The call for posts for the July Accretionary Wedge, hosted by volcanista’s Magmalicious Blog, is up!
So July’s topic is about your inspiration to enter geoscience. Was it a fantastic mentor? Watching your geologist parents growing up? A great teacher, or an exciting intro field trip? How did it happen?
The deadline for posts is July 10. Go to volcanista’s announcement and leave her a permalink there when you’ve got something to add.
AW #17 is up: “Let’s Do A Time Warp!” Thanks to the numerous geobloggers who posted submissions. I’m proud of how it turned out, but I couldn’t have done it without your work. Enjoy!
Next Saturday (June 13) is the deadline for the June AW, “Let’s Do A Time Warp.” I’ll try to get around to the numerous geoblogs I read and leave another reminder in your comments over the next few days. You can prevent such nuisance comments by leaving a link or URL to your submission at the above link.
Yes folks, we’re back! Let’s do a Time Warp! The description may be a bit verbose, but I hope this is a fun one.
I’d also like to take a moment to ask all the geobloggers out there (and there’s a lot of you follks) to come up with interesting AW topics that you’d like to host. Convention seems to be that if you’d like to host an edition, leave a comment here. Kim, Chris and I are helping BrianR get the melange activated, but we need your help and participation too.
This is a test post
TAW #16 (Feb 2009) was hosted at Geotripper — the original (and all the comments) can be found here.
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Tuff Cookie plays with lava
I am pleased to host February’s Accretionary Wedge Geoblogosphere Carnival! I am impressed and gratified by the contributions; it is wonderful to learn of the fascinating places of our planet, brought to you by those who know and love them.
As you may recall, the mission set forth was as follows:
What are the places and events that you think should all geologists should see and experience before they die? What are the places you know and love that best exemplify geological principles and processes?
It was my hope that there would be a good sampling of international sites and localities (the original list of 100 sites was fairly North America-centric), and I was not disappointed. The pictures in this Wedge are from the contributors unless otherwise noted.
The very first post was from Ikenna, a new geoblogger from Nigeria who offers us the Inselbergs of Nigeria. Check Ikenna’s blog for some nice views of a variety of granite domes that dot the terrain in that region of Africa.
Terry Wright, Professor Emeritus at Sonoma State University, suggests that three places of the world that should be included on our list are:
Renee Aubrey, a high school teacher in New York suggests in an e-mail that Newfoundland is beautiful! She would add to the list two places from there – sunrise at Cape Spear (easternmost point of North America) and a visit to Western Brook Pond (landlocked fjord). She also suggests sunset from the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
Silver Fox at Looking for Detachment suggests three additions to the list:
Check her post for more details
Eric at Dynamic Earth offers up the Wadi Al-Hitan in Egypt (I’m thrilled that we got so many suggestions of sites in Africa). The World Heritage Site is both scenic and full of important fossils. Read about it here.
Geology Happens went and changed the rules (oh, no!) to describe what he would do in one year, with the following choices:
Visit the type area of my favorite formations.
Do a Powell and travel the length of the Grand River system by boat.
See lava coming out of the earth. This need not be a significant event.
Climb in the Himalaya.
See a surging glacier if there are any left.
Calving icebergs
Climb an icefall
Walk a transect of some really interesting geology, coast range of California or the Appalachian mountains
Visit a deep sea trench
Feel an earthquake, again this need not be a major event.
Spend a summer at the INSTAAR field camp.
Climb the walls in Yosemite Valley
If I may editorialize a bit, that would be one heckuva year!
Julian at Harmonic Tremors (only a former music major would take a blog name like that…) suggests that simply listing the San Andreas Fault as a destination doesn’t quite do the feature justice and suggests exploring the entire length from the Salton Sea to Mendocino. Two sites are singled out for special exploration:
The Carrizo Plain National Monument, where the San Andreas is starkly exposed for all to see
The town of Hollister, where streets and buildings are being slowly torn apart by aseismic creep
Ian at Hypo-Theses offers up ten sites in the United Kingdom that ARE NOT the Giant’s Causeway but are far more geologically significant:
The Pembrokeshire Coastline, West Wales (photo below)
The Jurassic Coast
Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland
Eriboll, Sutherland, Scotland
Glen Sligachan, Skye, Scotland
The Ercall, Shropshire, England
Kilve, Somerset, England
Wren’s Nest Dudley, West Midlands, England
Isle of Mull, Scotland
West Runton, Norfolk, England
Excellent descriptions and photographs can be found at his post here. Check them out!
Jessica, at Magma Cum Laude, fleshes out the idea of “visit a volcano”, including seeing an active lava flow (think blast furnace), skiing down a scoria cone, inhaling the delicious aroma of a degassing volcano, and standing on top of a stratovolcano. Check it out here, and also check out one of the things she suggests NOT to do…(that’s her picture at the beginning of the post)
Lockwood at Outside the Interzone was one of several contributors who worked with and modified the original list of 100 places, a notion I strongly support. Check his new list out here. He also added a several new ideas:
Identify an overturned sequence (not have it pointed out to you)
Spend a few minutes mesmerized by a waterfall or lake, and contemplate their ephemeral nature from a geologic perspective
Go on a geologic field trip
Lead a geologic field trip
See fossil fuel leaking from the earth at a natural seep or vent
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where it emerges on land in Iceland
Callan Bentley, at NOVA Geoblog responded to the original “100 things” list with a carefully considered rewrite, which he reposted for the wedge (check it out here)
Mel, at Ripples in Sand breaks the rules too (what is it about geologists and rules? But, hey, go for it!) and suggests a comprehensive list of the world’s great deserts. Her idea has the benefit of expanding our list to all of the continents (don’t forget there are polar deserts, too). He also has a nice list of dune fields that he has visited, including White Sands, shown below.
Chris at Highly Allochthonous has an aversion to visiting places just to fulfill a list, and offers us some thoughtful ideas that, in his words, “… identify occasions in my geological journey so far where my perspective has been broadened, and my understanding has been catalysed, by something that I have seen, and generalised from those examples“. His ideas (and wish list)include:
An angular unconformity
The centre of a stable continental craton
Jarring geological contrasts
Nature vs Civilisation
An active fault scarp and raised terraces
Crazy deformation
An active volcano/geothermal field
An eroded, extinct volcanic caldera
The contact aureole of a large igneous intrusion
An igneous intrusion into sediments
Seeing fossils from a Lagerstatten
Diving on a coral reef
The beach
Living stromatolites
Black/white smokers
Antarctica or Greenland (or both)
See his post for some excellent descriptions of his adventures as well as some very nice photos, including Arthur’s Seat and the Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh, Scotland (shown below).
Geotripper: Ironically, I did not spend very long thinking about how I would change the 100 things list, but in the announcement of the Wedge, I had a picture of a deep glacial canyon in the Sierra Nevada of California that was “Not Yosemite”. It is Kings Canyon National Park, and it contains some of the most dramatic and geologically instructive scenery in the entire range. Beautiful vertical exposures of granitic plutons, excellently exposed metamorphic roof pendants, highly deformed metamorphic rocks, marble caverns, glacial moraines, hanging valleys, waterfalls, river-cut gorges, and even the occasional exposure of lava flows. And…it is the second deepest (by a paltry 19 feet) canyon in North America. And despite being perfectly accessible, it has a fraction of the crowds of Yosemite National Park (which I also love, by the way).
Now, click your heels together, because after all our explorations of the big wide world, Kim, at All My Faults Are Stress Related, has one of the great ideas of the wedge this month: to appreciate the uniqueness and beauty, no matter where you live, of the ground beneath your feet. She makes a great argument: every place in the world has a geologic story, and it is almost invariably a fascinating adventure.
It’s been an adventure hosting the Wedge this month, and I deeply appreciate everyone’s contributions. If I have missed any, please let me know and I will add your contributions. You have added a lot of ideas for us to all think about as we map out the arc of the remainder of our lives. Looking over these lists I found myself thinking: Is one life enough?
Thank you very much!
TAW #15 (Jan 2009) was hosted by Clastic Detritus; the original post can be found here.
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First, Michael Welland of the blog Through the Sandglass ponders far into the Earth’s future — 100 million years — and, inspired by Zalasiewicz’s book The Earth After Us, discusses what future geologists/anthropologists might infer from a single layer in the stratigraphic record.
Essentially none of our infrastructure, creations, and artifacts will survive 100 million years of erosion, burial, diagenesis, and tectonics in their original compositional and structural form, and we ourselves, inhabiting the erosional land rather than the depositional marine realms are poor fossil candidates – think of the extent (or lack of it) of the record of our ancestors in the African Rift Valleys.
At the end of his post reviewing and discussing Zalasiewicz’s book, Michael poses a question to the reader:
So, here’s the question, given that our appreciation of plate tectonic processes was a long time coming, difficult, and highly controversial even while their work was going on all around us, in a post plate tectonics world, how would we discern that those processes had ever happened? What would be the evidence revealed to and by geologists of the future that plate motions and plate margin dynamics had sculpted the appearance of our planet? Something to think about as we gaze more closely at other planets?
Head on over to join the discussion.
Next, Hypocentre at the blog Hypo-theses looks at just the next few decades and proclaims that global warming will cause large earthquakes to completely disappear by 2035. Don’t believe it? Well, you better go check out his post.
Silver Fox at the blog Looking For Detachment investigates where, how much, what kind, and under what conditions ore deposits might be explored for in the future:
I recommend drilling for gold in 1 to 5 million years in the Mendocino, CA, area, with 2 to 3 million years being my best estimate of the proper timing. For proper and exact placement of drill rigs, I would wait for the future, when faults and fractures controlling future ore deposits will be identifiable, and when rocks will be available for sampling.
That’s just one of several specific predictions.
MJC Rocks at the blog Geotripper doesn’t pick a certain interval of time in the future, but ponders the basic processes and relationships of processes that both cause and are affected by the evolution of the Earth within the context of Black Mesa in northern Arizona:
I have no doubt that a layer will be discovered that represents a mass extinction event wherein a vast number of organisms disappeared forever, including the mammalian megafauna, and perhaps many oceanic species, especially at the top of the food chain, such as many kinds of sharks and whales. Will we be identified as the cause of the catastrophe? Who knows? Someone or something might figure it out. Or maybe not; it might be another of those mysteries that nag and bother the psyches of those who study the earth and it’s past.
Kevin from the blog The GeoChristian discusses some events and processes that will occur over four orders of temporal magnitude (from 1,000 to 1,000,000 years) and ponders them within the context of his own faith.
Finally, here is my own post that speculates and discusses a million years worth of deposition.
UPDATE: Chris from Highly Allochthonous addresses the question many of ponder about our magnetic field — when will the polarity reverse? And how long does it take? Read the post to learn more.
Dave over at the Geology News blog hosted the November 2008 installment of The Accretionary Wedge geoscience blog carnival. Check it out on his site here.
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Apologies for getting the post up late this week. I’ve been quite busy working on a big project for this weekend in San Francisco. Let’s not even talk about how I forgot about the Accretionary Wedge last month…
Source: The Plesiosaur Site
Alright, it’s time for the next installment of the monthly geoblog carnival, known as the Accretionary Wedge. Remember, this is the first of two Accretionary Wedge posts this month. Enjoy!
For this Accretionary Wedge, I asked, “whether you’re a student, researcher, or in the industry, what is your absolute favorite place that you’ve done field work in? Where and why? What were you working on and what made it so great?”
We’ve had some great submissions. Let’s take a look!
View Larger Map
Anywhere!
Near the Northumberland Caldera by Silver Fox.
First off, Silver Fox from Looking for Detachment talks about her favorite field area. It’s simple! Wherever she happens to be working at that moment in time. She goes on to explain some more specific areas she particularly remembers:
I spent a lot of time here, first doing some stream-sediment and rock sampling, walking around here and there, mostly from the tops of drainages to the bottoms, looking for high scintillometer readings to indicate the presence of uranium. Later, I spent quite a bit of time mapping parts of the caldera: the northern, central, and southern parts – bits and pieces, here and there, a lot of interesting rocks, formations, faults, ring-fractures, flow-domes, slide blocks, and rocks younger and older than the caldera itself. After that, I was given a fairly large budget for the time, and we started drilling like crazy, at one time having 3 core rigs and 1 or 2 rotary rigs drilling at once (way too many at once, but fortunately 2 were about to leave). That was the first year.
Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous shares a similar point of view regarding his favorite places.
So, does this make North Wales my favourite field area? Well, no. Because my fond memories are not so much due to the particular rocks there, as they are due to the pleasure I took in puzzling out, and understanding, the geological stories that they held. It’s been exactly the same in similar instances since; the rocks in New Zealand, or South Africa, may have been pretty cool in themselves, but my best memories are always associated with the spark of insight, the moment of “Oh, I see!” Because of that, I generally find myself looking forward to the place I’m going next, and the next geological puzzle to solve. So, in answer to Dave’s question for the next Accretionary Wedge, I have to say that my favorite field area is the next one. And the one after that, ad infinitum. Or, at least, a darn big finitum.
Big Bend National Park and Glacier National Park
Big Bend National Park by ReBecca.
ReBecca from DinoChick Blogs shares two of her favorite spots in Big Bend National Park and Glacier National Park. Here is an excerpt about her thoughts on Big Bend.
Big Bend is just a wonder – its such an odd place. Every plant there wants to poke, prick or stick you, and with the intention of making you bleed. Its hot. Not just hot. It can be ungodly hot – its awesome. There is really no shade there, so it is all sun, all the time, which is great! It does rain every now and then, that is true. Its remote, which it nice because it keeps your normal human away – you really have to want to go there to go there, because there is really no other reason to be in that part of the world. The general lack of humans can be nice (avoid spring break season however). All of the areas in the park I have worked are nice and off the beaten path so encounters with humans is at a nice all time low, which is always a plus. The geology though of Big Bend is just spectacular! It is everywhere and just so in your face (just like at Glacier). I think that may be one of the things that really caught my heart. Every way you look you just wonder – “now why is that there” or “what does this mean” – it really keeps your mind working IMO.
Colorado Plateau
Sunset at Yellowstone by Garry Hayes
Garry Hayes from Geotripper shared a few of his favorite spots for field work on the Colorado Plateau. These include the Cedar Mountain formation, the Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone.
In his series of posts, Garry recounts some interesting tales that happened while in the field.
What happened that particular evening became one of our department legends for the ages. One our students had a knack for fomenting trouble with the powers-that-be in the Universe. On various previous trips he had speculated about what it would be like to get stung by a scorpion, and within a day, he had been (unwillingly) stung by a scorpion. At a stop, he asked if we would see any rattlesnakes. He stepped on one moments later. There was a karma that hung about Craig like a hangman’s noose.
Dolomite Mountains
Dolomite Mountains by David Bressan.
David Bressan of Cryology and Co. gives us a detailed look at his favorite field spot in the Dolomite Mountains.
An approximate bipartition in the eastern Alps is caused by a mayor fault system, the Periadriatic Line, separating the Austroalpine in the North, predominated by metamorphic rocks, from the Southalpine, mainly magmatic and sedimentary rocks. The basement of the Southalpine unit consists predominantly of a monoton succession of quartz phyllites of the Paleozoic era.
Towards the end of the Paleozoic increasing magmatic activity started, one part of the melts remained struck in 12 km depth where it solidified; the other part reached the surface and covered enormous areas with volcanic deposits. This “Permian Athesian Volcanic Group” forms a solid fundament for the Mesozoic sediments that build up the “Pale Mountains”.
Fish Lake Plateau
An outcrop on the Fish Lake Plateau by Tuff Cookie.
Tuff Cookie from Magma Cum Laude shares one of her favorite areas on the Fish Lake Plateau.
I haven’t done a whole lot of research yet, but I always enjoy a good chance to get out in the field. For my undergraduate thesis, this meant spending a few weeks in south-central Utah, on the High Plateaus. The work was part of the 2006 NSF Fish Lake Research Experience for Undergraduates, a joint effort between the College of William & Mary and Coastal Carolina University. The project was in its second year, and had been inspired by past W&M field trips to Fish Lake.
My first visit to Fish Lake was on one of those trips – I had just finished my freshman year, and I was still struggling to learn all the basic skills of field mapping. As I remember, we had a discussion about whether Fish Lake was formed by glacial or tectonic processes (and I was on the glacial side, which ended up being not a great choice). Shortly after that, however, my advisor mentioned that the REU would be doing research there, and (dropping a blatant hint to get me interested) that there might be some volcanology I could work on.
Green River
Green River by Ed Adams.
Ed Adams from Geology Happens shares one of his favorite spots in a course he teaches.
My favorite class I have been teaching is the Geology of the Green River by Canoe through the Colorado School of Mines. Its nothing more than a “teacher enhancement” course meaning that the credit is only good for re-certification of the state teacher license. That said…we do some fun science on the river. The first image shows the river coming around BowKnot Bend. This entrenched meander takes 7 river miles to go less than 1/2 mile of a straight line. For Earth Science teachers who have taught river meanders, oxbow lakes and simple river mechanics in a classroom, the real thing helps them immensely in the next school year.
New Zealand
On top of Mt. Roberts, South Island, New Zealand by Dave Schumaker.
Like many others have said, I have a list of multiple favorite places. Really, I just enjoy being out in the field. However, if I had to pick one place, it would be New Zealand. It is where I did my field camp through Massey University. We looked at a lot of various problems relating to structural geology, tectonic geomorphology, tephra stratigraphy, and glaciology.
I’ve just arrived in the town of Westport, which is on the western coast of the South Island. The last few days have been relatively laid back. We finally left the hippy conclave of Takaka (which admittedly is a nice town) to journey southwards to St. Arnaud… a small ski village located on the shores of Lake Rotoiti. We spent two days in St. Arnaud, looking at various things of geologic significance.
Among the interesting sights we got to experience, was a brisk hike up Mt. Robert yesterday (which was also my birthday), which overlooks Lake Rotoiti. After arriving at the top, we were caught in a short snow flurry, but were able to take cover in a shelter along the trail. The views from the top were quite dramatic and fascinating. However, clouds quickly moved in and it began to rain on our way down. The last few days have actually been rather rainy too, which is somewhat disappointing. I’ve never been to a place where the weather changes so fast though.
Patagonia
Crossing Rio Zamora (photo from JAC via Clastic Detritus.)
Brian Romans of Clastic Detritus brought us an older post on the field area for his PhD thesis, Carro Divasadero in Patagonia, Chile.
The gauchos would drop us and all our gear off and then head back to civilization (i.e., a ranch in the middle of nowhere). For this particular excursion, we were staying for 11 nights. Basically, we set up the date for them to come back and get us … and that’s how it worked (we had a sat phone in case we needed to get out earlier than planned). In the photo above, that’s Chechin and Luis riding off with all the horses … leaving the four of us … in the middle of nowhere … for 12 days.
Finally! We’re there … after 20 hours of flying, a 3 hour drive to Natales, another 3 hour drive to meet the gauchos, and then 3-4 hours on horseback (and a lot of planning before and in between all these steps).
Quartzville
Quartzville Creek from Lockwood DeWitt.
Lockwood DeWitt from Outside the Interzone said his favorite place for field work was Quartzville.
I first visited this area in spring of 1982 with the OSU Geology Club- more of a sight-seeing tour than anything else, but soon afterward I found this field guide (7 Mb PDF) at the library, and returned frequently. The thing that makes the Quartzville area particularly interesting is that a late-stage intrusion (about 18 Ma) emplaced a granodiorite pluton that set up a hydrothermal system. So not only can you see the guts of an arc volcanic system, you can see a range of mineralization from unaltered to complete replacement with quartz. This is not a rich district: 30 years of on-and-off mining in the late 1800’s produced about $200 thousand worth of gold and silver. But that means that no great blocks have been removed or left unsafe to investigate.
Sierra Nevada
Eastern Gem Lake in the Sierra Nevada by Callan Bentley.
Callan Bentley at the NOVA Geoblog says that his favorite spot is the Sierra Nevada in California.
My favorite place to do field work is in California’s “range of light,” the Sierra Nevada.
I did my geology master’s field work in the eastern Sierra, along the Sierra Crest Shear Zone, a major high-strain zone which parallels the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Batholith through older meta-sedimentary and meta-volcanic host rocks.
In 2003, I spent the summer out there, starting with my first field area at lovely Gem Lake.
Spanish Pyrenees
The Spanish Pyrenes from Ian Stimpson.
Ian Stimpson from hypo-theses also contributed his favorite place to do field work – The Spanish Pyrenees.
I am extremely lucky having a job that allows me out into the field occasionally, even if at the minute it is just down the road. In my top five I would have to include the Atacama Desert of Chile, Iceland, Colorado and the Alps but at number one has to be the Spanish Pyrenees.
I’ve been many times, as a postgraduate demonstrator and lecturer on undergraduate field courses and twice as a field assistant to a Ph.D. student. However, I’ve not been back in a long time, so apologies in advance for the scans of twenty year old slides.
The Spanish Pyrenees is a classic place to teach geology. The Spanish side (unlike the French side) is arid so there is excellent exposure, and, unlike the Alps, they are not too high and much of the geology is accessible from the roadside (with a suitable loose definition of road).
Vermont
Middle Mountain from Kim Hannula.
Kim Hannula from All of My Faults Are Stress Related shares one of her favorite field locations in Vermont and remembers some of her experiences there.
love field work. No, really, I do. But when I tell stories about it, they always end up being about running out of food or wrecking vans or collecting samples of giant mosquitoes by slamming a field notebook shut or not being able to find a single sample of high-pressure metamorphic minerals except trapped as inclusions in a garnet. (And that was just my PhD area.) I’ve thrashed through ice-storm-damaged woods, taking an hour to walk a mile, in search of non-existent staurolites. I’ve fallen into streams. I’ve broken a canoe paddle while trying to cross a melt-swollen river. I’ve post-holed through snow banks. I come back from the field covered in mud, sweat, scratches, bruises, and occasionally blood from where my hammer missed the chisel and slammed the back of my hand.
The September 2008 edition of the geoscience blog carnival The Accretionary Wedge, was hosted by goodSchist.com. The topic is “Geology in Spaaaace!” and the original can be found here.
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The unprecedented threat of alien geology must weigh heavy on the minds of human Earth geologists. This month’s Accretionary Wedge (issue 13), opens the alien riddled can of worms that is Geology in Spaaaaace.
Greetings human Earth geologists and geologically interested beings of all kinds. This month’s Accretionary Wedge is dedicated to posts about, from an earthling’s perspective, Geologeeeeeeee in Spaaaaaace. In a manner befitting a species such as homo sapiens, posts will be tackled from a heliocentric perspective, starting with Venus and moving out to the entire universe. Behold the fearful wonder that is Geology in Space!
(note: if you’re reading this in an RSS reader, you’ll probably be missing out on the artwork I did for this post. Make sure you click through to get the full visual experience)
A world of beauty, or a galactic volcano in sediment’s clothing? Only Hypocentre of Hypo-thesis can distil the ancient doom of the Cambrian on Venus!
Something catastrophic may (or may not*) have happened during the Cambrian on Venus.
Maria Brumm of Green Gabbro gives cibophobics another reason to fear cakes, as she compares a plum clafoutis to Venetian impact craters in What Planet is my Clafoutis From?
Like so many moments of culinary inspiration, this plum clafoutis is nothing like what I was thinking of prior to actually wandering into the kitchen to make dinner.
The Earth. A pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam. The target of jealous and tyrannical alien invaders. And impacts! Geology Happens relays the shocking facts about Impacts from Space!
I am cheating somewhat since my post is about a phenomenon that happens here on earth as well as in space. That is the idea of impact craters.
Tuff Cookie from Magma Cum Laude tells of impactors too in Rocks in from space. Could this be the first wave of yet another alien invasion?
Anyway, spending so much time at the museum – around the meteorites, among other things – was one of the reasons I became a geologist.
The constant, unending invasions from Mars during the 1900s should have been horrifying enough, but now SamStag from cryology and co. makes us quiver in fear at the prospect of Rockglaciers from Mars !!! Will the red menace ever be defeated!?
From all planets and minor objects of the solar system, most similarities to features of periglacial regions on Earth can be found on the red neighbour – Mars.
And if the thought of glacial processes on Mars didn’t send shivers down your spine, Brian from Clastic Detritus informs us of Fluvial Deposits on Mars! Walk for your lives!
High-resolution mapping of planet surfaces (including Earth) from orbiting spacecraft is revealing the beauty and complexity of erosional and depositional landforms.
The inner Solar System could have bore five terrestrial planets. The smoldering remains of planet 4.5 are what make up the asteroid belt, where material unchanged since the dawn of the Solar System remains. Though there’s no perceived threat of alien attack from the asteroid belt, who can really be sure? Silver Fox of Looking for Detachment discusses Mining the Asteroid Belt, in what can only be described as a preemptive attack to deprive potential invaders of potential resources. Potentially.
But first off, mining in space – in the asteroid belt or anywhere else – is not likely to happen anytime soon, IMO. Numerous people, however, have been looking into it, perhaps at least as long as we have been actively exploring space, beginning with our 1960’s race to the moon.
The gaseous bully of the Solar System offers up intrigue for the bravest of volcanologists. And Dave Schumacher of Geology News gives us the terrifying details of Extraterrestrial Volcanism on Io! Will the space bound geo horrors never cease!?
What is all the lava that erupts on Io composed of? Scientists do not know for certain the composition of the lava, but based on spectrometer data, Io’s surface is covered with a mix of hot, basaltic or ultramafic silicates and a sulfur dioxide frost.
The unfolding story of Titan should surely serve as a warning! Peter Polito over at Geology News regales us with tales of Titan Channels: What we know four and half years later.
One of the most fascinating things about the surface of Titan is that five years ago we knew nothing about it. But with the arrival of Cassini and Huygens that has all changed.
Lockwood of Outside The Interzone also contemplates the channels of Titan and low temperature freeze-ray geology, as well as details of the moons of Enceladus, Europa and Miranda in A Fine Piece of Ice:
We knew there was a chance a chance of methane/ethane preciptation, we knew there was a chance of liquids on Titan. But the idea that dendritic drainage might form at 178 below zero Celsius never crossed my mind.
Disregarded as a fully qualified planet, could the menace of an atmosphere make Pluto a body of geological interest? Yes! And Chris from Pools and Riffles heralds in the new threat of the Geology of Pluto.
The hardest thing about studying the geology of Pluto is the distance. Pluto is at a minimum 4.28 billion km from earth. A little to far for a rock hammer. At that distance, even satellites have problems.
Cosmochemists (as I could claim to be), like the big picture. The REALLY big picture. Chuck at Lounge of the Lab Lemming tells us of the radioactive horrors that endured when the solar system was dragged kicking and screaming into the galaxy, in Isotope Park.
When’s the last time your non-geological friends told you their 6 year old loves 60Fe?
MJC Rocks of Geotripper contemplates scarring the children of today with thought of the universe-sized scorpions and bears, but not as part of some sort of dome, in Done with Domes.
The ancients thought of the cosmos this way, and they made stories to go with the random arrangements of stars that formed bears and hunters and scorpions.
And speaking of space in its entirety:
You have read it. You cannot unread it. Stay tuned for more exciting geological tales in next month’s Accretionary Wedge. Your very survival could depend on it!
For those wondering, no I didn’t manage to get my thesis in on time. I’ve got a 4 week extension, though, so it’s not far off.
In the title comic book cover, illustrations of the Earth split in twain, the characters floating in space, and the terrifying martian are from various covers of the comic book series Mystery in Space and © DC Comics.
The August 2008 edition of The Accretionary Wedge geoscience blog carnival is was hosted at NOVA Geoblog. Go there to check out the original post and comment thread.
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When I look back on my four years of undergraduate geology education, the one thing that strikes me as the most important thing I learned is the age of the Earth. It sent my mind reeling to recognize what a huge old planet I was on, and how ephemeral was my own species’ time on it. I was a blip, a temporary arrangement of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and a handful of other elements that would last a while, and then disassociate. Material and energy passed into me, and out. This kinetic chemical phenomenon known as me would soon pass, and the Earth would keep turning. The human species would reach its zenith, then collapse (or evolve into something else), and the Earth would keep turning. The continents would rift and crash and the map of the Earth would soon be obselete, and the Earth would keep on turning. Climates change, meteors hit, “rivers shift, oceans fall, and mountains drift” (REM, 1985), and still the planet keeps on spinning, keeps on orbiting, keeps on keeping on.
The day I really realized the age of the Earth wasn’t the day I heard “4.6 billion” in lecture. It was the day I sat there studying and grasped it internally — it clicked that it was immensely, unimaginably old. My temporary human mind was a short-time-scale phenomenon, and it was impossible for this small cerebral system to get a grip on the true scale of the planet’s age. While I would never really know (comprehend/appreciate) the age of my planet, I tapped into something fundamental that day. Looking back on it now, I’m reminded of John Playfair’s words when his pal James Hutton took him to Siccar Point for the first time: “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time” (1805).
When I made that cognitive leap (by essentially realizing it was impossible for me to fully make the cognitive leap), I got stuck on geology. I connected to the study in a way I hadn’t done before. Suddenly I was subject to a dizzying temporal vertigo, as if a layer of flooring had crumbled away leaving me gazing into a bottomless pit. The realization gave a whole new perspective on things, and it was exhilarating. It felt like one of the conversations when you’re getting to know someone, and realizing that they are both intriguing and yet never completely knowable. It draws you in, connects you. Without getting too gushy, it’s kind of like falling in love. I’ve been a geologist ever since.
As I learned more, both in school and on later peregrinations around the world, I found that geology was a great traveling companion. No matter where I went, geology was there with me, showing me new things, giving me insightful perspective. I was looking at the world through geology-colored glasses, and finding that it had a lot to show me. The world made more sense on an elemental level. Hills made sense; rivers made sense; mountains made sense. While I couldn’t claim to fully understand any of these phenomena, I could claim a connection to them now that wasn’t there before. They were no longer random in my mind; they had a place in the overall system, and it took geology to make me realize it.
So this perspective has stuck with me, and it’s what inspired me to pitch “geology as a connector” as this month’s Accretionary Wedge theme. (Newbies: the Wedge is a semi-monthly geoblogosphere carnival wherein different geobloggers contribute posts organized around a central theme.) I was curious about what I would get, and I didn’t want to restrict my peers’ submissions by specifying what kind of connections should be written about.
Sure enough, different people interpreted connection differently. Tromping around in the mountains doing geologic mapping yields more than insights into local structure and stratigraphy, as BrianR of Clastic Detritus discusses how his field work has connected him to the messy reality that is nature.
Jess at Magma Cum Laude is starting her first semester as a graduate T.A., and is going to employ a teaching technique that connected her to the pervasive nature of geology: everything that the Earth puts out for the purpose of assembling Oreo cookies. Something as simple as an Oreo can be the vehicle through which students realize the manifold ways they depend on the Earth every day.
Where are the boundaries between sciences? Is geology a subset of environmental science, or physics? Or both? How do we define the different parts of Nature that we study? Using a Venn diagram, Hypocentre at Hypo-theses explores the connections between geology and other sciences, particularly in the environmental realm.
Similarly, Mel uses a diagram to explore connections in her post at Ripples in Sand. How does geology connect to paleontology? Join Mel in looking at the taphonomic bridge. (And wish her congratulations on her wedding while you’re at it!)
Joining the crowd in her first Accretionary Wedge post, A Life Long Scholar (at The Musings of a Life-Long Scholar) makes a connection between the very small and the very large. In trying to answer questions about massive tectonic plates, sometimes geologists must turn to little bundles of mass a few micrometers across. Check out her post to see how garnets can reveal the secret histories of the continents.
And then there are the personal connections. In Looking for Detachment, Silver Fox was the first one to submit a post on the “connection” theme with her description of how different members of the mining and exploration community connect to one another over time and space (Nevada, of course). How do Charles Manson, Kevin Bacon, and exploration geologists all fit together? Read her post to find out.
MJC Rocks of the Geotripper blog has contributed a real treat: an exploration of the connection of geologists teaching geologists through time. It turns out that his academic lineage goes all the way back to Agassiz and Cuvier! A pretty impressive consideration which will surely inspire the rest of us to investigate our own geologic pedigrees.
Finally, over at Harmonic Tremors, Julian shares a story of how his knowledge of geology led him to make a personal connection with one of his cinematic idols, director Brad Bird. If you’ve seen the Incredibles, you’re familiar with Bird’s high quality entertainment. When Julian heard that Bird was working on a movie called 1906 about the great San Francisco Earthquake, he wrote a letter to clear up some inconsistencies in the book upon which the movie is based. The talented director took the time to write back to Julian, thanking him for the “seismic tutorial.”
Enjoy the various and sundry posts — follow these digital connections to other geologists in other parts of the world, and feel connected to the larger community of earth scientists. Thanks to everyone who contributed. If I’ve missed anyone or if anyone wants to submit a late post, give me a shout or post a link in the comments.
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References:
Playfair, John (1805). Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. V, pt. III.
REM, (1985). “Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” Fables Of The Reconstruction, IRS records.
