Author Archives: Chris Rowan

Earth’s inner core has an inner core?

We all know that the Earth’s mostly iron core is divided into a molten outer core and solid inner core. But that may not be the whole story: some just-published seismic data suggests that the Earth’s inner core is divided … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geophysics

Obsessing over the Anthropocene’s “golden spike” misses the point of the Anthropocene

This is a good write-up of the latest step in the long and somewhat contentious process of making the Anthropocene “official”: In the same week as the world’s population ticked over to 8 billion people, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) began … Continue reading

Categories: geology, public science, ranting

Content warnings when talking about disasters on social media

Like many others as Twitter continues its apparent spiral towards death eternally gridlocked dysfunction, I have been testing the waters on the distributed social network Mastodon. So far, I’ve been quite enjoying it, but it has been a big system shock … Continue reading

Categories: bloggery, geohazards, public science, society

Juno reveals Europa’s evolving surface

About a month ago, NASA’s Juno probe buzzed the Jovian moon Jupiter, and we got this cool picture, taken from a distance of about 400 km away. The grooves and ridges criss-crossing Europa’s icy shell are thought to record water from … Continue reading

Categories: geology, planets, structures, tectonics

The beautiful geological info-art of John Emslie

Look at this beautiful 19th century infographic, courtesy of the History of Geology on Twitter: Here it is in all it’s glory: Except for the somewhat interesting landscape associated with label 12 – “Earthquakes and elevations of the land by … Continue reading

Categories: geology