£2m ERC grant for Earth environment simulation to discover earth origins and life in the galaxy

SIM-EARTH project to shed light on pre-history mass extinctions and how to find intelligent life in space.

A new project by Dr. Benjamin Mills, Associate Professor in the School of Earth and Environment, SIM-EARTH: Simulating the evolution of Earth’s environment, has received £2m European Research Council (ERC) funding.

The temperature of Earth’s surface and the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans has changed dramatically over our planet’s history, but there is no consensus on what has driven these changes. We do not understand the relative importance of the fundamental processes that have made our planet suitable for complex life, and this is impairing our ability to understand our own evolution, to map our planet’s future, and to make predictions about what type of planets might support complex life in general.

Dr Mills explained, “This project should enable a new understanding of the global mechanisms that control our planet's climate and set the chemical make-up of the atmosphere and oceans. I hope that our work will shed new light on why mass extinctions have happened in Earth's history, what we should do to maintain favourable conditions on Earth in the long term future, and where we should look to find intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.”

I hope that our work will shed new light on why mass extinctions have happened in Earth's history, what we should do to maintain favourable conditions on Earth in the long term future, and where we should look to find intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.

“SIM-EARTH will use a new computational technique that I have recently prototyped to couple plate tectonics, physical climate and global biogeochemical cycles over billions of years, creating for the first time a 3D and time-evolving model of a planetary surface environment,” he explained.

“This model will finally allow us to integrate all of the hypothesised processes that might control Earth’s environment, and opens up the ability to use rigorous model-data comparison at local and global scales to identify which processes are the most important.”

Dr Mills described the potential impact of the project, “The outcome will help us understand what underlying properties of our planet have led to the temperate and high-oxygen environment which has allowed for the evolution of intelligent life.

The outcome will help us understand what underlying properties of our planet have led to the temperate and high-oxygen environment which has allowed for the evolution of intelligent life.

ERC Grants are prestigious grants run through Horizon Europe, with typically, only a 14% success rate. These awards are Consolidator Grants which is for those 7-12 years post-PhD. 

“I was overjoyed to get this funding award,” Dr Mills said. “It will give me the time and resources to pursue something that I find truly fascinating. It will allow me to focus the next five years of my career on big picture and exciting questions about how our planet works.”