Category Archives: geology

A new recipe for Large Igneous Provinces: just add BIF, then wait a couple of hundred million years

Here’s a new paper that proposes the biggest of big ideas: a 240 million year causal chain that runs from the Earth’s surface, to the core mantle boundary, and back again! Here’s how it supposedly goes: 1. Banded iron deposits … Continue reading

Categories: deep time, geology, past worlds, volcanoes

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

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

Just published: can sandbox models be educational and fun?

Just out: a paper by me and education expert Bridget Mulvey grapples with the question: analogue sandbox models are cool, but are they effective teaching tools? Analogue sandbox models are a way of demonstrating tectonic deformation processes in the classroom: the … Continue reading

Categories: geology, publication, science education, structures, tectonics