Vaguely Informed Commentary From the Wide World of Earth Science
Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, he is now a post-doc at the University of Johannesburg.
What the heck does 'Highly Allochthonous' mean?
March 31, 2008
Category: geopuzzling
Most of you correctly identified the sedimentary structures in Friday's mystery photo: two sets of ripple marks can be seen on the left, and a lower bed on the right has what look like dessication/mud cracks, formed by the drying...
Posted by Chris Rowan at 11:48 AM • 3 Comments •
March 30, 2008
Category: academic life
It was nice to get away over the Easter weekend - I went with some friends down to St. Lucia, on the east coast of South Africa north of Durban. I'm not generally the sort of person who gets much...
Posted by Chris Rowan at 8:52 AM • 1 Comments •
March 28, 2008
Category: geopuzzling
After a bit of a hiatus, I return to the geopuzzling fray with this photo: Your task is easy enough: interpret the features in the image above. Update: Answer here....
Posted by Chris Rowan at 11:10 AM • 12 Comments •
March 27, 2008
Category: geohazards
There's an interesting news story in Nature* about a distributed computing project with a seismological twist. The proposed aim of the Quake-Catcher project is to hack and collate data from laptop accelerometers - designed to protect the hard drive when...
Posted by Chris Rowan at 12:46 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: bloggery
If you haven't already checked it out, the latest Accretionary Wedge went up while I was away, stacked full of entertaining musings from your favorite geobloggers about the role of geology, and geologists, in the entertainment industry. Or, as our...
Posted by Chris Rowan at 10:55 AM • 2 Comments •
March 23, 2008
Category: general science
A meditation on different perspectives on, and responses to, natural grandeur.
Posted by Chris Rowan at 3:40 PM • 8 Comments •
March 22, 2008
Category: general science
Making the philosophical best out of getting lost in the mountains
Posted by Chris Rowan at 11:37 AM • 1 Comments •
March 21, 2008
Category: public science
[submitted for The Accretionary Wedge #7] It's a fact of life that scientific accuracy is not generally at the top of Hollywood's to-do list when making a movie. Any scientist can no doubt recall multiple occasions when their ability to...
Posted by Chris Rowan at 10:59 AM • 5 Comments •
March 19, 2008
Category: geology
An old(er) Grand Canyon? Yes, if you ignore one annoying data point...
Posted by Chris Rowan at 10:45 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: academic life
Hurray! Finally published!
Posted by Chris Rowan at 6:25 AM • 11 Comments •
