EUREKA - Snowball Earth - page 50

Crystal fans, tubes, ice rocks, strange isotopes. Paul was increasingly convinced that all this evid-
ence added up in some way, and would somehow yield crucial clues about the Snowball. He tried con-
tinually to make sense of all these features. He visited and revisited the strange carbonate formations
to collect samples, to note and map and muse.
By the end of 1997, Paul was feeling frustrated. He had now spent five years doing fieldwork in
Namibia, and he still had no research papers to show for it. He finally decided to write a paper about
the carbon isotopes, even though he didn't yet fully understand them. Over Christmas and on into
January, he perfected his paper, which was destined for a small journal. 1 He talked about the glacial
rocks, and the strange isotopes in the carbonates that bracketed them. He talked about, and discounted,
several possible explanations for the ubiquitous ice. And then—right at the very end—he suggested
that Joe Kirschvink's ideas about the Snowball might provide a possible explanation. For once in his
life he was being cautious. Not by choice, though. He was truly wrestling with the Snowball conun-
drum.
Until, that is, another new player entered the scene—a young colleague of Paul's, Dan Schrag. At
the time, Dan knew nothing about the Snowball idea. He knew nothing about Brian Harland's work,
or Joe Kirschvink's. He knew nothing about Precambrian rocks or Namibian geology. But there was
one thing he knew plenty about, and that was carbonates.
D AN S CHRAG is Paul's best friend at Harvard. They look almost like partners in some comedy routine.
Paul is in his sixties, tall, thin, shock-headed and white-bearded. Dan is in his thirties, short, plump and
blond, with thin hair and a smooth round face. Dan's manner is smooth, too. He is supremely sociable.
People are his thing—his networks stretch through every scientific field. He has hordes of friends.
Many of them are hot young scientists like him, but there's a smattering of other types, too—artists,
designers, people he knew at school. Every year Dan rents a house somewhere beautiful with five par-
ticular college friends. Spouses and children come, too. When a child is born to one of the group, there
is a complex gifting scheme. Each group member provides the child with three favourite topics to be
read now, and two hundred dollars to be used later. The money is invested in a college fund, earmarked
for entertainment purposes only.
Dan doesn't take anyone with him to these college reunions. He hasn't met the right girl yet. In-
stead he throws himself into his work, with sharp eyes and a quick wit and the veneer of arrogance
that often comes with high intelligence. Friends say he is warm and generous; enemies say he is calcu-
lating. Everyone says he is brilliant. Dan has just won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award: half
a million dollars to spend as he wishes. He has decided to use the money for building a science retreat
near the ocean on Cape Cod. The house will have skylights, an inglenook, a huge kitchen, plenty of
rooms where Dan and his many friends can gather, cook, talk science and think.
Princeton gave Dan a professorship when he was only twentyseven. He moved to Harvard four
years later and was quickly, precociously, given tenure. Normally you'd work up to a place like Har-
vard. Normally it would take years to get tenure there. You'd expect to be in your forties, maybe, to
have lots of research years behind you. Not Dan. He'd already published seminal papers by the time
he hit thirty-four. By then, he had more ideas than he knew what to do with.
Dan loves ideas. He loves bouncing them around, tasting them, testing them, and seeing how they
might work. He loves having intense conversations about them. Especially with Paul. Late at night,
before he leaves the Geological Sciences Department and heads for home, Dan calls in on Paul. Even
at eleven o'clock, or midnight, Paul is invariably still in his office. Dan sends his dog, Max, on ahead.