Category Archives: geology

Algae and earthquake precursors

From ye olde blog, May 2006: an interesting report from the BBC: Concentrations of the natural pigment chlorophyll in coastal waters have been shown to rise prior to earthquakes. These chlorophyll increases are due to blooms of plankton, which use … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, geology, paper reviews

Gone drillin’

I’m off for a week to collect some samples. It’s the first time I’ve actually handled a drill since my last field season in New Zealand way back in 2003 (a scarily long time ago, now I think of it), … Continue reading

Categories: geology

Know thy co-ordinate system

Even the best measurements are meaningless if you muck up your corrections
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Categories: geology, geophysics

Geological Basics: the art of Paleomagic

If I’m ever going to talk about my own research in any detail, I’m first going to have to explain a little (or a lot) about the field I fell into almost by accident, paleomagnetism. Literally ‘ancient magnetism’, paleomagnetism is … Continue reading

Categories: basics, geology, geophysics, palaeomagic

Scientists discover ‘Kryptonite’

The press office of the Natural History Museum must have been beside themselves with this one: asked to analyse an unusual mineral from a mine in Serbia, one of their scientists types the composition he’s determined into Google and discovers, … Continue reading

Categories: geology, rocks & minerals