Category Archives: planets

Geological maps: still interesting even when there’s only one rock type

The USGS, in collaboration with NASA, have just released a geological map of Jupiter’s ultra-volcanically active moon Io, based on images from the Voyager and Galileo probes. It is a thing of beauty. The sheer variety of different geological units … Continue reading

Categories: geology, planets, volcanoes

Now that’s what I call a geomagnetic storm!

It appears that I was a litte premature with yesterday’s post. Look at what happened to the ambient magnetic field at the two observatories at Boulder and Deadhorse today (the dotted line represents about where the plots I put up … Continue reading

Categories: geohazards, geophysics, palaeomagic, planets

The Earth weathers another geomagnetic storm

A couple of days ago, the sun got a bit excitable: This large flare produced what is known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), a blob of gas and radiation hurled at high velocities from the surface of the sun … Continue reading

Categories: geophysics, palaeomagic, planets

New at Erratics – the largest meteorite crater in the world

The clinching evidence for the Vredefort dome being formed by an impact did not come from aerial photos, but from under the microscope. Continue reading

Categories: links, planets, Proterozoic, structures

New at Erratics: from lahar to suevite

In his second post at Earth Science Erratics Simon Wellings reveals a rather interesting deskcrop, collected from Scotland in his youth: Since it was picked up, this rock has changed identities: what was once thought to be a mud flow … Continue reading

Categories: planets, Proterozoic, rocks & minerals