Friday Mountain Blogging: Paleotopography of the Sierra Nevada

How we’re figuring out the growth spurts of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Friday Rock Blogging, Interplanetary Breakfast Edition

Pancake domes from Venus, blueberries from Mars, and a molasse basin from Earth… I need to go grocery shopping.

Insert “In Soviet Russia…” Joke Here

So I’m browsing through the latest issue of Tectonophysics when I see that “[s]everal long-range seismic profiles were carried out in Russia with Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE).” Holy oxymorirony, Batman! Don’t nuclear arsenals carry a certain amount of bellicosity with them, which can only be removed by a painstaking ceremony involving lots of little children […]

Friday Rock Blogging: The Giant’s Causeway

Happy Green Beer Day! I am pleased to inform you that there are famous rocks in Ireland which you are not required to kiss, including but not limited to the Giant’s Causeway. It was built by Finn MacCool in the misty dawn of time, something something Scottish rival giant something basalt flows heterosexual giant […]

Quickies

Jerry wants some help identifying a mineral; I’m inclined to say “uh, green, um, chlorite? epidote?” but that’s why I’m not a real geologist. He’s also got some tomatoes going, and by zoinks, it’s March, time to get cracking on these recalcitrant scavenged Cherokee Purples!
Am I the only one who finds her eyebrows falling out […]

Friday Rock Blogging: Clay

NASA’s press machine is unbeatable this week. Everywhere you look (for values of “everywhere” limited to science sections of the popular press) you see the same pictures of Enceladus spewing out its watery spew - but all us cool kids have been seeing these pictures for months and we’re sick of ‘em*. No, today’s […]

Drawings of Scientists

Kids’ Drawings of Scientists, and also their descriptions of what scientists are like, before:

“Scientist Judy is wearing her white lab coat. She is a very simple person . . . simple clothes, simple house, simple personality.”
“Scientists live in their own world and the rest of society puts them there.”

And after a visit to Fermilab:

“. . […]

Friday Rock Bloggin: I’d Rather Be Camping

I went on a Web of Science binge yesterday, sensibly followed by a filing binge today. Which means I’m set for a thinking and writing binge tomorrow, but I’d really rather be camping.
Here’s a picture of a moraine in the Sierras.

Friday Seismometer Blogging: Houfeng Didong Yi

This is a replica of the world’s first seismometer, which was built in China, AD 130-ish. I haven’t been able to find a good diagram of the internal mechanism, but there’s some kind of pendulum in there, which jiggles in response to earthquakes. This moves a little lever on the dragon’s head, so that the […]

Friday Rock Blogging: Caliche

I’ve previously rockblogged about the crusty, water-soluble minerals known as evaporites. But you don’t need open pans or puddles to produce this kind of mineral precipitate - drying out shallow soil will work just as well*. When this happens, dissolved calcium carbonates (et al.) will coat all kinds of surfaces and infiltrate all kinds […]