Category Archives: geology

No chatbots please, we’re scientists

This story about backlash to an earth science specific chatbot at EGU seems to detail a lot of insider politicking that seems only obliquely related to the concerns over the use of Large Learning Models for scientific research and writing. … Continue reading

Categories: academic life, general science, geology, publication

Golden spike or no golden spike – we are living in the Anthropocene

This is not going to go well. After 15 years of discussion and exploration…Twelve members of the International Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) voted against the proposal to create an Anthropocene epoch, while only four voted for it. To be … Continue reading

Categories: climate crisis, deep time, geology, public science, society

Rivers might not need plants to meander

Here’s a new study that, if true, this would have some big implications for the nature of the sedimentary record for a lot of Earth History. Research from 1.2 billion year-old sediments in Scotland adds the oldest evidence yet against … Continue reading

Categories: geology, geomorphology, past worlds

Has Earth’s mantle always worked like it does today?

This seems to be the latest round in the eternal battle between the geophysics data which strongly suggests whole mantle convection (and for quite some time, if ideas about the origin of all the weird junk at the core-mantle boundary … Continue reading

Categories: deep time, geochemistry, geology, geophysics, past worlds

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