Earth science departments are home to three styles of working, each of which tries to answer similar questions, but from very different perspectives. First we have the field geologists. Armed with field gear and a hammer, they gather data from actual rocks in the form of photos, diagrams and above all maps. Next we have those… Continue reading The Himalayan mountains: flow and fracture
Category: mountains
Speed of metamorphism: cooling down
A while ago, I asked Twitter for suggestions of topics for future posts. A great one came from Brian Romans, a Prof at Virginia Tech and a long-standing pillar of the online geoscience community: How fast can rocks undergoing metamorphism be exhumed to the surface? How do we know (how can we measure/estimate)? https://t.co/qcsnxXKqhL — Brian… Continue reading Speed of metamorphism: cooling down
Speed of metamorphism: heating up
Published in the 1830s, Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology‘ is one of the founding texts of the subject. Part of a generation of Geologists who broke free of Biblical interpretations of the natural world, Lyell was working in an intellectual context seeking to move beyond explanations based on Noah’s flood. The true causes of the earth’s… Continue reading Speed of metamorphism: heating up
The many metamorphoses of the Moine
In a companion post I introduced you to a metamorphic rock with an apparently simple history. Using traditional geological techniques on this single outcrop can’t reveal the full history of the area, so this post will attempt summarise the latest research. In short the more closely you look, the more complicated things become. The many Phases of… Continue reading The many metamorphoses of the Moine