Geobulletin alpha

Friday fold: Riggins, Idaho 

There are some folds in this stunning west Idaho landscape. Perspective is looking toward the north, more or less. See if you can find them: Link GigaPan by Callan Bentley One example that will probably be obvious at first glance is this syncline/anticline pair, differentially weathered, with subvertical axial traces, and an apparently shallow plunge of the axes to the south: A more subtly expressed example is on the hill

A terrible beauty 

Images of art and science can be visually stunning at first glance, and then emotionally stunning when the viewer becomes aware of what is depicted. Think microscope images of cancer cells, or some of paintings of Salvador Dali or

The Ravages Of A Prehistoric Predator’s Prey! 

Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to identifying the predator that left its undeniable marks on this prehistoric morsel.  This discovery came in September 2014 in the panhandle of Florida.   At first glance, it appeared to be just an ordinary fossil rock but upon closer inspection, it was obvious, this was

Scenes from a Shield: Isn't This Supposed to be Basalt? 

Medicine Lake Highland (from an earlier trip when it wasn't covered with storm clouds). Medicine Lake Highland at first glance sure looks like a classic version of a shield volcano. The gently sloping flanks indicate the presence of non-viscous basaltic lava, and the lava tubes we explored were certainly composed of basalt. As we moved further up the flanks of the mountain we encountered

Shtetl-Optimized Smack Down of the Pop Sci Write Ups of the 

At first glance, the amplituhedron appears to be a way to calculate scattering amplitudes, in the planar limit of a certain mathematically-interesting (but, so far, physically-unrealistic) supersymmetric quantum field theory, more efficiently than by summing thousands of Feynman diagrams. In which case, you might say: “wow, this sounds like a genuinely-important advance for certain parts

“The Carpentry” in Makhtesh Ramon: Unexpected columnar jointing 

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–At first glance this rocky outcrop in the middle of Makhtesh Ramon appears to be a typical columnar-jointed basalt. We’ve seen this many times on our blog (for example here and here). However, these rocks are entirely a quartzose sandstone. They have the typical polygonal joints of a cooled lava flow, but the

A fifth anniversary tyrant 

The next few days are likely to be very busy for me and this weekend I’m off on holiday, so I very much doubt I’ll be blogging on next Monday. This is a bit of a shame as those who occasionally glance at the bottom half of the sidebar on the Musings will realise that

Geology Photo of the Week #24 

The photo of the week is one that I took in November on my glacial sedimentology class trip to the Buckingham sand pit and at first glance it looks pretty boring. Nothing could be further from the truth though when you consider the implications of this lonely old block sitting al by itself in these

Friday’s earthquake and Darwin gap 

A nice short discussion about the Lorito et al. paper regarding seismic gap at the Chilean coast and seismic slip while the 2010 earthquake, can be found at Highly Allochtonious. The discussion highlights the paper findings under the glance of Continue reading

Clionid sponges 

A number of modern and fossil sponges made their homes inside the shells of other organisms. Rather than taking an empty gastropod (snail) shell like a hermit crab, these sponges literally move into a shell. Clionid sponges use a combination of physical and chemical abrasion to create openings in shells. They then spread out throughout the internal structure of the shell to create an extended home for themselves. I often imagined these sponges waiting until an organism dies to create the [...]

Another look at climate sensitivity 

This is the title of an interesting paper by Zaliapin and Ghil that appeared some time ago on the Arxiv and more recently in peer-reviewed form in NPG. It's presented as a criticism of Roe and Baker, which has already been debunked enough, so after a quick glance I didn't pay too much attention to it at first. I also know the second author to be extremely clever, so I was worried that it might

Active reading, continued 

Yesterday I posted my understanding of the techniques of “active reading”, and shared the results of my initial glance through of an article. Today I shall share my notes from that article, Metamorphism and deformation at different structural levels in a strike-slip fault zone, Ross Lake fault, North Cascades, USA.Skipping the abstract at the moment, and jumping straight to the article

Song of the Young Nature Researchers 

Translation after the German children's song "Lied der jungen Naturforscher"(see here).1. The homeland’s dressed up prettily with dew drops in her hair.The waves refect her beautousness like joyful eyes so fair. Meadow in bloom and rushing fir - they spread a mystic glance.So look out! Learn the secret that will serve our advance.2. The wind soughs through the woods and field a

Sustainable mining in Sierra Leone 

   Part of the pleasure of the holidays is the chance to read uninterrupted.  I have already gotten through a few long-neglected mystery novels littered with blood-bespattered corpses.  I skimmed one of those my-view-of-the-universe books of no particular merit.  Then there was a glance at the two-volume set of cook books by Julia Childs that my

More Exxon shenanigans 

Hmm...so much for Exxon giving up their funding of sceptic groups. A quick glance at the groups linked from that page shows that they do indeed feature the standard septic nonsense, I found something by Baliunas very quickly (and no, it wasn't about astronomy, where her opinions might possibly be worth something).This news rather undermines the credibility of the EGU officials who (in the

In a fishbowl 

Apparently, having office hours in which I leave the door open is a clear invitation to everyone in the hallway to stare at me like I'm a specimen in a museum case. Is this a physics building sort of thing, or is this normal? I realize that a quick glance as you're passing by is a normal reaction to seeing another human being in your general vicinity, but this