Geology
amillikan | December 24, 2008After an expedition through the Sarahan sands of Morocco, ScienceBlogger Darren Naish from Tetrapod Zoology has returned to share astonishing essays and photo documentation of his journey. "Our primary aim was to discover Cretaceous dinosaurs, pterosaurs and other fossil reptiles," Naish wrote in Part 1 of his four-part blogumentary, but he also encountered exotic living creatures along the way—jerboas and fennecs and agamas, oh my!
scientificactivist | July 31, 2008Below is the second part of my interview with planetary geologist Bethany Ehlmann. In the first part, she discussed two of her recent papers on Martian geology (see citations below). In this segment, she discusses water on Mars more generally.
Bethany Ehlmann Nick Anthis: Would it be possible to briefly take our readers through the history of the discovery of water (or traces of past water) on Mars? I know that this is an important area, but it seems like there's so much work on it coming out now that it's hard for someone not in the field to put it all into context. Maybe you could just…
scientificactivist | July 30, 2008Planetary geology is a fascinating area--particularly when it pertains to the search for extraterrestrial life. I wrote about it once during my brief stint as a student science writer, but it's not an area that I've really covered on my blog. However, a former colleague of mine from Oxford, Bethany Ehlmann, was recently involved with a couple of papers on geological formations left by ancient Martian water, so I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity. Ehlmann is currently a PhD student in the geological sciences at Brown University and part of the CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance…
pontiff | May 30, 2008The scientific data, it wants to be free! San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth: "You are currently viewing Hole E - Run 1 - Section 1" Cool.
esiegel | May 17, 2008Sometimes, you find weird stuff on the internet. But sometimes you find even weirder stuff in scientific journals. To what do I refer? A paper in the Journal of Mathematical Geology back in 2000 entitled Godzilla from a Zoological Perspective, by Per Christiansen.
This was written as a critique of the "new Godzilla" movie, arguing that it is not more biologically plausible than the "old Godzilla" of 1954.
However, calculations show that his limbs and limb muscles must have been severely undersized to move his huge bulk around at even a leisurely pace, and most other biological problems with…
esiegel | April 21, 2008What makes earthquakes? Although there are many causes, including volcanoes, the most common thing that causes them are tectonic motions, which also cause tsunamis. But as valuable as it is to understand other planets in our solar system and in other star systems, sometimes it's important to understand what's going on inside our own planet.
The crust of the Earth actually is made up of a number of plates, which rub against one another and move over time. Who's to blame? I fault the liquid hot magma.
So what happens is that these plates slip against each other in one of three ways, as shown…
terrasig | April 20, 2008I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.
- Woody Guthrie, Ludlow Massacre (1944)
US Senator Ken Salazar (D-Colo) has commemorated today's 94th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre by introducing a bill (PDF) to designate the coalminers tent colony as a National Historic Landmark. Unless you…
laelaps | February 28, 2008Well, if you consider shipwrecks, buried forests, and some previously covered geologic formations to be treasure, that is. Due to the action of some powerful storms around the northern tip of the Oregon coast, parts of the shore underwent massive erosion, revealing the previously entombed oddities. Indeed, you never know what large storms might turn up along the shore; mastodon teeth have been found along one New Jersey beach as storms sometimes cast remains from a near-shore deposit onto the sand.
chaoticutopia | February 10, 2008This weekend’s fractal isn’t very late, when you consider its roots are found 50 million years in the past. The earth was a bit different then... think of it as a post-global-warming world, where greenhouse gasses have already run amok, driving global temperatures. The poles are virtually frost-free, and rainforests reach far into the northern latitudes. Some of our familiar coastline is entirely underwater, including Florida, Louisiana, and a large swath of Texas. On the other side, most of California and Oregon isn’t quite done yet... large chunks of it are still sliding up from Mexico. The…
vhughes | February 7, 2008(This guest post was written by Chris Rowan)
It is always a pleasure to welcome a new Scibling into the fold, but I am particularly pleased to celebrate the addition of a fellow rock-hound to the Collective. Maria Brumm of Green Gabbro has used the move as an opportunity to throw off her cloak of pseudonyminity, but despite her claims to the contrary, the blogger formerly known as Yami McMoots will surely continue to provide the geologically flavoured wit and wisdom that we have come to know and love at her old site.
Maria was actually a big factor in inspiring me to blog in the first place…
laelaps | January 31, 2008Apparently Sb has been snapping up quality science bloggers at an extraordinary rate, and the latest member of the collective is Maria of Green Gabbro. It's definitely good to have another geo-blogger in the house.
laelaps | January 29, 2008[Note: For fuller and more technical summaries of the Anthropocene and why it just doesn't fit (at least not yet), please read Chris' and Greg's posts. Likewise, naming new periods of time for perceived changes in our species or our impact in the world isn't anything new, i.e. the older concept of the noosphere (which I will write more about soon)]
Every few years it seems that the concept of the "Anthropocene" rears its ugly head again, the general idea being that we are now in a new geologic epoch defined by changes that our species has inflicted on the earth. The term is essentially tied…
tqa | January 24, 2008
Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins has a post that criticizes a recently-published journal article. Normally, I agree with John - in fact, if it's true that the best measure of someone's intelligence is how often their views match yours, then John Wilkins is an absolute genius. But even Einstein had off-days, and (again, based on the agreement standard) I think this might have been one of John's.
The article in question, by paleontologists Sarda Sahney and Michael Benton, examines how long it took for ecosystems to recover after the end-Permian extinction. The dinosaurs weren't…
sporte | January 14, 2008is coming home and flying into Seattle. I took these pictures with my phone (in Airplane Mode, of course).
In the first shot, you get to see Mt. St. Helen's and all the interesting geology around it.
Can you tell which way the volcano blew?
Mt. Rainier is in the background
The second shot is downtown Seattle.
jstemwedel | October 31, 2007I'm told we had a moderate earthquake here last night. Indeed, it is reportedly the largest earthquake in the area since the 1989 Loma Prieta quake -- which, as it happens, was the temblor that welcomed me to the San Francisco Bay Area.
I completely missed it.
You see, I was driving home from the store with the carrot sticks for the younger Free-Ride offspring's classroom Hallowe'en celebration. The roads haven't been repaved in a while, so I suppose the jostling that I attributed to the road surface might have been caused in part by seismic activity.
At home, the sprogs felt the shaking (…
laelaps | October 23, 2007Creationists have been strangely quiet today, their silence all the more odd because it's Bishop Ussher Day! According to Young Earth Creationist dogma the world just celebrated it's 6,011th 6,010th birthday (or a formless, empty Earth just celebrated it's birthday, the job not being finished until a few days later, of course), the creation week beginning the night prior to October 23, 4004 B.C. We know this is preposterous now, of course, but in Ussher's time figuring out the date of the Genesis narrative was big business, many theologians using various sorts of numerology in an attempt to…
tqa | September 25, 2007
Most of the readers of this blog are intelligent, interested, scientifically literate individuals, but I'm guessing that at least a few of you aren't familiar with one of the nouns in the title. Those of you who do know what a conodont is are probably wondering what it has to do with the others. If you bear with me for a little bit, the connection will be clear shortly. It has to do with fossils, fossilization, and the latest spectacular misunderstanding of those two things at Uncommon Descent.
Conodonts are (or, rather, were) an interesting group of animals. They were around from late in…
tqa | September 12, 2007
This is a continuation of a post I wrote (and updated a couple of times) earlier today. Since the tsunami is no longer a possibility - it's an actual event - I thought a new title was probably a good idea. Here's the situation as it currently stands:
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a final watch statement for the event at 11:05 am Eastern time. They report that a tsunami was generated, and is currently traveling across the Indian Ocean. Based on the data that they have - currently, they have readings from three near-shore tide gauges and one deep-ocean gauge - the tsunami is…
tqa | September 12, 2007
A very large, shallow earthquake occurred at 11:10 UTC today. The earthquake epicenter is located in the Indian Ocean, about 375 miles from Jakarta, Indonesia, and is currently estimated at magnitude 7.9. The magnitude of the earthquake and the shallow depth of the quake have lead the Pacific Tsunami Warning center to put a tsunami watch into effect for the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, there are still not a lot of sea level gauges in the area, so it's not yet known if a tsunami occurred.
Our thoughts are with those who have been affected by the quake, and with those who might be affected…
vhughes | May 18, 2007This week, in the Mexican oil city of Tampico, an orb-like, robotic submarine begins its 1,000-foot plunge to the bottom of an underwater cavern, the largest sinkhole in the world. As part of the NASA-sponsored DEPTHX project, the autonomous robot, endearingly called "Clementine," will probe exotic rocks and microbes that may be the key to finding life on Europa, Jupiter's largest moon.
Last Saturday, ranch hands of Rancho la Azufrosa helped get Clementine out of storage.
According to NASA's current plans, it'll be at least 30 years before robots get to airless, ice-crusted Europa. Despite…