Please see the April 2008 edition of The Accretionary Wedge geoscience blog carnival up at Andrew Alden’s geology.about.com site here.

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It will be archived here in the future.

The Accretionary Wedge #7 was hosted by Tuff Cookie at Magma Cum Laude — see the original post here.

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Welcome to the 7th edition of the Accretionary Wedge – and happy birthday to John Wesley Powell, one of geology’s first real action heroes! This month’s scrapings dealt with (depending on how you look at it) one of the biggest sources of headaches or entertainment for the denizens of the Geoblogosphere: Geology/ists in the movies.

Or, as some of the commentary seems to lean toward, “How Hollywood manages to screw up, in movie and/or TV form, the science that it took me multiple years, pints of blood and continuing therapy sessions to learn, and why I can’t be held legally responsible for my reaction when the students in my intro classes spout it back at me on exams.”

Just kidding – but only a little. Geology in the movies seems to bring out both the passionate and the flippant in us. We mark geology movies as points of inspiration in our journey toward our chosen profession; we happily do our best MST3K impressions while tearing apart the shoddy science; we laugh at the absurdities and turn even the worst transgressions into teaching opportunities. Seeing your science represented in film can be both maddening and gratifying, and as a result this month’s posts cover the full spectrum of praise and pugnacity.

I’ll be a little self-indulgent and mention my favorite geology movie (the video of which I’m currently ignoring in favor of writing this), the 1959 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. I’m fond of all of the characters, even James Mason’s bellowing Professor Lindenbrook, but in my opinion, the real hero – and possibly the best geologist – in the movie is…Gertrude the duck. After all, it is Gertrude who discovers the proper entrance into the bowels of Mount Sneffels, Gertrude who enforces mine safety practices by removing stealing Madam Goteborg’s stays (which could have impeded her breathing), and Gertrude who, by being eaten by Count Sakneussem, leads the group to the Lost City of Atlantis and their volcanic escape route. (Okay, that was a stretch.) And Gertrude aside, Journey is just good campy fun. Giant mushrooms, dimetrodons, phosphorescent pools, lost cities, and singing geologists may be cheesy, but sometimes cheesiness is enjoyable for its own sake.

Had enough previews? Then it’s time for our feature presentation:

Just because you have a deep spiritual connection with volcanoes doesn’t mean you can predict eruptions, according to Chris Rowan of Highly Allocthonous. Hunches are often a good place to start, but unless you back up your gut feeling with a little science, people probably aren’t going to take you seriously. Not even if you’re Pierce Brosnan.

Chris at goodSchist takes us on a tour of the extreme geology to be found on the planet Crematoria in The Chronicles of Riddick. With a name like Crematoria and planet-wide explosive volcanic eruptions ever three hours, this place certainly isn’t going to beat out Cancun as a prime spring break destination – unless you’re a geologist, that is.

MJC Rocks at Geotripper gives us a who’s who of geologists in the movies, bringing together victims of volcanic eruptions, velociraptors, alcoholism, avalanches, and even a few who survive with only minor injuries. (Has Hollywood got a grudge against us or something?) There’s even a reminder that one of the most beloved fictional anthropologists, Indiana Jones, had his roots in a real-life extreme paleontologist.

Here’s something to look forward to – Journey to the Center of the Earth has been remade yet again! In 3D! With giant albino dinosaurs! And Brendan Fraser riding around in a mining cart! What could be better? Mel at Ripples in Sand hopes that the educational campaign accompanying the movie will be slightly more accurate than all that. (She also mentions The Great Warming, which seems to have slipped under the collective radar; I’ll put out a milk carton alert and ask, Have You Seen This Film?)

Some of us are lucky enough to be able to turn snarking into credit hours! John Van Hoesen has a class called “Geology in Film”, and brings to our attention some real classics of geo-cinema. Who knew Paul Newman did disaster flicks?

Not content to stop at a single entry, Dr. Mike at Otago has created an entire blog devoted to “Reel Geology”. Not to be missed is the entry for “Best Use of Mineralogy in a Movie,” awarded to The Monolith Monsters, which apparently features “a water-activated silica-sucking meteorite and ends with the hero saving the town by blowing up a dam conveniently located upstream of a salt mine.” ‘Nuff said.

Steve McQueen as a climate change prophet? Believe it. Callan Bentley at NOVAGeoblog gives us a lovely little tidbit from The Blob that suggests another excellent reason to step up our efforts to slow global warming…

Did you ever wish you could set the filmmakers straight? Well, Jim Repka at Active Margin might have done just that – however briefly. His close encounter with The Core may not have resulted in real science making it into the movie, but at least one anonymous writer now knows the meaning of gigapascal. (He also notes that nuclear weapons may be the next great innovation in seismology. Hmm…)

As a self-admitted Trekkie/Trekker, I was very happy to see the post by Silver Fox at Looking for Detachment about The Devil In The Dark, a Star Trek: TOS episode in which Kirk, McCoy and Spock encounter the galaxy’s first silica-based life form. Being able to mind-meld with a rock would be a fabulous asset for a geologist. Being a geologist on Star Trek, however, would not be so fabulous, as they tend to be relegated to the ranks of the Redshirts. (For those who aren’t familiar with the Original Series, Redshirt = cannon fodder. Sometimes they even manage to kill them before the episode starts.)

Run for your lives – sedimentology is out to get you! Well, not really – but it is out to get Peter Parker in the next Spiderman movie, in the form of the villain Sandman. Thanks to BrianR at Clastic Detritus for the heads-up…and hopefully Imhotep from The Mummy won’t be too jealous.

Laelaps’ multimedia post brings us once again to the exciting world of extreme paleontology, where he explores the declining standards of the Jurassic Park movies; Professor Challenger, the first paleontological action hero in various incarnations of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World; and the likelihood that Cary Grant probably wouldn’t survive a real field camp, despite being Cary Grant. (Frankly, for high odds of survival in a dinosaur-ridden feature, I’d stick with Sam Neill, although he lost a lot of cred with that velociraptor duck-call in the third movie.)

Argus Panoptes at Astronomical Seeing points out why Ross of Friends makes a worse paleontologist than Cary Grant. (He is, indeed, way too well-groomed and lacking proper paleontological attire. One suspects that his field experience is mostly limited to obtaining beer in a crowded bar during a Yankees game, and not obtaining beer while camped in the middle of the Montana desert and trying to hide a secret scotch supply from a pack of ravenous graduate students.)

It’s probably the one and only time a movie featuring a geologist has won any Oscars, let alone multiple ones. There Will Be Blood, featured in ZS’s post at Hindered Settling, takes a look at the oil industry in the early twentieth century. It also explores the less charming side of geologists, and leads us to suspect that the main character may have forgotten his coffee supply, since he at one point looks for oil in a silver mine.

Last, but certainly not least, we have doomsayer Julian from Harmonic Tremors, who warns us that the big one is coming, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Fortunately, it’s not a monster earthquake but a movie about one – an incarnation of the novel 1906 by James Dalessandro, set during the San Francisco earthquake. Though it has its faults (I had to steal that one), including, refreshingly enough, too much science, Julian advises us to put our trust in Brad Bird and Pixar. (And yes, it would be really fun if a bunch of us geobloggers went to see it together – I’m game if you all are!)

Thank you all for your contributions – and for putting up with my own snarking, which has probably grown increasingly less witty and more random, since it’s getting pretty late where I am. Next up among the Accretionary Wedge volunteers is Andrew over at About.com Geology, who’s going to be hosting an Earth Day carnival – don’t forget to check the “Who’s hosting the next Accretionary Wedge” page for updates.

The February 2007 edition of The Accretionary Wedge was hosted at the Lounge of Lab Lemming … check it out here.

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Welcome to the 6th thrust-repeated section of the Accretionary Wedge. The theme this time was “Hmm.” Things about our planet that intrigue y’all. Geologists have a tendency to work on all sorts of scales, and this is reflected in this month’s entries. Sadly, though, the smaller scales were conspicuously underrepresented. Nobody is dying to know about crystal defects, space groups, or microinclusions. We are, apparently, macroscale thinkers or larger.

In fact, the smallest scale object that interesting people this month was a word. A recent GSA Today article made a new case for the Anthropocene, and the digital cuttlefish, not merely satisfied with a hmm, wrote an entire poem.

Despite the lack of comments there, the rest of the GBS had plenty to say, and none of it was hmm.
Callan offered a detailed explanation of the paper. BrianS calls it “more of a PR stunt than a rigorous scientific idea.” Andrew quotes Walt Whitman. Greg Laden says no. Chris gives some background and perspective on subdividing geologic time before suggesting that renaming might be premature. Maria calls the Anthropocene unbearably narcissistic, shortly before claiming to be partial to the term. BrianR expressed exasperation that semantics can get everyone is such a tiff. And Tom simply notes the news without comment. Note that Apparent Dip and I, both isotope geochemists, made no comment. After all, ages are properly measured in numbers, not names.

For all the hubbub, you’d think it was a four letter word, not a four syllable one.

Moving on, we scale up from the word to the student. Sciencewoman wonders- and expresses concern (more of a HMm that a hmMm) about the lack of racial diversity in her upper level classes.

Looking at the population as a whole rather than in his class, MJC Rocks wonders why people in general are not fascinated by geology. His post in accompanied by a classic field photo.

And that is it for the language/ people / culture scale hmms. From here, we step back down to the mineral.

Silver Fox wonders about some blue quartz that she remembers from her youth. Unfortunately, her favorite outcrop seems to have been covered by a leach pit.

On the laboratory scale, Maria is curious what, if anything, a neutral buoyancy experiment tells her about real systems.

Now, step up to the outcrop.

Sandstone, Interrupted! has Hypocentre puzzled by the discontinuity of his favorite bed.

Ron is wondering if his fault might swing both ways, but only preserve the medial sandstone on one side.

And the bigger faults are also intriguing. Harmonic Tremors is interested in the pre-periodic period of the Parkwood section of the San Andreas fault. He’s even lucky enough to have gotten a reference in the comments.

On the volcano scale, Chris wonders why Mt. Taranaki is so far west, relative to the rest of New Zealand’s volcanoes. I’ve only seen Taranaki from the plane, and my reaction was more of an Oooo than a Hmm, but I see his point, and suggest that he read up on Japanese volcano locations, as I seem to recall northern Honshu has two rows of volcanoes, and many run-on sentences. While the distance from the subduction zone will in part explain the increased alkalinity (deeper melting zone), it doesn’t explain why there is only one such volcano, nor why it is so pretty.

But I’m not the only one to look out a plane window. Mel said hmm all the way to her ski holiday, while traversing the snow-covered NW United States and SW Canada.

And anonymous Chris wondered about “rivers of stone” reported by Darwin in the Falklands.

Moving up to the plateau scale, Andrew presents new research on the Colorado River prior to the grand canyon formation.

And Chris Rowan wonders about the crinkly microplate style tectonics that happens where plated are grinding past or under each other.

On the hemispherical climate scale, Kim wants to know why an excessively sinuous jet stream is bringing her so much snow, while Callan wonders about global climactic and chemical implications of the hypothetical snowball Earth.

Dropping back down in size by a factor of 2 to a smaller planet, Jeannette is curious about magnetic anomalies on Mars, and what the tectonic implications are. Luckily for her, Chris Rowan blogged about this very topic, back before hmm was a fashionable thing to say.

Finally, on the galactic* scale, I’m curious about what makes our home planet the way it is. And how different planetary formation can be before it produces something completely unrecognizable.

So, there’s the list. Several people have already been lucky enough to get replies in their blogs. So if you are also intrigued by any of these things, wander on over, and see if you can help out a fellow geoblogospheroid.

I think the next installment of this carnival is Geology in the Movies by Magma cum Laude, but we should probably get her to confirm that before we bury her in rants.

[edit: two new late entries added]

*e.g. data-poor.

UPDATE! Instead of this thread use the newly-created static page on this site called “Who’s hosting the next Accretionary Wedge?”

It is at the top of the sidebar or click here.

Hopefully that will be less confusing of who is hosting and what the topic will be.

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Below is the January 2008 edition of The Accretionary Wedge. It was hosted on Green Gabbro. Check it out and the comments here.

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The December 2007 edition of TAW was hosted by goodSchist.com — check out the original here. 

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This month’s Accretionary wedge is Deskcrops/My Pet Rock. A tour de force of rock collections, concentrating on the world’s geobloggers detailing their favourite samples. Why are they so interesting? What’s their history? Read on to find out.

First up is Andrew Alden from About:Geology who proudly display two of his favourites;
A Multiply Fractured Mudstone

A cherty mudstone was fractured and invaded several different times by mineral-depositing solutions, then nicely rounded in the Pacific surf.

and a Serpentinite Boulder

Photos can’t capture all the color and textural appeal of this serpentinite specimen, polished by deep movements in the California Coast Ranges.

Next up, Chris Rowan from Highly Allochthonous gives us a desktop full of Komatiite;

I’ve been meaning to discuss this one for a while: even though it’s not the prettiest in my collection, it tells a very interesting story about the early Earth.

Kim from All My Faults are Stress Related gives us a deskcrop with dizzy feldspars

If you want to know just how a rock changed shape, it helps to have a way to tell apart pure shear and simple shear. Generally, you need to find some kind of object that has tracked the movement - and this rock has one.

Brian over at Clastic Detritus gives us a trio of his favourites, a couple of which are from the Permian (!), which I’m chronologically jealous of;

Stopping along Highway 62/180 in between Guadalupe Mtns National Park and Carlsbad Caverns is a favorite for geology field trips of any kind. At this location, you are not in any national park and can smash and grab as much of this rock as you want.

A submission from Ron Schott gives us Bushels of Deskcrops;

See how many of the deskcrops you can identify on your own - when you recognize one you can “Take a Snapshot” and add a comment.

Jim Repka from Active Margin has a fulgurite sample to tell us about. And to be honest, fossil lightning sounds amazingly cool;

The subject of fulgurites, or fossil lightning, came up and I explained that quartz has a melting point of about 1600 degrees C, a temperature easily achieved in the near surface, though in very wet soils the charge can be dissipated pretty rapidly.

Lab Lemming gives us a rundown of their Trophy rocks;

My first trophy rock is a 4 kg boulder of the Lavras conglomerate from the Tombador formation of the mid-Proterozoic Espinhaço Supergroup.

And to round out the deskcrop theme, here’s all of the deskcrops described by thermochronic from Apparent Dip;

• An early Cambrian shale
• Some mantle xenoliths
• and ventifacts from Death Valley

Thanks a lot to everyone who’s participated.

REMINDER!! 

This post copied directly from goodSchist.com — go here to see the post and make any comments to Chris.

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goodSchist is hosting AW episode 4. This month’s theme is “My Pet Rock”.

As was decided by no majority at all on the discussion thread, the 4th installment of The Accretionary Wedge geology blog carnival will be “My Pet Rock”. As Ron Schott put it;

I think Thermochronic hit on a really interesting theme in writing about rocks in your home/office collection, or Deskcrops as he coined it (http://apparentdip.blogspot.com/search/label/Deskcrops). Others might prefer to call these pet rocks, but in any case they usually will have interesting stories and many folks have them.
Could be very interesting.

Could be very interesting indeed. So, as geologists with large rock collections, tell us about your favourite sample. Why is it interesting? Where did it come from? What’s its history? The most difficult part maybe choosing just one, so don’t feel limited. Give us the run down on as many of your favourite deskcrops as you like.

Please email your submissions to Chris (yorrike {at} gmail {.} com - with the ” {at} ” replaced with an @, and the ” {.} ” replaced with a simple .), with the words “accretionary wedge” in the subject, before the following deadline:

01:00 December 14th EST (New York)
04:00 December 14th PST (Los Angeles)
12:00 December 14th GMT
23:00 December 14th PST (Sydney)

use this thread to discuss ideas and organize hosting

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The 3rd edition of The Accretionary Wedge was hosted on the blog The Other 95% and was published on Nov. 15th, 2007. Click here to see original post with comments.

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n=1That is our sample size, our replicate number with 0 degrees of freedom. If you believe the most popular estimates, Earth is ~4.6 billion years old. For a long time only rock existed once the planet cooled. Out of rock came life. Perhaps not literally, but only certain raw materials were present to work with: Nitrogen, Oxygen, inorganic Carbon, Hydrogen, Sulfur. Perhaps metals provided the catalyst, perhaps the Flying Spaghetti Monster reached down to bless our planet with His noodly appendage. The answer isn’t clear, but I can guarantee its written in the rocks.

Geology has had an intimate relationship with biology, a long term romance spanning at conservative estimate around 3 billion years. As the disciplines of each are concerned, they were inseparable until the mid-19th century. Both were included with the modern sciences and maths as the study of Natural History, a subset of Theology. Some might say that the discipline of Geology was born with the work of James Hutton and Alfred Gottleib Werner in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Later on with the work of Charles Lyell, which heavily influenced Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, Geology became a subject to study in its own right regardless of other subdisciplines of Natural History. Several years after which Biology was separated from Medicine and Natural History with the work of Darwin and Thomas Huxley and many others that followed into the 20th century.

Life exists, establishes and persists with geology’s permission. Natural disasters can wreak havoc wiping generations of establishment and millenia of adaptation and diversity. Yet out of the ashes rises the phoenix and life reestablishes and re-adapts, and modifies the geological environment. Lichens break down rock into soil, plants establish their roots and suck out minerals and add organic carbon, microorganisms and meiofauna recycle and mobilize nutrients in the soil, animals enrich the soil both while living and dead. In the ocean, microscopic organisms extract calcium and silica to form tiny houses. These fall to the ocean depths as they die. After several thousands of years, this ooze layers on top of itself hardening and combining with weathered rock debris to form the substrate of Earth’s most extensive habitat, the abyssal plain. Life may exist by geology’s consents, but with a price.

The submissions received for this edition vary widely on the theme but are all enjoyable reads! For any new readers to the Accretionary Wedge, it is a geology-themed carnival started a couple months ago. Click on the link in the last sentence to find out more about it and consider submitting articles and hosting future editions.

Like me, Brian from Clastic Detritus has to write his dissertation. We can’t just blog our lives away right? It also doesn’t pay very well, or at all… But he was kind enough to take a break and submit an article on trace fossils he has found while doing his research. Check out the monster Ophiomorpha!

Also blogging on dissertation research, I present the introduction to my thesis proposal in the first part of a week long series of Dissertation Blogging as I prepare for my comprehensive exams in less than 2 weeks (I have to keep reminding myself). Prepare to be amazed by hydrothermal vents at back-arc basins!!

Chris from Zoogeomorphology Brilliant Mediocrity avoided talking about his thesis research, but captures the essence of the theme posting how life interacts with and modifies its environment using examples from beavers and whales.

Chris #2 from Highly Allochthonous, already completed his dissertation, takes a “grand and sweeping look at Geology and Life” and discusses how the air breathe became breathable in a BPR3-certified article.

Christopher (not to be confused with a Chris) from the Catalogue of Organisms highlights beautiful New Zealand serpentine soils and the plants the establish there. In an earlier post, he discusses a recent Nature paper on continental collisions with this loverly quote:

“Great chunks of the planet’s surface get ripped up by colliding masses of rock bigger than all imagining, at scales at which living organisms just become negligible.”

In a related post from earlier this year, brought to my attention by Yami from Green Gabbro, Joseph from the blog Science, AntiScience and Geology discusses research suggesting that the geochemical influx from the building of Gondwana may have triggered the Cambrian Explosion. Unfortunately, it seems seems these geologists may have disregarded some important biological information

Brian from the newly sexed up Laelaps, professes his love of squishy things and waxes beautifully and poetically on Aldo Leopald, the Book of Job, and Charles Darwin.

Julia at the Ethical Palaeontologist uses volcano farts as a segway segue into a discussion of volcanism and the public perception of climate change.

From the very cleverly titled All My Faults Are Stress Related, Kim ponders the granitic soil and its properties that make those oh so delicious blueberries grow there and be so… delicious!

Neil of Microecos reminds us to take a close look around us in public buildings. Fossils are everywhere in architecture and monuments!

Although Harold at Ontario-Geofish *claims* it happened to a friend, he discusses why one should go the emergency room and not try to solve medical problems with beer, especially urinary tract infections. Though not scientific, I thought there were lessons to be learned for field researchers in there.
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Thats all for for edition #3 of the Accretionary Wedge. Next month’s Wedge will be hosted at GoodSchist and please go the Accretionary Wedge page to submit ideas for the next and further editions.

TAW#2 was published Oct 15th, 2007 at All of My Faults Are Stress Related. Click here to see the original post with all the comments.

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Civilization exists by geologic consent–subject to change without notice.

Apparently there is some controversy about whether Will Durant ever actually wrote that quote. But that doesn’t really matter to geologists. We know it’s true. Just ask the ammonites, or the residents of Pompeii.

But how, exactly, might the death and destruction occur?

Volcanoes

Well, to start with, there’s always fire.

Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous sees warnings for Naples, Italy in“A Tale of Two Volcanoes”.

And on the North American plate, Yami at Green Gabbro takes a not-quite-boiling soak in the hot springs created by the magma of the Long Valley caldera.

And if the volcanoes of recent history are too tame, consider the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. The asteroid impact gets most of the press these days, but Chris (yorrike) at Good Schist points out that the volcanoes of the Deccan Traps did a number on the ammonites first.

Earthquakes

From his perspective above a subduction zone, Miguel at MiGeo explains the dangers of tsunamis, in Chile and Indonesia. (English translation of the post is here.)

And I wasn’t killed by the Loma Prieta earthquake (as you might have guessed), but I was shaken up a bit.

Landslides

And, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the house, Brian reminds us that even fundamental forces of physics, like, for instance, gravity, are dangerous.

Hazards in general

It isn’t just gravity. As Jim Repka at Active Margin points out, we wouldn’t be able to live without disequilibrium. That’s right. Thermodynamics is also out to get us.

And then there are the hazards of field work…

Those of us who live in arid or semi-arid environments know that the sun is not always our friend. Especially at noon in the summer. Lounge of the Lab Lemming has more about deadly evapotranspiration.

And Ron tells of a field assistant with walking pneumonia on the dreaded Mancos Shale, and also warns that the Earth is hungry.

So watch out.

The next edition of The Accretionary Wedge will be on November 15. Kevin Z at The Other 95% will be hosting the carnival, with a theme of “Geology and Life.”

Also, an announcement for any geo-bloggers and lurkers who will be going to the GSA meeting in Denver in a few weeks: there are plans afoot for a geo-blogging meet-up/dinner on Sunday night. Ron has offered to make dinner arrangements. Keep a look out for the final arrangements.

Edit: I’m adding other posts as they come in. So far, Jim Repka has added dire warnings about equilibrium, and Dr. Lemming tells of the dangers of evaporation.