Apparent Dip

The Times about time: Geochronology themed article in the NY Times

2008-12-01T22:21:00.004-05:00

No real analysis here, but I'd like to draw your attention to this recent article by Kenneth Chang in the New York Times about recent work that might shed light on the very early earth. I am highlighting the article both because it deals with geochronology (U-Pb zircon geochronology to be exact), and because it is a rare article dealing explicitly with geology; not modern climate change or some geoscience themed hazard, but straight up geology. The article also has some good quotes from some of the grand high mucky mucks of geology including Mark Harrison, John Valley, and Norm Sleep. I've seen a talk version of some of this data before, and when I get into my office tomorrow I'll check out the Nature paper as well and try to comment, although in all honesty I seriously doubt I'd come up with much more insightful than Professors Harrison, Valley, Sleep, and Mojzsis.

In consideration of self promotion, if you'd like some background on geochronology to help with the NY Times article, check out this earlier post of mine, or any of the background geology posts I have listed on my sidebar.

President Elect Barack Obama!

2008-11-04T23:55:00.003-05:00

Apparent Dip is thrilled and profoundly happy to announce that my endorsement of Barack Obama for president appears to have worked, tipping the balance in crucial states, and leading to an overwhelming victory for Barack Obama.

I am unfortunately listening to television pundits try to sound profound right now. John McCain gave a fantastic concession speech, I am glad he did not speak like that during the campaign, I feel the contest would have been much closer.

Time to watch his acceptance speech!

Thermochronologists for Obama

2008-11-02T21:21:00.004-05:00

The wait is over. All across the country, undecided voters have been waiting by their televisions, constantly checking email, listening non-stop to NPR, just to learn which presidential candidate has earned the Apparent Dip seal of approval. I know how much sway my choice has, believe me, as the author of the world's leading thermochronology themed blog...well, let's just say the responsibility has weighed heavily on my (figurative) shoulders.

Apparent Dip is officially endorsing the Obama/Biden ticket. No big surprise perhaps. As someone who reads books, did well in school, and grew up in California, I obviously don't belong to the "real America" I've heard so much about at GOP rallies. I grew up in a decent sized city, which means I lack "small town values" and therefore hate my neighbors, can't stand families, am allergic to hard work, do nothing worthwhile, am a communist, cavort with terrorists, and of course, want America to fail. I am also an elitist because I think issues are complicated and can't always be summed up as one-liners, oh, and I also enjoy reading and non-motorized outdoor activities, which means I am a whiny liberal tree-hugger. Oh, and I don't believe that the term "mothers health" should be put in air quotes or muttered in a snide tone. I care a great deal about my mother's health, and don't consider that an extreme position.

On the issues, well, this seems to be a no brainer. I can't think of a single thing that has gone well in the Bush administration, and McCain agreed with Bush 90% of the time. Right now, the university I work at has a football team that has had a rough few years. Really rough, no bowl games, no winning seasons, no big crowds, embarrassing losses, you know what I mean. Much of the blame is laid at the feet of the coach. Would a fan of this team want to replace the coach with someone who thought he did 90% of everything right? Of course not.

Add to this the fact that for the first time in my life, I have been inspired by a politician. Now, I don't agree with everything Obama is proposing, and I understand the realities of politics, I know many of his plans will be difficult to enact. They always are. What gives me hope though, is that Obama recognizes and acknowledges that issues are complicated. Obama has even spoken about what a huge problem anti-intellectualism is in America today. Seriously, a politician who isn't pretending to be a doofus. A politician who thinks it is important to be more than a guy "you can have a beer with." You know what guys who you can have a beer with are good for? Having a beer with.

On a serious thermochronology note, McCain and Palin have both made offensively ignorant and anti-scientific statements recently. They both love to rail against government spending on research, even when it is obvious that they have no idea what the research is really for. Remember Palin's rant about fruit fly funding? I'm no geneticist, but anyone who has stayed awake through a college biology course knows the importance of fruit flies in genetics research. And guess what, the research Palin was slamming actually is involved with treating children's autism. In one of the debates, McCain brought up DNA research on grizzly bears as a waste of money. Turns out that is the most effective way to understand their population and therefore enforce the endangered species act. But hey, who cares? This also came up a few years ago, when I heard McCain ranting about funding to study "cow farts." The research was actually about methane, a potent greenhouse gas, much of which happens to come from cows. But hey, as long as you can reduce serious science down to a funny one-liner, it must be a waste of money. Not a good use of funds like the Iraq war. To be fair, I don't expect McCain and Palin to know all the science. I do, however, expect them to consult with scientists on scientific issues, which from their statements they apparently do not. And to boot, Palin is a proponent of teaching creationism (excuse me, I mean incompetent design) in public schools, a sure fire way to undermine science. If someone wanted to destroy America's ability to compete scientifically in the future I believe they'd favor the same programs.

I could go on, and it would become more rantish. Long story short, the world's leading thermochronology blog is officially endorsing the Obama/Biden ticket for the 2008 presidential election. I care too much about the future of the country, despite my status as a fake american elitist. Don't forget to vote!

Events

2008-10-28T21:26:00.005-04:00

On Saturday night a close friend and colleague was hit and killed while riding his bicycle in a park near campus. Alec Waggoner was a 23 year old masters student working in our group, a Kansas native with a bright and promising future. I could go on for pages about Al's scientific and academic ability, but it is his friendship and entirely genuine and unique take on life that I will miss the most. Alec was good at life, and was someone who I admired immensely. His passing can only be described as a monumental tragedy. Many of us have lost a great and true friend, and the earth science community has lost a bright and motivated young talent.

I do not have any experience writing about young friends in the past tense. I will probably write more about Alec later, but not now. My heart and thoughts go out to Al's family.

A few years ago, I read Antoine de Saint Exupéry's autobiographical book Wind, Sand, and Stars. I initially read it because it was listed inthe National Geographic list of the 100 greatest adventure books of all time. When I started reading the book I was initially kind of disappointed. Truth is there isn't a great deal of adventure in the book, especially in the beginning. It is much more philosophical than I was expecting. By the end though, I was really into it, and I ended up re-reading it many times. I often find myself thinking about certain passages, especially during difficult times. This is the one that has been in my head ever since I heard about Alec.

Bit by bit, nevertheless, it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.
So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.

FT2008 - Alaska chapter 4 and a big thanks

2008-10-20T19:34:00.007-04:00

Before I write any more about FT2008, the International Conference on Thermochronometry, I need to take care of one blog related item. Last week I was named a "blog of note" on blogger.com, and have since seen a drastic increase in my readership. Above is a bar graph of my daily page loads from 10/10/2008 until today. Take the statistics challenge, see if you can tell what day I was named a blog of note. I removed the actual numbers, well, mainly because I have been shamed into realizing I was letting my blog suffer tremendously and therefore are unwilling to admit my average readership. But, thanks to the recognition, my page loads really spiked, that first day they were 2 orders of magnitude higher than average, and although they have settled down, are still 20 times what I am used to. Now, based on the comments, many people want to attribute this to my pretty pictures from Alaska, but that is probably only because they are embarrassed to admit how addictive thermochronology can be. I understand gentle readers, but don't be ashamed, it is OK to admit that you are fascinated by thermochronology, that you now want to quit your career and pursue this new passion, that you now try to work in the phrase "thermally activated volume diffusion" into everyday conversations, and you are constantly frustrated when reviewing papers that compare apparently phase-independent "⁴⁰Ar/³⁹ ages" to U-Pb zircon ages like they are the same thing.

Seriously though, thank you to whoever named me a blog of note, and to all of the people who've had so many nice things to say about the blog and my pictures. I appreciate the kind words.

So back to FT2008, the International Conference on Thermochronmetry. In a previous post, I discussed some of the methodoligical advancements I was most interested in. Today I just wanted to highlight a few of the case studies I found most intriguing. Again, if you are interested in these topics, make sure to check out the free and downloadable extended abstracts from the meeting, available from the Union College FT2008 website. Of course, these will be interspersed with random pictures from the field trips, in no particular order.

There was one talk and a few posters that dealt with apatite fission-track and (U-Th)/He ages from tunnels in the alps. The talk was by Reinecker, and I apologize for not remembering his first name, and the posters were by Glotzbach and Spiegel. All of these papers were in the Alpine Orogen session on the Thursday of the talk. So why tunnels? Well, these tunnels go straight through significant topographic peaks. Isotherms, or surfaces of equal temperature in the earth, tend to mimic topography, especially at relatively shallow levels. In some ways this is a problem in thermochronology. We often would like to know how fast things came to the surface, but that depends on the depth of the closure temperature isotherm, which in turn depends on toppgraphy (and many other things), which we don't necessarily know. Isotherms are deflected up under large topographic peaks, meaning that if you drill sideways through a mountain, you will experience hotter and hotter temperatures towards the core of the mountain. So I mentioned that the deflection of isotherms is a problem for us brave thermochronologists, but used correctly, it could also be a relatively powerful tool. If topography can affect isotherms, then topography should also be recorded in thermochronometers. The tunnel studies should see evidence for the topography being recorded in the low-temperature thermochronometers. Turns out it isn't so obvious, but I'll leave the abstracts for you to read.

A Blue Grouse (I think, correct me if I am wrong)

In the last few years there have been a number of studies investigating the link between climate and tectonics. Specifically, which drives which? My own personal belief is that it just isn't an either or, but the idea that climate (namely erosion) could drive crustal processes is kind of hard to swallow for many geologists. Some of the evidence for this involves correlations between erosion rates, rainfall, and uplift rates in active mountain belts. This isn't supposed to work everywhere, there are plenty of places that get tons of rain but where nothing is being uplifted (like the Amazon basin), but many people think of it as a major driver in mountainous regions. Frank Lisker presented a paper on some of his results from Sri Lanka, and what struck me is that the southern part of the island has a rather large mountain (2000+ meters) and gets buckets of rain, but has i n c r e d i b a l l y s l o w uplift rates, slow enough they are reported in meters per million years (typically we report uplift rates in kilometers per million years).

More massive piles of Late Miocene - Pliocene conglomerates

So I think that is all I'm going to write on this. It gets difficult to decide what talks to highlight and what talks not to highlight. If you have found any of the things I've discussed intriguing, download and enjoy the abstract volume.

More pillow basalts from the Kenai Peninsula. Seriously, they actually look like pillows!

And my last Alaskan fall picture

FT2008 - Alaska chapter 3 - Alaskan Wildlife

2008-10-16T08:16:00.004-04:00

So no geology this post, but instead I thought I'd post some of the wildlife pictures I took on the Denali and Kenai Peninsula field trips. First from the Kenai peninsula fjords cruise, some Stellar Sea Lions, hanging out on pillow basalts. I guess I lied, I said no geology, and here I am tossing around the term pillow basalts. This species is endangered, and if you look at the guy in the center, you can see he has a numbered brand. The decline in sea lion population is a little confusing, allegedly, and the tatoos help track them throughout their range. The pillow basalts, while not endangered, are still fantastic. This cruise actually included some of the best pillow basalt exposures I've ever seen firsthand.

Next up, a black bear! To attempt to head off any scolding comments or emails, I did not approach this bear. I was walking down a path when I came on a student who had stopped. She had been there for a few seconds. She had walked around a corner, and a youngish black bear had seen her and ran into a tree. I had my camera out, snapped this picture, and quietly walked away, trying not to attract anyone else down the walkway.

What would Alaska be without a moose? What this picture doesn't show is the other 50 people on the side of the road snapping pictures of this moose.

I took this last picture for my Mom, just to say that we did not see any of the famous Alaskan "chikens" on the trip.

Enjoy!

FT2008 - Alaska chapter 2

2008-10-14T20:40:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, the scientific program at FT2008 (The International Conference on Thermochronometry in Anchorage) was overall pretty impressive. I thought I'd highlight a few of the presentations that I found most interesting. As a side note, the extended abstracts for this meeting can be downloaded for free from the official meeting website here. The abstracts vary in length, but most are true extended abstracts with color figures. My discussion is by no means exhaustive, and who knows, I might augment it later. Here are some of my highlights, interspersed with random pictures of mine from the field trips. I am primarily sticking to methodological highlights today, I'll save the others for later posts.

There were many discussions and presentations by one of the meeting sponsors, Autoscan. Autoscan is an Australian company that has been working to develop an automated fission-track counting system. I am still in the early stages of learning to count tracks, but I've observed the process and know most of the basics. Counting fission tracks is exactly what it sounds like, fission-tracks are etched in acid, and then using a microscope you count the number of tracks in your grain (gross oversimplification, I know, but to make a point). So counting tracks can be tedious, you need to count hundreds of them from dozens of grains to beef up your statistics. Anyways, as nice as it would be to have an automated counting system, the mechanics and potential complications of the process make me wary of trusting an algorithm. That being said, the Autoscan demonstrations are pretty convincing. You can download the demonstration and demo images from the Autoscan website here. Andy Gleadow gave the presentations on Autoscan and led the discussions. He went into detail about how the software deals with some of the more specific problems, comparing reflected and transmitted light images, evaluating overlapping tracks, distinguishing tracks from scratches and dust, etc. By the end I was sold. Again, I am not a certified fission track counter [yet], and therefore am undoubtably missing some important caveats, but Autoscan impresses me.
Speaking of fission-tracks, there were another set of talks and posters by the group from Union College/SUNY Albany (John Garver and his student Matt Montario) about their recent work using a scanning electron microscope to date high track density zircon samples. The problem is this: Fission-track dating works because with time, tracks form in U-bearing minerals due to the spontaneous fission of ²³⁸U. Old and/or U-rich samples can accumulate so many tracks that they become impossible to count; they overlap and obscure each other too much. The Union/Albany group has developed techniques that allow them to count very high density samples. They do this by using a modified etchant (super secret recipe, well, until they get it published that is) and a scanning electron microscope. Typically, fission-tracks are etched with acid so they become large enough to see with an optical microscope. But, if you have a lot of tracks, this is a problem. So by using a less aggressive etchant, and more powerful microscope, they are able to effectively count samples that would otherwise be useless. I am assuming this will all be published soon, so I'll keep you updated.
Barry Kohn presented some work he has been doing attempting to reduce single-grain apatite (U-Th)/He age spread in quickly cooled samples. Apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronology has been in widespread use for a little over a decade now, and as more and more data sets are collected, we are starting to identify and grapple with recurring problems. Perhaps the most significant issue are irreproducible single-grain ages. These are samples that appear well-suited for analysis, and have easily measurable quantities of U, Th, Sm, and He. Despite this, it is not uncommon for grains from the same hand sample to show significant scatter, well beyond what you'd expect from simple analytical uncertainty. There are many reasons why you'd actually expect significant single-grain scatter in slowly cooled samples. I won't go into it, but instead refer you to Fitzgerald et al., (2006) for a review. For quickly cooled samples, however, there shouldn't be as many complicating factors. Kohn presented results from his experiments where grains are abraded prior to analysis. Air-abrasion removes the outer rind of the crystals, leaving just a rounded core. Air-abrasion has the potential to deal with the "bad neighbor" problem in apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronology. "Bad neighbors" are U, Th, and/or Sm bearing phases that are close to or in contact with the apatite crystal in the rock. Because the He atoms move about 20 microns or so when they are expelled from their parent atom, He produced in neighboring phases can be implanted into the apatite. You end up with "parentless" He, which gives you artificially old ages. So, the idea is that if you abrade off the rind, you remove the region that could have had "parentless" He implanted into it. Kohn isn't trying to say that this is the only answer or that it always works, but in some of the samples he analyzed it certainly had the desired effect. Namely, abraded grains showed less scatter and were more consistent with fission-track ages and/or other constraints. Obviously still a lot of work to be done, but again, very intriguing.

So those are some of the presentations I have thought about the most since I got back from Alaska. I'll have more highlights in later posts. I'll also have more pictures, including a special Alaskan wildlife post, and a brief discussion of our stop at the Wasilla town hall. Yes, we stopped in Wasilla. But before I leave, here is a picture I took of the Exit Glacier, I tried to get the glacial striae in the foreground with the big looming wall o' ice in the background. Unfortunately I couldn't Photoshop out the guard rope and warning sign.

Fitzgerald, P. G., S. L. Baldwin, L. E. Webb, and P. B. O'Sullivan (2006), Interpretation of (U-Th)/He single grain ages from slowly cooled crustal terranes: A case study from the Transantarctic Mountains of southern Victoria Land, Chemical Geology, 225, 91-120.

FT2008 - Alaska chapter 1

2008-09-24T22:59:00.011-04:00

There are many potential reasons why the world's leading thermochronology blog has been utterly silent for the past few months. This has nothing to do with the world of thermochronology, which as I'll discuss in a bit is as cutting edge and fast paced as ever. No, this has more to do with the authors life, motivation, and workload. I am attempting re-entry, this time with the proper heat sheild as to avoid blog burn up. The score so far, sense 0, tangential metaphors 1.

I am going to report on last week's International Thermochronology Conference (called FT2008 as a remnant of the meeting's origin as a fission-track conference), probably in installments of some kind. This was my first "specialist" type conference, which I have to say is a great idea. First off, I was interested in all of the talks and posters. This of course never happens at large conferences. Well, to be fair, I might find all of the presentations at AGU or GSA interesting if I was an expert/aficionado in the subject, it is tough to get into things that you just don't get (like cricket). In addition, there was only one session, everyone saw every talk and had time to go to every poster session. No dog-eared copy of the program or guestimates of if you can make it to the next room in 2 minutes. No, once set your were firmly planted in the session. There were enough coffee and poster breaks that I didn't get meeting sores.

But I think the best part of being at a specialist conference is that it gives the attendees a chance to discuss things that wouldn't really fit at AGU, GSA, EGU, or even a Goldschmidt (although to be fair I haven't attended the latter two). We all have issues with data collection, analysis and reduction, modeling, and/or consistency. We as a community have specific techniques, or aspects of specific techniques we are still trying to make sense of. And, we are all interested in new developments in the hardware and software we use every day. These things just don't make most large conferences. These things came up all the time at FT2008, both in the formal sessions, as well as over beers later on.

Not that it was all songbirds and sunshine. There were a fair number of talks that were just not that great. Like a soufflé, thermochronology is something that it is easy to F-up; in the field, lab, or at your computer. There were too many talks where I got the feeling the author had never read many thermochronology papers. This isn't much of an exaggeration, I'd say one of the most glaring errors involved ignoring (sometimes landmark) previous work from the same field area. Usually though it had to do with the study design and sampling strategy, or interpretation.

But today I'm going to talk briefly (read: show pictures) about the pre-meeting field trip. This was my first trip to Alaska, and I was very lucky to get in on the 2.5 day trip north to Denali. The trip included about 40 people, faculty, students, and even some industry and government folks. The trip covered a lot of different topics, and was for most of us an introduction to the geology of South Central Alaska.

This may seem obvious, but the trip really reinforced to me the enormity of Alaska, and the complexity of Alaskan geology. The area we discussed was larger than some states. Exposure is not ideal, neither is access. And, like many areas that are still active, there are generations of structures and events that are continually being modified and obscured.

As far as rocks go, most of the features we saw were large overview things, the trace of the Denali and Castle Valley Faults, some of the different large mountain belts, features from the 1964 earthquake, etc. We did see some excellent exposures of some of the ginormous piles of conglomerates shed off the various mountain ranges. I make no pretense of being a sedimentologist, but even these had me impressed.

The weather hid most of the dramatic views on the first day, but we did have this one fantastic view of Denali from the park road.

We were also smack dab in the middle of the fall colors coming out. This is a picture I took from Honolulu Creek, one of the exposures of these piles of late Miocene-Pliocene conglomerates we spent some time arguing about. The exact age of the deposits isn't too well constrained, but they are believed to be correlative to the Pliocene Nenana gravels. The Nenana gravels are interpreted by the field trip leaders to result from the unroofing of the Alaska Range.

The meeting included some talks I'll hopefully post about that discuss some of the more recent thermochronology in this part of Alaska. We did talk a great deal about one of the more "landmark" thermochronology papers that happens to come from this area, which focused on an elevation transect all the way up Mount Denali (see Fitzgerald et al., 1995; the top of the fossil apatite fission-track partial annealing zone is at about 3800m).

More later, I bought some sourdough starter while there and now need to go attend to loaves.

Fitzgerald, P.G., Stump, E., and Redfield, T. F., 1993, Late Cenozoic uplift of Denali (Mt. McKinley) and its relation to relative plate motion and fault morphology, Science, v. 259, p. 497-499.

SoCal Shakeout 2008

2008-06-30T20:02:00.002-04:00

When I TA'd introductory geology for my adviser, he'd always have an assignment early in the course that focused on earthquake safety. My graduate school was in Northern California (read "the chosen land"), in an area that straddles one of the most famous faults in the world, and has experienced many destructive historical earthquakes. The assignment was simple; he told the students to go back to their dorm room and do one thing that would make them safer during the next earthquake. They didn't have to turn anything in, but after a week he'd ask for a show of hands to see how many people followed through. Participation was minimal, to say the least. Those people that did raise their hands put in less-than-impressive effort. No one made an earthquake kit (bottled water, batteries, non-perishable food, diet coke, etc..), and just a few removed heavy things from above their bed or double checked their emergency exits. I was even surprised how few graduate students, fellow geologists had proper earthquake kits. I had one, never had to use it, but it took a total of 20 minutes and about $10 to put together.

This is all a preamble to advertise what appears to be a fantastic earthquake preparedness event that I was told about this afternoon. It is called the Great Southern California ShakeOut. The ShakeOut is a series of events that focus on preparing Southern Californians (read "heartless water-stealers") for the inevitable; the next big quake. The ShakeOut has both a blog and official website, and culminates in the largest planned earthquake drill ever in the history of the known universe, on November 13th 2008 at 10 am. Now, I proudly hail from the cultural, intellectual, and political capital of California. I spent graduate school in Northern California, where folks in L.A.L.A.Land get most of their water. Needless to say I have many beefs with the ne'er-do-well neighbors to the south, but I can give the ShakeOut event nothing but support. Contrary to some reports, Southern California is not all bad, and the fact that they are putting so much effort and energy into what is essentially geoscience education and public outreach can make me even [temporarily] forget the 2002 NBA playoffs (also here and here). They also have a great motto on the blog, "because shift happens."

So check out the sites, and if you live in Southern California, get ready for the Big One!

Zotero and Citation Managing

2008-06-26T22:27:00.003-04:00

Like many paper-writing academic types, I typically employ a haphazard and ill-planned technique for reference-handling when writing papers. I have EndNote and BibTeX, and I have used them both at times, but I really have never been entirely satisfied. I have liked EndNote at times, but the truth is the version I have is old and clunky, and I am not all that thrilled about plunging another $100 some-odd dollars into an updated version. BibTeX was great while I was using LaTeX, but most earth science journals do not accept LaTeX file submissions, and none of my collaborators are ever comfortable with LaTeX, which means I have to constantly import and export from Microsoft Word to LaTeX and back. A pain. Plus, BibTeX is great for most things, but putting out a .rtf formatted bibliography is not one of them. So to summarize, I want something cheap (read: free) that works well with Microsoft Word (the standard for my collaborators).

Enter Loose Baggy Monster, my better half. One of her favorite things in the world is playing with new word processing related software. Seriously, I'm not joking. She is especially excited about reference management utilities and other things that let her release her humanities dorkosity.

She pointed me toward Zotero, a free reference and bibliography management utility that works through FireFox, and integrates beautifully with Word 2004. I've now become a convert, and decided it is time to spread the word. Now, there are many features in Zotero I don't yet use or understand, and I am sure in the future I'll do a better job showing off it's power, but here are some screen shots describing why I like Zotero. Oh, and if you want, click on the pictures to see higher resolution versions.

First off, Zotero makes importing references into your database very easy. I do all of my reference searching on web-based applications, such as my current GeoRef interface (shown below).

You will notice that in the browser address bar, there is a little orange folder. That means that this page has enbedded bibliographic information that Zotero can read, and import directly into your database. This is a GeoRef search for the term "jimboite."

If you click the orange folder, a window appears with all of references that appear on the page. You select which ones you want in your database, and once you click OK that are imported. You can see that there is another window on the bottom right showing the references that are currently being imported.You will also notice that on the bottom of my browser window, there is the little "Zotero" icon. If you click this, you are taken to your personal database. You can see that one of the articles I had searched for and selected in my "jimboite" search is now in my database. I should mention here that this database is held on your hard drive, so even though it runs through a web browser, you don't have to be online to access your downloaded or otherwise entered database. Nor must you be on the interwebs to use the "cite while you write" functionality in Word 2004.

So now lets go to Word and start writing that landmark paper. You can see that because I installed the free Zotero plugin for Word, I have a little Zotero menu bar up on the top of the screen shot. So I've written my first stunning introductory sentence, and now want to insert a reference. I click one of the menu bar buttons.

And this window comes up. I can select what citation style I want to use. Truth is there aren't as of yet that many earth science citation styles available, but someone did make the AGU general style, which I tend to like. On the Zotero web site you can download and install the AGU style (it does not come standard), and there is also a style-maker that I have yet to figure out.

After I click AGU, I am then shown a window where I select the reference that I want to include. You can chose one or multiple, either way it is pretty simple.
Click "OK" and voila! the paranthetical citation is entered into the word file.

So now I'll add some more text and reference, and then click the menu bar button that says "Zotero Insert Bibliography" and Ka-Bam! Instant formatted bibliography.

Now GeoRef isn't the only web search engine that lets you download references straight away. Most of the individual publisher or journal web pages do as well. There are plenty of other features I like, for example you can take snapshots of web pages if you wish to record and later reference those; you can link references in your database directly to the .pdf's on your hard drive, and so on.

There are some things I want Zotero to improve on. First I'd like more citation styles. Zotero also does not have any decent way to sort out duplicate references, which is a headache. But, Zotero is one of those programs it seems is improving quickly. And hell, it's free!

So as of now I am a convert.

Brian Greene in the NY Times

2008-06-01T18:44:00.007-04:00

The better half and I just returned from vacation this week (contrary to the comment I recently received, the blog break has not been NSF-induced, but rather from an incredible week + vacationing.) I am adjusting to the time and lifestyle change fine, and spent most of the weekend getting back on track (including a few visits to a lab undergoing a bakeout). This morning I ran across this article in the NY Times by Brian Greene (physicist and author of many popular science books.) It starts with a description of a letter he received from a soldier stationed in Iraq, the kind of letter anyone who fancies themselves a writer must be thrilled to receive. He then spends some time discussing the status of science education in the US. As a scientist who is interested in science education, I thought it was worth linking to.

My only beef is that when discussing the issue of science education Green writes:

It’s much the same story in classes for biology, chemistry and mathematics.

You might notice that once again geology and/or earth science is not given a place on the list of important sciences. I am sure Greene has no problem with geology, that is not what I mean, I just think it is sad how often the "important" sciences are listed off with nary a mention of the science that studies the planet we live on. Other than that, the article is worth a read. He makes the point that science education is "unassailably vertical [paraphrased]" and too often focuses on teaching skills and forgets to involve the grand ideas, the things that might inspire students to want to learn the skills. Or as he writes:

Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow, that’s science?”

This is the second time I've blogged about a prominent scientist somehow appearing in the NY Times and forgetting to include geology as an important science. The first time is here, in an article that quotes nobel laureate Leon Lederman.

Mass Transit

2008-05-12T22:30:00.008-04:00

I saw this article in the New York Times today, and thought I'd mention it as a kind of part 2 of my commentary on high gas prices (see my post from a year ago here, although prices have continued to rise I don't think my sentiments have changed a ton). I'll let you read the article yourselves, but the basic synopsis is that with gas prices at all time highs, public transit systems are seeing record breaking ridership. It appears we might be near the "tipping point" where prices are high enough to convince people to train, bus, bike, or walk-it. Of course biking and walking won't show up in these statistics, but you get the point.

The article contained one thing I'd like to quote:

The increase in transit use coincides with other signs that American motorists are beginning to change their driving habits, including buying smaller vehicles. The Energy Department recently predicted that Americans would consume slightly less gasoline this year than last — for the first yearly decline since 1991. [emphasis added]

Think about this. In 1991, I didn't have an email address. I couldn't even type very well. I listened to mix tapes on a Sony walkman (90-minute Maxell XLII tapes of course). MTV still played music, and we would see the release of both Ten and Nevermind that year. Kurt Cobain has now been gone more than a decade, and we have iPods, blogs, the interwebs, and instead of walking to my local record store I download albums from iTunes. But with all of those amazing technological advancements we came up with nothing to make our transportation-related energy use more efficient. In fact, we just kept using more and more. Just think if transportation saw the same step increase in technology that the walkman did. As tough as high oil prices can be for people, how many decades have people been making rational arguments for higher fuel economy, increased public transportation, and decreased dependence on fossil fuels? Just for argument sake, let's say since the late 1970's. And what have we done? If we would have heeded those warnings back then, when gas was $1.25 a gallon, perhaps it never would have reached this point.

Oh, and even with a cheap-o 9 year old car I still pay less for gas now that a medium-sized SUV driver did in 2000.

UPDATE, thought I'd add this clip from the 1999 Simpsons season.

Mother's Day

2008-05-11T23:46:00.003-04:00

Every mother's day I tend to balance my general dislike for the Hallmark Holidays with my overwhelming love, thanks, and appreciation for my mom. My balance usually ends up with me calling her, something I should do more often. While in grad school I was lucky enough to attend a poetry reading by then Poet Laureate Billy Collins. I like Billy Collins a great deal. One of my favorite poems of his is called "The Lanyard."

OK, time to connect the thoughts in the previous paragraph. As Apparent Dip's mother's day offering, I bring you "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins. You can hear him read this here, or on this excellent CD. As a copyright note, I am only putting the text up because NPR did, and I figure if NPR thinks it is OK, then so does Apparent Dip. I think most poems are best listened to, so check out the links above.

The Lanyard - by Billy Collins

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift--not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Thermochronologic Sampling

2008-05-03T19:45:00.006-04:00

I've posted about thermochronology and mineral separations (twice), but I realized that I haven't yet gone over the field work aspect of thermochronology.

Now, I'll admit up front that the field work I do is not very hard core. There are plenty of thermochronologists who spend months in the classic style, mapping and sampling in some remote part of the planet, I am really not one of them. The most rugged field work I've done was when I was in college, and while the helicopter rides and grizzly bears gave me some geo-street cred, my field work since then has been rather tame. The truth is, as a thermochronologist, you rely on good maps. Your data is meaningless outside of geologic or structural context. Now, it is pretty commong for people doing thermochronology to provide the necessary structural and geologic underpinnings. For much of my work, I've been fortunate enough to work in places that have been mapped very well, and I'm often in field parties with the people who've done the mapping.

Anyways, what I am going to be blogging about assumes you either have or are making the maps necessary for actually understanding your data.

OK, first things first, you can take a thermochronologic sample anywhere there are rocks, but when you plan your sampling, there are some important things to consider.

First, although you can get important information from single samples, the most powerful sampling method involves collecting multiple samples from different structural positions. If cooling and exhumation have been vertical (as is the case with my current project, see this for a more in depth discussion), then this means collecting samples at different elevations. For reasons I'll explain in a later post, it helps to cover as much structural relief as possible without moving too much laterally. The ideal sampling surface in a region with vertical exhumation would be a sheer cliff. In regions like the basin and range, where faults and structures have rotated lithologic units, structural relief might be almost horizontal (like Yerington). Again, this is why you need to already understand your field area.

So lets just say that exhumation has been vertical. Your sampling transect will try to cover the greatest amount of relief possible.

In almost every case, the best lithologies to sample for thermochronology are granites or granodiorites. So to summarize, you are looking for a big granite mountain.

Unless you are attempting some rather specialized analyses, you also want fresh and underformed rocks to sample. Obviously then, avoid altered rocks, weathering varnishes, and rocks that have been faulted or otherwise chewed on. You will also want to avoid the outer few cm's of outcrop because of potential problems caused by forest fires (see Mitchell and Reiners, 2003, Geology v.31, n.12, pp.1025-1028; summary if you don't have access, fires can reset apatites, so don't sample the outer few cm's. They do very interesting things with the data, but I won't go into that right now).

OK, so find your enormous granite mountain made entirely of fresh outcrop (this sounds pipe dreamy, but actually describes some of my current field areas).

So you want to take a whole slew of samples from different elevations. It is pretty standard to sample every 100 meters or so of relief (structural relief or elevation). So, first step, find a place at the right elevation that has fresh outcrop. As below

If the rocks aren't that well exposed or fresh, it helps to spend some quality time with your chisel. I love the ones with the hand guards. If you are sampling granitoids, bring a sledge hammer, not a pick hammer. Sledge hammers (3 or 4 lb head, metal or wood handle) make the job much easier.check out Dr. New Helvetia chiseling away at an oriented sample

If you are interested in mica, hornblende, or K-Feldspar, you usually don't need much sample at all. You can often see the minerals you want to analyze with your hand lens, and can sometimes "field dress" your sample, and take out what you want with your knife (works well especially for books of mica). For apatite, zircon, and monazite, you have a lot more work ahead of you. since the first step in that mineral separation might mean feeding your sample through a jaw crusher, I find it useful to break your sample into bite sized chunks on the outcrop. If you wait to bash up a large sample into smaller pieces back in the lab, you have to spend all kinds of time cleaning up. You don't have to clean up or worry about contamination if you bash things up on the outcrop. Bashing things up also lets you remove the weathered rinds you want to avoid.

Many rocks seem to be either feast or famine when it comes to apatite and zircon abundance. Some rocks I've worked on yield piles and piles of apatite, where I could have gotten away with much less sample. Others yield nothing, and it wouldn't have mattered if I would have brought home a barrel's worth. I usually go for about 3-4 kgs of sample.
So you've now got your mandarin orange sized chunks of amazingly fresh granite, time to bag them. I prefer heavy cloth bags, like those available here at Miners Inc. I don't reuse them, so I label the bajeesus out of the bags with a Sharpie.

I write the sample name, elevation, and some basic info about the geologic context of the sample. I also like to take a picture of the sample bag (with the sample name readable) on the outcrop, kind of a way to help me remember the sample and where I took it. I also take a GPS reading, and plot myself manually on a topographic map. I'll actually check my map location against the GPS whenever possible.

This is also a good way to trick otherwise camera shy members of a field party to have their picture taken. Again, Dr. New Helvetia.
Taking pictures like this also helps me keep my photos organized. For example, I'll have pictures like this below, that I don't write a ton about in my field book (because I am an idiot who is still acquiring skills), but I have it sandwiched in between pictures I have GPS coordinates for, so I'm all good. I was able to recreate the outcrop where I saw these enormous K-feldspars, even though it was towards the end of the day and my field notes weren't as complete as they should have been.

The K-feldspars remind me of salmon swinning upstream.

Now, I usually have a back-and-forth sampling route. Meaning, I'll hike up to the highest point in my field area, take a sample, and then head down, sampling as I go. This saves you from having to carry rocks up hill, which is usually a good thing. I also find it easy to plan time this way. I plan on eating lunch at the highest point, and I know that I can cover ~1300 m of elevation in a day (13 samples) with a good field party (at least 1 other person). You can also note good outcrops on your way up, making the way down more efficient.

FT2008 Early Registration Deadline

2008-05-01T21:29:00.002-04:00

The early registration deadline for the 11th International Conference on Thermochronometry is tomorrow! Get the purchase card and sign up now, otherwise your grant will have to pony up another 50$. All the information you'll need can be found here. The meeting is in Anchorage, from September 15-19. I've never been to this conference, but reliable sources tell me they have been excellent in the past.

The FT conferences started out as Fission-Track workshops, but have expanded to include all low-temperature thermochronometers. There will be a wide range of posters and talks at the conference. The conveners are specifically requesting papers that fall into these categories:

1) New analytical developments in helium dating and fission-track analysis
2) Thermochronology of orogenic belts
3) Detrital thermochronology, provenance, and basin analysis
4) Thermochronology of sedimentary basins
5) Kinetics and thermal modeling
6) The thermotectonic framework of Alaska and adjacent areas.

Abstract and final registration deadline is June 13th, still time to crank out some ages!

Incidentally, speaking of abstracts, when writing them I always like to paraphrase our former Secretary of Defense and say "You write abstracts with the data you have, not the data you want."

Spring [Field Trip] Fever

2008-04-29T23:18:00.004-04:00

Here at ESRU we've been enjoying some unseasonably warm weather, even hitting the 80's last week. Although the cold nights have returned, this amuse-bouche of spring has sent my brain into desert field trip mode.

As a undergraduate, my first extended field trip was to the Colorado Plateau. The trip was at the end of my freshman year, we left TMLAC in early May, and spent the next two weeks all over the Plateau. As you might imagine this was a watershed moment in my professional life, although my geoscience experience at the time was limited to one introductory course, but by halfway through the trip (camping in the snow on the north rim of the Grand Canyon), I knew I was going to be a geologist. I've returned to the Colorado Plateau a few more times, including a family trip (my graduate present from my parents), and my honeymoon (belated, but incredible).

In graduate school I either TA'd or hung out on a Death Valley/Owens Valley/White Mountains spring field trip many times. Depending on the course and professor this trip would change specifics, but at its base always involved a week in the desert. The timing of this trip is really perfect. It was usually smack dab between two academic quarters, a time when you were definitely ready for a break. More importantly, the weather this time of year is amazing. If you are lucky, your trip will coincide with the brief but colorful bursts of wildflowers. The high elevations are still cool (cold even, you can find snow fields once you get over a few thousand feet), and the low elevations are not yet absurdly hot. Most of the campsites cool off enough at night to allow for comfortable sleeping, but once the sun rises you can get away with shorts and Tevas. Plus, you beat most of the crowds. Win-win-win.

The desert is one of the things I've missed most since moving out here. In truth the region around ESRU is beautiful and scenic, especially this time of year, don't get me wrong. But it is not the same. Thoughts of these trips have inspired me to post some of my random pictures from the deserts, a sort of virtual field trip.

To fully put myself into the desert, I suppose I could wake up early, make coffee, and fry a bagel in butter (seriously, try this, fry the cut side of the bagel, then add cheese and guacamole, and make into a sandwich.....most amazing breakfast ever.)

So the pics

The end of Monarch Canyon in the Funeral Mountains, looking west into Death Valley.

Racetrack playa, Death Valley National Park

Mono Craters, Owens Valley California

Wildflower preserve east of Arvin, CA, California Golden Poppies in the foreground

Picture taken by moonlight (long exposure) in Arches National Park. Thanks to my brother for suggesting the technique.

Standard issue picture of Delicate Arch, Arches National Park

View looking into Death Valley

Ripples in sand dunes in Death Valley

The Boundary Canyon Detachment Fault, Funeral Mountains, Death Valley National Park. View is looking north, fault is at a low angle (it has actually been overturned) right at the break in color.

Great Gift Idea for that Geochronologist in Your Life

2008-04-26T11:18:00.005-04:00

I just wanted to mirror a post on the Arizona Geology Blog in case you know any geochronologists with upcoming birthdays, or wanted to get a head start on the Holiday shopping season. This could be the very first gift item aimed directly at us "something"chronologists. And, seeing that this is the world's greatest thermochronology blog, I figured it was appropriate for me to point you here, where you can learn all about the PaleoClock!

Farallon Plate Part 2

2008-04-20T15:36:00.004-04:00

Next in my hall o' fame of geoscience images is the Farallon Plate - North American Plate animtion put together by Tanya Atwater (UCSB). This is one of a series of excellent earth science animations available at this site. This cartoon continues last week's theme, the fate of the Farallon plate, and follows (in map view) the evolution of the western U.S. plate boundary from 38 Million years ago until present. I have long considered this to be one of the best and most useful geoscience illustrations ever produced.

I've seen this animation in a wide variety of talks and lectures. As someone who went to graduate school in California, every discussion of the San Andreas fault would begin with this movie. But I've also seen it used when discussing general plate tectonics, basin and range extension, or this history of magmatism in California.

The movie was made primarily using plate reconstructions. Basically you "unspread" the oceans, using the time and velocity constraints provided by sea-floor spreading anomalies to step things back in time. This is augmented and checked using terrestrial records of deformation. Although it is slightly simplified, it is a fantastic view of the development and evolution of the western U.S., especially California, and the development of the San Andreas Fault.

In the movie you will see a number of things. First off, the thick red lines are the plate boundaries. Separating the Pacific Plate from the Farallon Plate is a divergent plate boundary, where sea floor spreading is making new oceanic crust. The toothed red line separating the Farallon Plate from the North American Plate indicates a subduction plate boundary, where the Farallon Plate is being subducted underneath North America. This plate configuration begins at roughly the same time as the Humphreys figure I blogged about here. The big white arrows are plate velocity vectors relative to a stable north america. The thin black lines on North America are rough outlines of the state boundaries, prior to Basin and Range extension.

So at the beginning of the movie, the western plate boundary of North America is a subduction zone. Beginning in southern California (at about the latitude of Santa Barbara) at ~30 Ma, the divergent plate boundary (or spreading ridge) separating the Pacific and Farallon Plates is subducted. This results in in the formation of a strike slip boundary, the margin we now refer to as the San Andreas Fault.

As more of the spreading ridge is subducted, the transform San Andreas fault gets longer and longer. You also see the initiation of significant extension throughout western North America. These regions are colored a salmon color in the movie. This extension roughly doubles the present width of the western U.S. This extension leads to the formation of the Basin and Range province.

As the San Andreas continues to form, you can watch parts of southern California rotate (the transverse ranges) and/or be translated northwards. Finally, the movie finishes with the modern plate set up.

As simple as the cartoon now looks, it represents a great deal of effort to put together. And, if you are looking to discuss any geologic event in the western U.S. in the past 40 Ma or so, this cartoon provides a fantastic framework.

I've used this movie every time I've TA'd or taught a course, or given lectures to audiences unfamiliar with Cordilleran geology. The figure has the rare ability to talk to all levels of earth scientists. People with no background can really see the development of a very complex plate margin.

Now a quick disclaimer. The website that hosts these movies says they can be used for free for educational purposes. My blog is non-profit and I consider it to be primarily an educational endeavor, which is why I am posting the video. If anyone connected to the video does not appreciate that, please just email me.

Enjoy! And check out the site I reference for a whole boatload of geoscience movies.

Eocene Farallon Lithospheric Chalupa

2008-04-07T19:35:00.010-04:00

Also see my second post relating to the Farallon Plate here.

This past Friday I was talking with some of the people in my research group and we ended up discussing our favorite published figures. This is easy for me, hands down, it is the Eocene Farallon Lithospheric Chalupa of Humphreys (1995). I'll explain why I love this figure in a minute, but first...

I don't think I'd be out on a limb to say that when many geologists first look at a paper, they begin by studying the figures. Many branches of geology are very visual, the ultimate goal often being complete 4 dimensional reconstructions of complicated events. As such, most earth scientists spend a great deal of time learning how to make good figures. For many geologists, the steep part of this learning curve is field camp, when they first learn how to make geologic maps.

I think if you want to consider the information density of a figure, nothing can beat a geologic map. I am continually amazed at the amount of information that trained geologists can gather from geologic maps. The amount of information packed into a geologic map of course depends on the quality and scale of the map itself, but really good maps can detail billions of years of faulting, folding, erosion, magmatism, deposition, and metamorphism.

And one more "quick" aside. I think that my general reverence for geologic maps has played into my slight annoyance with Edward Tufte. This is probably entirely stupid and absurd on my part; I apologize in advance and fully accept criticism, but I am continually amazed that Tufte doesn't spend more time singing the praises of geologic maps. I had a chance to attend a public lecture by Tufte a few years ago. In general, I am a big fan of many of Tufte's ideas. I think that many people, geologists included, need to think seriously about how they visually represent their information. I think that geologists already have to spend a lot of time doing this, and so some of the examples seem kind of basic. I think this molehil of an annoyance of mine became a small end moraine of annoyance when I saw Tufte speak. First the background, this was a public lecture attended by about 600 people. Although Tufte is not categorically against things like PowerPoint or slides, he is much more in favor of archival quality paper. Unfortunately, these are expensive, and impractical for 600 people. So, the first 200 or so people who got into this lecture had beautiful large images to look at during the talk, images on such incredible paper that they are undoubtedly as bright and colorful today as they were 2 years ago. The rest of us got to crowd a dozen or so people around a single piece of paper, trying to follow along with his message. I would have loved a crappy PowerPoint slide complete with kitten background and lightning sound effects. I guess I am saying that I think it is important to strike a balance between quality and accessibility.

Long story short, I get a little bit stuck-up when it comes to geologists and visual representations of data. That is why I've decided to start blogging about some of my favorite figures.

So to start we have the Eocene Farallon Lithospheric Chalupa, published in 1995 in a paper by Eugene Humphreys (Geology, v. 23, n. 11, pp. 987-990). What this figure shows is his preferred model for the removal of the Eocene Farallon slab. The idea is that during the Laramide orogeny, the Farallon slab was subducting at a very shallow angle, effectively transferring plate boundary forces into the interior of the continent during the Laramide orogeny (making some of the Rocky Mountain structures). Beginning in the Eocene this slab was somehow removed, allowing hot asthenosphere to rise up and introduce a great deal of heat and basaltic magma into the western North American lithosphere. This led to the "ingimbrite flare-up," a period of intense volcanic activity in western North America, from Washington in the north down into northern Mexico. Volcanic activity did not begin everywhere at the same time, in fact it seems to have started at the northern and southern margins of the province in the Eocene. The volcanic front moved south from Washington, and north from Mexico, eventually meeting around Las Vegas in the Miocene (Vegas baby!) Many geologists interpret this to be the result of the gradual peeling away of the Farallon slab from both the north and south at roughly the same time.

So, here is the figure, the Eocene (~35 Ma) Farallon Slab!

So, with that background, what Humphreys attempts to explain in this paper is that pattern of magmatism, and how it could be related to slab removal. My favorite figure is his preferred model for Farallon slab removal. Why do I love this figure? Well.

It make sense. It takes a while to wrap your head around, but it explains the removal of the slab, and the associated patterns of magmatism.
The perspective. The view is looking up from the mantle somewhere underneath eastern Canada. The view is looking to the west, with the subducting Farallon slab coming right at you. I am used to map view and cross-sectional views, but I love the moxy to use this perspective. I wish google earth had this view.
The approximation. I like the fact that this is simplified and hand made. I don't think Illustrator has a feature that makes buckled subducting slabs. In my geologic education I have definitely felt pressure to make diagrams crisp and Illustrator-ific. I can imagine this figure originated on a sketchpad or (if I were to write this as a legend) cocktail napkin, and didn't get caught up in the refinement process.
It reminds me of a chalupa. Not that I consider Taco Bell excellent cuisine, but the buckled Farallon slab is a dead ringer for an enormous chalupa. And, it should be noted, that downing chalupas can also lead to flare-up events. I love mexican food, and Taco Bell is a distant cousin of mexican food, so that makes me smile.

I think my favorite thing though, is the fact that I didn't buy this figure at first. I first saw it in a seminar on Cordilleran geology when I was in graduate school. I remember spending a great deal of time trying to figure out what it was representing, and why this was the preferred model. At first I thought it was absurd and overly complicated. I am not an expert on slab removal or the ingimbrite flare-up, but I am now pro-Farallon Chalupa. Every time this figure comes up people who've never seen it are always unsure. Geology can be complicated. Geologic maps are complicated if you aren't used to looking at them. So I like that this image makes brains work. I don't think anyone immediately accepts this diagram, which is good. It is immediately interactive.

So what are your favorite figures? Any nominations? Feel free to nominate yourself if you have a figure you are particularly proud of.

Future Geologists

2008-04-06T22:27:00.002-04:00

This story appeared in our local paper this morning, and I thought it was worth highlighting. It tells the story of a 5th grader who noticed that a display at the Smithsonian identified the Pre-Cambrian as an "era." He knew this was wrong; the term "era" has a specific use in geologic time, and according to standard time scales the Pre-Cambrian does not qualify. The Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic are eras, the Pre-Cambrian is not. Anyways, many geoscience education posts, especially those dealing with the state of geoscience education in America today, are usually negative or at the very best worrisome. This is good!

And, the fact that there is a 5th grade teacher somewhere that gives proper lessons on geologic time made my day. I doubt I knew anything about geologic time back then. In 5th grade I was an expert on the Chicago Cubs and the 1985 Bears. If the Smithsonian had incorrectly labeled the Cubs 2nd baseman as Ryan Sandberg (instead of) Ryne Sandberg, well hell, I would also have filled out a comment card and made the AP wire. I probably also would have complained about the snack bar.....and so ends the window into 10 year old thermochronic.

Lab Ninjas - ANIMAL edition

2008-03-22T12:25:00.006-04:00

I like to think of myself as a lab person. I think on average, I have a decent knowledge of the technical aspects of noble gas analysis. I have built a He extraction line from scatch, I've been involved with upgrades, repairs, routine maintenance, and exploratory surgery on both He and Ar extraction lines. I feel confident in my ability to put together noble gas labs quickly without paying a technician or lab mercenary (that is a special note for all you search committee members out there). I can dumpster dive, resuscitate broken pumps, and leak test with the best of them. Well, that is what I used to think.

Thanks to Dr. Chèvre I recently realized just how much more there is to learn. The good Dr. recently told me about the ANIMAL facility at Auburn University. ANIMAL is an acronym (one that many thermochronologists must be jealous of) for Auburn Noble Isotope Mass Analysis Laboratory. It is the noble gas (mainly Ar/Ar) facility at Auburn, run by Willis Hames and Mehmet Billor (can't find his web page). What makes it amazing though is not just the acronym, it is the fact that the entire apparatus, magnetic sector mass spectrometer included, was built by hand at Auburn, specifically for their lab. Honestly I'd never considered building a mass spectrometer, I figured it was something I'd buy (if I was ever in that position). I've now spent a lot of time on their website, looking at the pictures they have from the development and construction of the machine, looking at their calibration data, it is just amazing. It appears to be a great collaborative effort, involving geologists, material scientists, chemists, physicists, and engineers. Combining experience, resources, and skills, they put this things together from scratch.....and it works! There are even all of these great pictures of students helping to build the thing, polishing the flight tube, wrapping the coil of the magnet, etc.

There are a few things I love about this. First, the design of the machine is actually pretty innovative. Both the extraction line and the mass spectrometer have been optimized in such a way as to significantly reduce the internal volume of the extraction line. The primary modification of the extraction line that impresses me is the lasing system. Most lasing systems have a laser port and sample holder that are attached to the extraction line via stainless steel flex tubes. The laser port is mounted on a motorized stage, so it can be moved under a fixed laser, and samples can be maneuvered into place. this works well, but flex hoses are kind of a pain to deal with. By length, they have much more internal volume than straight tubes, and they are also blessed with much more internal surface area. Both of these facts are negatives from the point of view of signal size and blanks. Some flex hoses are necessary, but it is nice to avoid them when possible. At ANIMAL, the laser port is fixed, using short straight tubing, while the laser beam is mobile.

They call this set up the "flying optic." Basically, the optics of the laser are set up so that both the laser itself and the samples remain stationary, but the mirrors that aim the laser are movable. You can see in the picture above that one of the samples in the sample chamber is glowing hot.

The second great innovation deals with the size of the flight tube. The flight tube of a mass spectrometer can be one of the larger contributions to the overall volume of the extraction line. Large volumes are harder to pump out, but more importantly, the size of your signal is a function of the partial pressure of the gas in your system. Large volumes mean lower pressures, and smaller signals. Many commercial mass spectrometers have flight tube volumes of ~2 liters. ANIMAL is 80% smaller, with an internal volume of ~0.4 liters (that data comes from their website).

So this is all fantastic. One other thing that I think is cool is that they built a viewport into the ion source of the mass spectrometer. That means you can actually see the filament and electrical doohickeys working. I am not sure if this helps in the operation of things, but it is really cool, and doesn't seem to compromise their blanks at all.

So the ANIMAL lab is a good example of Lab Ninjas at work. If you have some time and are interested at all in mass spectrometers it is worth spending some time on their site.

Anyone have a spare Andy Goldsworthy?

2008-02-17T16:15:00.003-05:00

I've been a definite blogging rut lately, more than a rut really, more like a chasm, thalweg, canyon, trench, graben........the list goes on. The trouble is that I have some ideas, but I am still unsure of the direction of Apparent Dip. As I've mentioned before, the department I currently work in does an amazing job of bringing in outside speakers. This means that every week I see a new talk, some excellent, most OK, and a few that were truly terrible. I mean embarrassingly bad. Same went for AGU, I saw dozens of talks and posters, had a lot of interaction and feedback, and plenty of blog ideas, but no posts.

My problem is that although I like the idea of blogging about peer reviewed research, I am not sure if my blog is currently a great place for that. I am pseudo-anonymous, meaning I am amazed how many people tell me they like my blog, even though I don't associate my name with it anywhere. I tend to dislike anonymous reviews, so it seems like if I wanted to comment on other people's work, I'd have to remove anonymity completely before posting. But, I am not sure I necessarily like that yet. I will be on the job market again in the not-too-distant future, and I am not sure if random critiques of invited talks is the best thing for the resume.

It is like deciding whether or not to give anonymous reviews for papers. I am always proud of the reviews I've written, but end up chikening out and checking the "anonymous" box. Might it hurt me, might it help me, who knows.

So I was thinking about this dilemma and realized how analogous my blog chasm was to my collection of copper ConFlat gaskets. Let me explain. In order to connect equipment in ultra-high vacuum lines, you can either weld things (huge pain), or use special fittings that use metal gaskets to create amazingly tight connections. One of the most common systems is called ConFlat (when you have a leak in a ConFlat fitting it is called ConFlatulence.) Anyways, these fittings use special copper gaskets, and these gaskets are single use only. For some reason when I started working in a noble gas lab I started collecting the used gaskets. At first I had no idea why, but as time when on I decided that I'd collect all of the gaskets used for my PhD and make some sort of installation art out of the whole thing. This was also inspired by my affinity for the art of Andy Goldsworthy. Andy Goldsworthy is one of the most amazing artists I have ever come across. As an earth scientist who love the outdoors and the beauty of the natural world, Goldsworthy strikes a particularly strong chord. I was actually introduced to his work by a professor in my graduate department. He uses materials that he finds locally, and spends hours and days and weeks constructing the work. Many of his pieces are left to erode naturally, that is actually one of the tools he uses, showing the response of the art to time and the elements.

Anyways, if there was a local material in a noble gas lab that one would try to make some sort of art with, I'd have to guess it would be copper gaskets. Every lab I've worked in has a pile of these things, waiting for someone to figure out a good way to recycle them, or for the price of copper to skyrocket. I want to make something out of them, but I'd like suggestions.

So like my blog, I have all these ideas, but for various reasons have yet to pull the trigger. Below are some images of the gaskets, if you have any inspiration by all means pass it along. And if you have suggestions on how to deal with the problems of blogging about peer research pre-tenure, by all means I'd love to hear it.

For scale the viewport (steel ring with the window) is ~3 inches in diameter.

Apparent Dip Music Club #6 - Stan Rogers

2008-01-16T19:36:00.000-05:00

When I first started blogging, I had a regular feature I called the Apparent Dip music club. I'd find video clips on YouTube, embed them within a post, and boo-yah, instant entertainment. I haven't done this for a while; primarily because I've wanted to focus on geologic posts, but truth be told, there were many other reasons I felt a little unconformable posting videos. I found this video today, and decided to link because it absolutely made my afternoon. Let me explain.

I've been a big Stan Rogers fan since my sophomore year in college. I'd never heard of him growing up, but my undergraduate adviser had a tape of a Stan Rogers album he played once on a field trip. For some reason I became hooked. This was 1995, and after fruitlessly searching the record stores in Madison AND Berkeley (the two hippest places I visited that year), eventually found and bought my first Stan Rogers album (Between the Breaks, Live!) using some early online version of a music store. I forget the name, but I remember printing off an order form, mailing off a check, and then 3 weeks later getting two copies in the mail (one as a present for my brother.) I played and replayed this album hundreds of times; on field trips, in my dorm room, on the plane flights back to California to visit family, everywhere. After college, I found a few more Stan Rogers albums at Amoeba Music (Home in Halifax and From Fresh Water), and then later in grad school got a hold of Northwest Passage. Stan died long before I was aware of his music, when I was 7 actually, but I am still catching up with his catalog. Part of this has been the relative difficulty of finding his albums in the U.S., and always being on a budget entirely incompatible with buying import CD's. I've slowly accumulated albums, and a biography, but have never had a chance to see the CBC documentary about his life. Most of the facts in the documentary are things I knew, but what really fired me up was the live footage of him singing, especially the chorus to Northwest Passage. My two favorite albums of his are live albums (Between the Breaks, Live and Home in Halifax), but I'd never seen him perform.

I like all kinds of music, but I can rarely explain why. Stan Rogers is no exception. I have no experience with the activities he sings about (sailing, fishing, farming, etc...), and I am not Canadian (although I have a definite wanna-be Canadian streak). For whatever reason though, his songs truly resonate with me. That actually makes sense, because Stan wasn't any of those things either, well, except Canadian. But somehow he was able to embody peoples lives in his songs, and the ideas and emotions he sings about are pretty universal. Truth is when the weather turns a little foul, there is nothing better than his music.

My favorite parts of this movie are:

1. Stan and friends sitting around a kitchen table stomping and singing his most famous and song, Barret's Privateers. Incidentally, this is perhaps my favorite song in the world to sing when I've had a few beers, although my baritone is slightly less impressive than Stan's. His description of the song starts at 29:46.
2. Footage of Stan singing the chorus to Northwest Passage. I had never heard this song until graduate school, when a Canadian friend played it for me. Now it is one of my favorites. I probably listened to it 30 times on the drive east from grad school. This is right at the beginning of the film.
3. And the best part, the last 5 minutes or so, with the concert footage of Stan singing The Mary Ellen Carter interlaced with footage of Bob Custick describing the wreck of the Marine Electric and how the refrain from the song helped him live through a freezing night in a lifeboat. Seriously, you can't make that up. It is itself the perfect story for a Stan Rogers song. The refrain from this song, and the last lyrics ("smiling bastards lying to you every where you go") has always been one of my favorites. This part starts at the 38:08 mark.
4. How striking bald men with beards are, truly a great look.

Enjoy.

via videosift.com

PS - Stan died of smoke inhalation in 1983, when the plane he was on (Air Canada 797) caught fire. It was this air disaster that led to the mandatory installment of floor lighting and other guides to help guide passengers in smoke-filled planes to exits. So, every time you fly and the staff are going over the safety features of the plane you are on, think of Stan.

Closure Temperature

2008-01-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

I've alluded in some of my previous posts (aquí und hier) to one of the fundamental concepts of thermochronology, the idea of a closure temperature. Today I ended up re-reading some of the first thermochronology papers I ever read, back in the day. Long story short I was thinking about what the term closure temperature means today, and decided that after a year of blogging it was high time the the world's foremost thermochronology blog did something with this fundamental idea.

Most people trace the idea of a closure temperature, or at least the term, to a classic 1973 paper written by Martin Dodson (Dodson, 1973). The issue, as Dodson describes, is that some radioactive daughter products (he was concerned with Sr and Ar, but this also applies to other daughter products) are mobile long after a rock has crystallized. By mobile, I mean that they can readily move out of a crystal. If the daughter products are lost, there is no way to calculate a radiometric age. Well, I take that back, you would calculate an age of zero. Once a mineral cools enough, then the daughter product can accumulate, and the radiometric "clock" has started. Before I go on, I will make another self reference to a post where I point out that OG, Original Geochronologist R.J. Strutt mentioned this problem a century ago. OK, that's done.

It would be nice if this transitional temperature were finite. That is, that there was a set and known temperature above which the daughter product diffused readily, and below which the daughter product is entirely retained. This theoretical temperature is called the closure temperature (usually written as T_c); the temperature below which the mineral is closed to diffusion (in the past few years I've noticed this called a Dodsonian closure temperature, in part recognizing Dodson's contribution but also recognizing the necessary simplifying assumptions his 1973 paper made, more on that in the next paragraph.) In the real world, however, there is actually a broad range of temperatures over which daughter products can, and do, diffuse. This range of temperatures is often referred to as a partial retention zone.

When you start trying to pin down exactly what that means, physically, it gets tricky. The truth is, things like Ar and He never really stop diffusing out of crystals. Even at room temperature, for example, Ar and He diffuse, just so slowly that it really doesn't make much of a difference. Dodson of course realized this, and provides a very zen definition of what he thinks the term closure temperature means:

Closure temperature of a geochronological system may be defined as its temperature at the time corresponding to its apparent age.

So you see, grasshopper, it is what it was. This of course gives no direct way to assign a temperature to an age. Dodson showed the idea graphically this way:

The top graph shows the thermal history of a sample, in the form of temperature decreasing with time. The bottom graph shows the daughter to parent ratio of the sample over the same time interval, with the assumption that at high temperatures the daughter escapes easily, so the ratio is zero. At some temperature, daughters start to be retained, and as cooling continues, the daughter/parent ratio increases with time. If you use the present day ratio to calculate an age, and then see what temperature the rock was at at that time, well, that is the closure temperature of your system. Unfortunately, as I'll talk about in a bit, rocks don't come with the top graph, or even the bottom one for that matter, all we have is the present day daughter to parent ratio.

Mathematically, Dodson worked out a way to calculate the closure temperature, given a few assumptions and with a few other knowns thrown in. Here is the Dodsonian closure temperature equation

The best description I've ever heard of a closure temperature was when I was in grad school, a visiting über-thermochronologist said that a closure temperature is really just thermodynamic shorthand for a whole suite of physical and chemical properties. In the equation above, R is the gas constant, E_a is the activation energy of the daughter product's diffusion in the mineral of interest, A is a geometric factor considering the shape of the host mineral the daughter is diffusing out of, D_o is the frequency factor (another diffusive constant describing the rate the daughter product), a is the size of the diffusion domain in the mineral of interest, and dT/dt is the cooling rate. D_o and E_a are things that are determined through laboratory diffusion experiments, A and a are specified depending on the situation. I'd like to point out a few things about the equation. First, of all the inputs, E_a is the strongest control on the closure temperature; the other variables are locked up in a natural log term. Second, you have to input a cooling rate. But how do you know the cooling rate without thermochronologic ages and closure temperatures? Laboratory measurements of of the diffusive parameters are actually pretty good, but assigning a closure temperature to a system (say He in apatite, or Ar in biotite) still requires knowing a priori the cooling rate. In practice, people often quote a closure temperature assuming an average cooling rate, which is almost as meaningless as saying average geothermal gradient, and which should read geologically reasonable cooling rate (just like it should be a geologically reasonable geothermal gradient,) but I digress. In truth, for a wide range of geologically reasonable cooling rates, the range of closure temperatures isn't that great, certainly within an acceptable range of uncertainties for most applications. Where you run into problems are on the extreme slow cooling end of the spectrum. Minerals that cool very slowly can have drastically reduced closure temperatures (some slowly cooled Chinese samples I worked on have apatite He closure temperatures of about 57°C, about 30% lower that the quoted closure temperature of He in apatite.) The situation gets even more tricky, because this definition of a closure temperature, at least the derivation of the equation, assumes cooling that is linear in 1/T (or that in a time versus inverse temperature plot the thermal history is linear.) Dodson explains why he did this in the paper, and why it is a reasonable assumption for the purpose of the paper, but you can probably guess that rocks that have experienced very complex thermal histories that include perhaps prolonged time at moderate temperatures and/or cycles of heating and cooling will not fit this model.

The upshot of all of this, in my opinion, is that by themselves, thermochronologic ages are meaningless. They are non-unique, and therefore just numbers. Assigning meaning to a thermochronologic age requires external constraints, namely a good understanding of the geology of your study area (good maps, cross sections, and tectonic reconstructions) and multiple thermochronologic controls. There are some excellent software packages that allow you to use many different thermochronometers at once to iteratively constrain each other, usually considering many potential variables are deciding what thermal histories are consistent with all of the available data. My personal favorite is Rich Ketcham's HeFTy. But it all really starts with the geology.

Like many complications in science, the problems inherent in assigning a temperature to a thermochronologic age are increasingly being turned into tools savvy thermochronologists can actually use to their advantage. As I've said before, calculating a geochronologic or thermochronologic age is simple and straightforward. Assigning geologic meaning to that age takes time. It turns out that this problem is especially important to the understanding of the "low temperature" thermochronometers. Since these have seen a huge boom in use and importance in the past decade, it is no wonder that the problem of what closure means is
receiving more and more attention.

I hesitated at including this as the final figure, but decided to include it with a few disclaimers. First, these are all approximate range of closure temperatures for common thermochronologic systems assuming cooling rates of ~10-100 °C/My, and, I do not mean to imply that U-Pb zircon has a classic closure temperature, only that Pb is retained in zircon at exceptionally high temepratures, and typically is more reflective of the time of crystallization than of cooling through a specific temperature. Also, deciding what thermal importance to assign to your particular thermochronologic age requires a great deal of thinking, that is, these temperatures are relevant for the kinds of systems and tectonic settings I typically study, not necessarily those you happen to study. For example, if you work in hydrothermally altered areas, all bets are off. That being said.

References, etc..

Dodson, M.H., 1973, Closure Temperature in Cooling Geochronological and Petrological Systems, Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, v. 40, pp. 259-274.

And, although it is focused on the ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar world, Ian McDougall and T. Mark Harrison's excellent book Geochronology and Thermochronology by the ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar Method (Oxford University Press, 1999) gives an excellent discussion of closure temperatures, their meaning, and their derivation.

Deskcrop #4

2008-01-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

Embarrassingly I did not post to The Accretionary Wedge centered on Deskcrops. I have some lame-o excuse, but that's all it is. So, belatedly, here is the next installment of my deskcrops.

As an undergraduate I was the beneficiary of an amazing alignment of geologic planets. My first year as a major (sophomore year) was also the first year a new professor was teaching at TMLAC. He happened to be a co-PI on a large NSF funded project, and had included funding for undergraduate research in his portion of the proposal. I turned out to be a good student, and for two summers (after sophomore and junior year) was able to do field work with him, and an excellent cast of high-falootin' geologists in northwest British Columbia. It was really an amazing experience for me. The first summer I went from school ending, to a 2-week geology field trip in the northeast, to 6 weeks of field camp, and then straight to British Columbia. Incidentally, that summer I spent all but 2 weeks total living out of tents and sleeping bags. It was awesome.

My main project, what later became my senior thesis, focused on a large tonalitic pluton near the town of Prince Rupert. I was mapping the contact, and looking at variations in the magmatic fabric of the pluton as it related to a major bounding structure. The thesis is embarrassing to read now, but it did end up as a talk at GSA my senior year (Salt Lake City, 1997.) Anyways, even though I was mainly looking and sampling the tonalites, we did venture into the country rock every now and then. The sample above is one of my favorites. This is one of many chunks I brought back, although I've never seen it in place. This particular chunk was whacked from a big piece of float while waiting for the helicopter to come and pick us up. Yes, perhaps the coolest thing about the field work was that we got to use helicopters, not typically for day trips, but we'd get flown in and left for a few weeks of field work, then picked up and given a few days to shower and get away from the black flies (and hit Cowpuccino's). I digress, back to the deskcrop.

This is a piece of the country rock, a garnet-sillimanite gneiss. How much sillimanite you ask? Well, roughly 70%. I basically see this rock as a metamorphosed beer can, the amount of aluminum is really astounding. I was on a field trip to the Funeral Mountains in Death Valley where one of the big stops was where we could see sillimanite (you can, in Monarch Canyon, walk from a brittle detachment fault into sillimanite grade schists and gneisses.) When we got to the outcrop, I was a tad unimpressed. The sillimanite we spent the afternoon hiking to occurred as fuzzy growths on biotite, something you needed a hand lens to see. Previous to this my entire field experience with sillimanite was where it was the dominant mineral in the rock. I have since learned to appreciate all forms of sillimanite, but this is still my favorite. I have yet to find many reference for this rock, although it is kind of famous among the people who work up there. There was one outcrop that was mapped and sampled just prior to being blasted away to make a road, but other than that it has only been found as float. As such, I cannot provide much insight into it's geologic significance, but I have about 15 pounds of it in my office.

Slate Articles and Michael Pollan

2008-01-06T09:25:00.001-05:00

Not too long ago I blogged about Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. If you've read my review you know that in general I thought it was a very well written and argued book. Pollan has a new book out, called In Defense of Food, which was recently reviewed on Slate. I am a regular Slate reader, and since In Defense of Food is a book I am considering reading, I thought the review might be a good read.

Slate is a weird website. Some of the articles very well written pieces on politics and culture, mixing humor and insight in a way that makes me check the site daily. But, Slate also has a second type of article that appears all too often. The outline of the classic Slate complaint is this: Take something that everyone likes or is in general good, and with a whiny, self-important, high-schoolish rant explain why it is either bad, wrong, or both - written, of course, with a "I would have done it sooo much better" flavor usually reserved for indie music critics in novelty retro t-shirts (One of my favorites is a complaint of how a fictional character is a "fraud.") One way this is done is by misrepresenting the original source. Which leads me to Laura Shapiro's recent piece on In Defense of Food. Now, I haven't read Pollan's new book, but I cannot trust this review because of a glaring misrepresentation.

Shapiro writes:

Pollan's way of doing this is to stage a kind of faith-based dinner party he calls "The Perfect Meal"—perfect because everything on the table will be made from ingredients grown, shot, or gathered near his home in the San Francisco Bay area, from the wild-boar pâté to the cherry galette. By the time he heads out to collect local yeast spores for the bread dough, you feel as though you're not even reading a book anymore but instead gazing stupefied at some sort of life-sized diorama in the Museum of Natural History ("Northern California, ca. A.D. 2000—Worshipping Plants and Animals").

This has nothing to do with the content of the chapter, or what Pollan ends up calling "The Perfect Meal." In addition, it pitches Pollan, and Dilemma, as an elitist and snobby book that provides no "real world" ideas or solutions. As I quoted in my review

Perhaps the perfect meal is one that's been fully paid for, that leaves no debt outstanding. This is almost impossible ever to do, which is why I said there was nothing very realistic or applicable about this meal [emphasis added]. But as a sometimes thing, as a kind of ritual, a meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted. The reason I didn't open a can of stock was because stock doesn't come from a can; it comes from the bones of animals. As the yeast that leavens our bread comes not from a packet but from the air we breathe. The meal was more ritual than realistic because it dwelled on such things, reminding us how very much nature offers to the omnivore, the forests as much as the fields, the oceans as the meadows. If I had to give this dinner a name, it would have to be the Omnivore's Thanksgiving. (pp. 409-410)

Pollan fully admits that the meal foraged and hunted is impractical, he talks about that repeatedly in Dilemma. You might confuse the point if you only skimmed the book and chapter titles, perhaps. Unfortunately I see this as falling into the Slate whiny pattern I mentioned earlier; perhaps confusing the idea of critique with criticism Shapiro wants to find something to complain about in a well reviewed and popular book. That is one of the thing Slate does best, of course, point out why things we like are actually bad. I haven't read Pollan's new book, but I immediately can't trust the rest of Shapiro's review. The misrepresentation goes to the heart of what I consider to be one of the better points of Dilemma, and I can only guess that the trend of exaggeration and misrepresentation is not limited to the example I am using.

To be fair, not all of the review is this off, and I have liked many of Shapiro's pieces in the past. But I am entirely disappointed with the tone of this one. Why misrepresent?

High School Science Appreciation

2007-12-26T13:10:00.000-05:00

Back to blogging. With AGU, Holidays, and associated activities over the past 3 weeks I have found almost no time to read, let alone write any blog posts. I've had this idea simmering for a while and thought I might work it out.

I spent the week od the 10-14 of December in San Francisco for the AGU Fall meeting. I had a presentation on Tuesday that went well. In general the meeting was excellent:

1. I had a chance to see many good talks, a few great ones, and a couple dozen interesting posters.
2. I was able to see and catch up with many of my friends who I haven't had a chance to see for a long time.
3. I got to meet and share beer and tapas with fellow geobloggers.
4. I enjoyed many a free glass of Anchor Steam at the afternoon refreshment break (thanks to AGU, err, maybe thanks to my registration fee..)
5. As I mentioned my poster went well, which has inspired me to get it written up into something submittable by the time my boss returns from the field (end of January.)
6. I also had a chance to pop down to my old graduate school department and do a little pro bono technical support on the lab I built while a student. This allowed me to eat Thai food outside in the sun for lunch, something not possible at ESRU.

As I mentioned before I grew up in Sacramento; the cultural, political, and intellectual capital of California. I had not been back to Sacramento for roughly a year and a half, so after AGU I hopped on Amtrak and spent a few days back home. This past year and a half is actually the longest contiguous amount of time I have ever spent out of California. In college I was in the Midwest, but came home for Holidays, etc. So getting back to the Great Valley was very nice (i.e. they don't call it the Great Valley because it sucks.) I saw my folks, some friends, and ate roughly 50 lbs of Mexican food. All of that was excellent.

But what I'd like to blog about is what I did on the Tuesday of my visit. I spent Tuesday visiting my High School Chemistry teacher's class.

First the background. I attended Sacramento High School, a large public high school on the border of a not-so-great neighborhood. Like many schools, it was overcrowded, underfunded, and had it's share of problems. I had some terrible teachers, but I also had quite a few who I considered exceptional. One of my favorites was my Chemistry teacher. My chemistry course was one of the first times I really remember being challenged in a science class. Specifically, my teacher made us think quantitatively about science; in the labs, in the homeworks, in everything. When I took introductory chemistry in college, I actually found it almost entirely review. College chemistry was a breeze, even though I was only a sophomore in high school when I last took chemistry, and it wasn't even an AP course. I even considered the inorganic chemistry that underpins Mineralogy and Petrology quite straightforward. In short, I felt that my high school science teachers, and my chemistry teacher in particular, prepared me exceptionally well for college.

Since then I have obviously become a professional scientist and am in a discipline where I end up using chemistry quite often. I have spent time at many colleges and universities, and have yet to run into better science teachers than I had in high school.

In 2003, my high school was judged to be in such poor shape that it was closed down and turned into a charter school. The politics surrounding the decision to shut down the school and turn it into a charter were rather confusing. For example, Sacramento High was no where near the lowest performing school in the district, and test scores had been improving thanks in large part to an intensive reading skills program, which of course had been discontinued due to lack of funds. The conversion had much more to do with the fact that a wealthy and famous alumnus wanted to use his charitable organization to change the school. The speed with which the rest happened astounded me. As soon as many people heard a famous guy wanted to donate a lot of money and change the school, they jumped on the bandwagon, blaming the school, and more specifically the teachers (or teachers union) for their own children's academic failures. What else could it be? Everyone knows teachers are just in it for the money...remember, those who can do...(worth a watch if you have 3 minutes). Parents love the idea that their child's performance has nothing to do with them.

This burned me up to no end. Why? Well, I have spent time at a small liberal arts college well known for it's teaching, as well as one of the best universities in the world, and have yet to find better science teachers than I had at Sacramento High. I had plenty of good teachers in other disciplines as well, ones that fully prepared me for college. Sure, some teachers were horrible, but that is true at any high school, college, or university. The worst class I ever took in my life (with the worst teacher) was at a well-known university. I consider myself to be academically successful, and I know plenty of other students from both my years and older who were also very successful, doing well in college, and many getting advanced degrees in a variety of fields. So if Sacramento High prepared us well, my position is that it is not necessarily the fault of the teachers that some students don't do well. I don't want to get into that, I am not a sociologist and have little background or authority to speak from. For the purposes of this post, let's just say that many of the best teachers I've ever had were blamed for things they had little control over, and all of their success stories were buried beneath piles of averaged test scores and propaganda. They got a very raw deal. (students got a raw deal as well, because once again the real problems in public education were ignored while the mobs hunted down the easy targets.) People who had spent decades developing their courses, helping students, and dealing with exceedingly tough situations were turned into the bad guys, offered non-union jobs or sent packing. My Chemistry teacher was told how little she cared for her students, how uninterested she was in their education, and how she was just in it for the easy money. Years later, for all of the big talk the charter school proponents spewed, for all of the talk shows the famous alumni has appear on spouting off all of his greatness, turns out it isn't working so hot. Sure, grades are inflated, but the school serves a much smaller community, and the "improvements" seem to be primarily relegated to PR campaigns and empty statements... But I digress.

The whole event really pissed me off. In addition to spreading pure lies about many of the staff, I felt it was a great insult to those of us who had succeeded academically. Off the top of my head, I know of 5 Ph.D's, a J.D., a dozen M.S or M.A, and scores more who did well in college and have excellent careers - just from my year and my older brother's year alone. At least in my experience, the students who worked hard did well, the ones who cut, didn't do their homework, and didn't care about school did not. I know it isn't always that easy, but my point is that students who wanted to do well had the opportunities. I thought about this a great deal while I was putting together the acknowledgments section of my thesis, and decided to try to get in touch with my Chemistry teacher. It turned out not to be too tough to find her, even though she had of course changed schools in the interim. I wrote her an email updating her on what I'd done since high school, and thanking her for providing such an excellent scientific role model. I've had many scientific role models in my life (my parents and brother to name 3), but she was certainly one of them.

Turns out public high school teachers don't get letters like this very often. She seemed touched and we ended up sending a few emails back and forth about how things have been. I was interested to hear her side of the high-school-shut-down debacle, which only bolstered my negative view of the event (turns out in addition to rampant grade inflation, they cut the number of students from 2200 when I was there to 800 now, why they couldn't address overcrowding without shutting it all down is anyone's guess.) She also asked if the next time I came to Sacramento I'd mind speaking to her classes. So I did.

It was great to see her, and I actually remembered the lesson she was teaching, chemical nomenclature (I also remember not doing all that well this exam.) I was really impressed by how I was received by the students. I had 15 or 20 minutes at the end of the classes, and all 5 classes were very polite and respectful, a reflection I believe on the rapport the teacher has with the students. They asked questions, came up to me after class for follow-ups, and seemed really into it. My basic message was that there are a lot of great careers in science, and this class is excellent preparation for those careers. I also hammered home how lucky they were to have this teacher; how the class was difficult, but well worth it. Who knows, in total I talked to 130 or 150 kids, if 1 or 2 take the message to heart, that would be excellent. Who knows, at that age I wouldn't have had "geologist" on my top 50 potential jobs list, maybe I planted the thermochronic bug.

The main reason I wanted to blog about this is to point out how simple reconnecting was, and how much it meant to my teacher. At least in the US, public school teachers are increasingly asked to take on more and more responsibilities for less pay and even less respect. Like when I was in school, many of the kids they have in class come from difficult backgrounds, and have few other invested adults in their lives. Funding is terrible - the chemistry class I visited had no hot water or gas, and the teacher spent her own money to buy hot plates and balances - and the only results that seem to matter anymore are meaningless test scores and average inflated grades. Teachers are blamed for everything, but are rarely acknowledged for their "success" stories.

Perhaps you never had great high school science teachers, but if you did, I think it is well worth an hour of time to find and thank them. They will be thrilled. My teacher still remembered me 15 years out, she still remembered my classmates, and even had pictures of us on a bulletin board in the back of the room. She reads my original letter to her classes every year; many of the students I talked to remembered the letter, which is poster by her door.

For anyone interested, the basic outline of my email was:

Dear Ms. Urlacher,

I just finished my PhD in geology and am about to start a post doc.
You were a very influential teacher for me, and helped me decide I wanted to be a scientist.
Your class taught me a great deal, and made college chemistry a breeze.
I hope you are doing well.

cheers
Thermochronic (class of 1994)

But of course her name wasn't Ms. Urlacher, the letter was 2 pages long, and I didn't write it in bullet points, but you get the point. This could be turned into a sort of holiday, National Thank-A-High-School-Teacher Day, to be commemorated during the week after Christmas when teachers are gearing up for their second semester. I suppose it could be expanded into thank a teacher day, if your high school wasn't blessed with superb teachers like mine was.

As you can tell, I am inherently wary of charter schools, especially those with blaring PR campaigns who slander hard working and dedicated teachers. I've heard the entire Sac Hi debacle will soon the the focus of a post over at Metcaffeination, which I am sure will be more detailed. Stay tuned.

O.G. (Original Geochronologist) R.J. Strutt

2007-12-04T09:18:00.000-05:00

Blogger's Note - Today we are digging into the archives of Apparent Dip. I am working on my AGU poster and not up for a brand new post, so I thought I'd re-post one of my earliest entries. My audience has grown since I first put this up (1/16/2007), and it is one of my favorites. So enjoy.

As much as I like the idea of being a field geologist, anyone who knows me also knows that the bulk of my graduate (and most likely post-graduate) geology career took place in a lab. Not just any lab, mind you, but a noble gas thermochronology lab. I primarily worked on (U-Th)/He thermochronology. In the past decade, (U-Th)/He thermochronology has exploded in popularity and has become a relatively common and useful thermochronologic tool. Of course, the more we learn the more potential problems and pitfalls we see, which is good, because that means there are plenty of papers left to write. To show you how the techqnique has really taken off, below is a chart showing the number of georef hits for (U-Th)/He by year. (I compiled this data myself rather quickly, so I am sure I am missing some relevant papers.)

In many ways, (U-Th)/He thermochronology is a cutting edge technique. But, it is also the first radiometric geochronometer. As far back as 1905, super-scientists like Ernest Rutherford and R.J. Strutt were estimating the age of rocks and minerals based on their measurements of U, Th, and He. I'd like to focus on one of these papers today, the one that I am most amazed with. It was written by R.J. Strutt in 1910:

Strutt, R.J., 1910, Measurements of the Rate at Which Helium is Produced in Thorianite and Pitchblende, with a Minimum Estimate of their Antiquity: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character, Vol. 84, n. 571, pp. 379-388

I found this paper on JStor, which most academic libraries have access to. Reading this paper and those it references I am first blown away that they could measure U, Th, or He in the first place, especially He. I spent months and months with very fancy equipment trying to accurately measure the amount of He trapped in apatite crystals. Of course, I was trying to measure much smaller quantities with much higher precision, but I am still astounded by the ingenuity with which these labs were built. For example, to meaure the rate at which He was produced, Strutt first dissolved the material in various liquids (usually combinations of acids), and placed the solutions in this contraption

The solution was allowed to sit for some period of time for the helium to accumulate. Then, the helium was gently boiled off and collected in a test tube inverted into a pool of mercury. (I'd love to try to get this experiment approved by the Health and Safety folks at the University nowadays). The collected helium was transferred into this set up

Here, the helium, in the test tube on the left. The gas would be let into the apparatus (evacuated with a mercury pump), and then the tubing would be filled up with more mercury, pushing the helium along until it was confined to area c, which is a cooled charcoal trap used to clean up the gas (an idea still used today in He thermochronology thanks to nifty devices like this

from Janis Cryogenics). After a while the helium is "drawn" into part "d" (not sure how that is done), and part "d" is filled with even more mercury, pushing the helium into the capillary "g" where the volume of helium can be measured using the length of tube the gas occupies and the pressure of mercury that is pushing it up there. As someone who regularly complains about high-tech devices that dare to come without GPIB ports or LabView drivers, this is slightly humbling. So, amazing fact #1 is that they could actually accurately measure helium in the first place.

Amazing fact #2 is that they could measure helium production rates from both U and Th with decent reproducibility.

Amazing fact #3 is that they all didn't die from Mercury poisoning (curiously, however, the lab assistants are never named)

But, the most amazing fact, that would be #4, is that the ages Strutt calculated, and most importantly the conditions he applied to interpreting that age, are really pretty good.

Below are his results from that paper

Strutt refers to these as "minimum ages," according to him "...because helium leaks out from the mineral, to what extent it is impossible to say"

In earlier papers, specifically one called Leakage of Helium from Radio-Active Minerals (Same journal as above, v. 82, n. 553, pp. 166-169), Strutt discusses some of the reasons helium "leaks" out of geologic materials, spending significant time talking about temperature. Thermally activated helium diffusion is of course now the basis for He thermochronology, something he alluded to in 1909.

So, he realizes that these are minimum ages, and his reasons make perfect sense. But his minimum ages are really not that bad. Realistically they are all good minimum ages for the time period they represent (8.4 Ma for a minimum age for the Oligocene, 31.0 Ma for the Eocene, 150 Ma for the Carboniferous, and 710 Ma for the Archean). This both blows me away and makes me wonder why it took me so long to get a lab running! It also makes me thankful that there are now good alternatives to mercury filled McLeod gauges and mercury pumps.

So, tonight I raise a toast to the O.G.'s of this world, the Original Geochronologists. I'll put another plug in for JStor, they have so many of these early papers there for the downloading.

Brett Favre Shrimp Dip

2007-11-29T20:25:00.001-05:00

And other search terms Apparent Dip is the #1 Google hit for:

brett favre shrimp dip

electric triscuit disaggregation

severely emotionally disturbed thermochronology

extraneous Ar reservoir

urlacher apparent moses

I found the "brett favre shrimp dip" one from looking at my StatCounter, the rest I came up with sitting here.

Predicting Science News

2007-11-28T19:44:00.000-05:00

Andrew over at About.com (the geology page) posted his fantastic idea for the upcoming Fall AGU meeting. Prior to the meeting he tries to predict what ten research projects presented at AGU would get the most print. That is, which talks or posters would show up in newspapers, magazines, and on-line. He batted an astonishing .900 last meeting (see this for his write-up on the process.) Both the prediction and the post-meeting media analysis can serve as good starting off points for science and society discussion. If I were in a position where I had students, I could also see this as a good way to make the connection between current research and the science page of their local paper.

Andrew is soliciting entries to either be posted on his blog, or linked to from his About.com page. Links are above or in my sidebar.

As a note, I know that most of you when compiling your lists will search through the abstracts for exciting terms like "thermochronology," "k-feldspar MDD modelling," or "apatite (U-Th)/He." For some unknown reason, print media has been slow to pick up on the Thermo-craze, so while I know that those are the stories you all think SHOULD be reported on the most, I'd suggest trying other themes. Someday print media will understand what the rest of the earth science community already knows (low-temperature thermochronology is hot), but for now, things like earthquakes, hazards, and climate change get all the ink.

Deskcrop #3 - Ventifacts

2007-11-28T09:24:00.001-05:00

Today's deskcrop is a ventifact. A ventifact is a rock that has been abraded by the windblown particles: sandblasted if you will. They typically have a heavily grooved or polished surface. Large ventifacts can have the grooves aligned with the prevailing wind direction. Small ventifacts, like mine, appear to not remain stationary, and therefore can develop a "brainy" texture. Ventifacts are not all that common, reflecting the relatively small importance of wind erosion. Water (both solid and liquid) is far and away the most powerful erosive agent around; wind is much less significant. In order to see well developed ventifacts, it helps to look in places where the wind is absurdly strong, there are abundant loose and abrasive particles (i.e. sand), erosion from water is relatively minor, and you don't have to worry about plants or soil covering things up. My samples are from Ventifact Ridge, in Death Valley National Park. (legal note, these were collected by someone who had the proper permit to take a few chunks). The rock itself is a basalt, Pliocene in age I believe (but cannot confirm right now).

Besides general interest, ventifacts and other eolian-erosion related features are the best earth analogs we have for many of the images sent back from the different martian landers. Below are images taken by the Viking and Pathfinder landers thought to represent Martian ventifacts (from Greeley et al., 2002.) Greeley et al., is an interesting paper that compares images sent back from the Martian landers to eolian features in the Mojave Desert and in Iceland.

In addition to dry environments, ventifacts need time to form. I haven't found any references for the average amounts of time needed to create well-developed ventifacts, but I imagine it is strongly dependent upon wind speed, lithology, and the type of particulate matter being thrown through the air. References would of course be appreciated.

Greeley, R., Bridges, N.T., Kuzmin, R.O, and Laity, J.E., 2002, Terrestrial analogs to wind-related features at the Viking and Pathfinder landing sites on Mars. Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 107, n. E1, 10.1029/2000JE001481.

AGU Meeting Planner

2007-11-26T13:34:00.000-05:00

I spent some time this morning searching the schedule for the upcoming American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, and decided to vent. The on-line abstract searcher and meeting planner could be the most user-unfriendly and time-wasting internet tools around. I don't think AGU has updated their online searching in years, and as far as I can tell you can only export your selected itinerary as a poorly formatted email, damn near impossible to import into anything useful or make easier to read in any way. I move that AGU pays one of its computer savvy members to redesign the meeting website for next year, this time with a focus on being user friendly. Seriously, I'd be thrilled for a tab-delimited text file right about now. As it is I have about 13 printed pages of session names, posters, and talks. I think the style is properly called "dot matrix, circa 1991." I feel like printing it out on that wide green-striped paper we used when I worked for the Department of Fish and Game.

Deskcrop (?) #2 - Mantle Xenoliths

2007-11-24T23:21:00.001-05:00

As pointed out by Ron and Kim, the next samples from my rock collection for posting are my mantle xenoliths. Xenoliths are pieces of a pre-existing rock that get incorporated into a magma but for any variety of reasons, do not melt. When the magma crystallizes the xenoliths appear as distinct bodies and are usually pretty recognizable. You find xenoliths in all sorts of igneous rocks: basalts, granites, andesites....really almost anything. Somtimes the xenoliths are pretty local in origin. This summer while sampling granites, for example, we found xenoliths a few kilometers from the pluton-country rock contact that were easily identifiable as pieces of one of the wall rock units.

Magmas that rise through the crust relatively quickly can incorporate pieces of all of the rocks they pass through. Magmas with deep origins, therefore, can bring up pieces of the lower crust, or in some cases, even the mantle.

The mantle xenoliths I have in my office are from Kilbourne Hole, a maar in New Mexico that is part of the Pleistocene Potrillo Volcanic field. Maars are explosive volcanoes that form when magma flash heats groundwater. In the case of Kilbourne Hole, a basaltic magma carrying pieces of the lower crust and mantle erupted sometime between 80 and 17 thousand years ago. The xenoliths are medium to coarse grained peridotites, with P-T-ometery suggesting origin depths up to 67 km (Thompson et al., 2005). One of the things I always think about with chunks of the mantle is how odd our perspective is as geologists. I like to show these rocks off, even to non-geologists, because they are odd-looking and distinct. But, if you assume that some flavor of peridotite (or related olivine- and pyroxene-rich ultramafic rocks) makes up the entire mantle, then this is volumetrically the most abundant lithology on earth. Most of us make our living studying the dynamics of the outermost scum of the planet. The lithologies we regard as common, ones that I wouldn't even bother displaying on my window ledge, are really some of the rarest. It is just our limited surficial perspective that makes mantle rocks seem rare, and granites or shales seem abundant. There are of course good reasons for this, but it always sticks in my head.

First, a field map (taken from Thompson et al., 2005.) I collected these rocks on a field trip in 1996 while in college. We spent two weeks going up and down the Rio Grande Rift. Kilbourne Hole is on the west side of the rift, where the obvious rift features start to give way to the Basin and Range province. The xenoliths occur as volcanic bombs, often with thin basalt crusts. Collecting the xenoliths is pretty simple, you basically walk around on the rim of the crater, picking up bomb shaped items, and cracking them open. Well worth the drive if you are in the area.

And a google maps view, you can see Kilbourne Hole as the bluish splotch in the middle of the field of view. The Potrillo Volcanic field includes the big pockmarked region to the west of Kilbourne Hole. Las Cruces is the city in the northeast part of the view, at the intersection of the interstates. Las Cruces is the home of the Whole Enchilada Fiesta. Man, I miss mexican food.

Now the mantle peridotite xenoliths!

Thompson, R.N., Ottley, C.J., Smith, P.M, Pearson, D.G., Dickin, A.P, Morrison, M.A., Leat, P.T., and Gibson, S.A., 2005, Source of the Quaternary Alkalic Basalts, Picrites and Basanites of the Potrillo Volcanic Field, New Mexico, USA: Lithosphere or Convecting Mantle? Journal of Petrology, v. 46, n. 8, pp. 1603-1643; doi:10.1093/petrology/egi028. Available here.

The outcrop I've been carting around Part 1

2007-11-23T18:49:00.000-05:00

For the past year I've been living in the academic equivalent of the penthouse apartment. I was the sole inhabitant of a two-room office; the outer room has two enormous windows looking out over the campus. It is a first floor office, but elevated enough that I have an excellent view. This past week, the postdoc population of my group, and consequently my office, doubled. This is an excellent development on a lot of different levels, one of which is that I actually tend to work better with someone else in the office (well, I am sure there are exceptions to that, but in general it is true.)

So when I moved into the office, I had way more space than I needed. Consequently my crap kind of exploded all over the place. My rock collection was no exception. I ended up having them all piled on the heating grate under the window. This served double duty, not only was it a place to pile the rocks but it also helped regulate the air, which in the winter is set at "Thermochronic total fusion", and in the summer "Cryogenic cold trap."

So I had to rearrange all of the crap in my office, including the rocks. I've decided to photograph and post about some of my favorites.

First, I want to draw a distinction between my rock collection and my sample collection. I've been collecting rocks since my first Introductory Geology field trip (heh, some of those first Wisconsin Ordovician dolomites and glacial erratics are still in a bucket in my parent's garage.) Rocks in my collection were all picked up on field trips, during field work, while hiking, plus a few gifts. I rarely took very good notes on the samples when I picked them up, or if I did the notes are long gone. This was especially a problem early in my career as a geologist, I've been trying to work on it, but the end result is I have a lot of rocks with vague pedigrees.

Samples, on the other hand, I could take back to their place of origin and more than likely put them exactly where they came from. Samples all have GPS coordinates, they are marked on maps, and I have pictures of the outcrops before and after sampling. Why I can't replicate that for random rocks I pick up I have no idea.

So I moved all of my collection over to my side of the window, it is a little more compact, but I think it still works. Notice how I am covering up about a third of the air vent.

Today's sample is one of my personal favorites. It is something I picked up during my first year in graduate school, when I was a field assistant for my office-mate. Incidentally, Clastic Detritus provided the original inspiration for putting this rock on a post. (And, as a general inspiration, Loose Baggy Monsters recent post about her desk also inspired me to both clean and post a general shot of my workspace. Unlike her post, however, you can actually see my desk in these pictures.) As far as I remember, it is an Early Cambrian shale that I collected along the Transcanadian Highway in eastern British Columbia, just east of Golden B.C., and about as close to the Burgess Shale as you can get on the highway. I remember my office mate telling me we were actually in a late Pre-Cambrian unit, but perusing as many geologic maps as I can find makes me think we were firmly in the Cambrian. I'll hunt some more, but we'll see. Anyways, these are burrow trails in a really old shale. A trace fossil! Our ancestors!

This has always been one of my favorites to show off. Whenever I've participated in people's practice qualifying exams I use this as one of the test rocks. It is amazing how many people want to call it a metamorphic rock, staurolite schist or something.

So more to come, some with better explanations. But I bet that most professional geologists reading this blog have similar piles in their office. Show them off! Let me know and I'll link in this post.

Also, there are outcrops and roadcrops.... so what are these called? Deskcrops? Workcrops? Any suggestions? I am trying to play with the word diamictite, but it is just not working right now.

Amory Lovins and Technology

2007-11-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

I had a chance recently to see Amory Lovins speak. Lovins (not McLovins, as I found myself saying) has a rather impressive resume, but he is bet known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a "think and do tank" that specializes in profitable "green" technologies. Early in his talk, Lovins drove home what seems to be his central philosphy: the profit or the environment dichotomy is entirely false. In fact, switching to energy saving technologies is extremely profitable, and any business that expects to survive and compete needs to realize that. He has countless examples or instances where the RMI has partnered with companies to help them retrofit factories, redesign systems, and adopt new materials and technologies that both save energy and dramatically increase profit. He also focuses on what he calls "breaking barriers." This means designing with efficiency in mind, and optimizing efficiency so standard items that are both expensive and inefficient are unnecessary. One of the examples Lovins uses is his own home, high in the Rocky Mountains, 16 miles west of Aspen, sitting at a beautiful 7100 feet. Even though the home is in an area that can get frost yeear-round, and will dip well below 0°F in the winter, the home does not have a furnace. Want to be more impressed? Well, the home also has a high-falootin' greenhouse, where they grown a great deal of fruits and vegetables, including bananas. Yes, growing bananas at 7100 feet in Colorado with no furnace. And, Lovins insists that the technology and engineering used to make the home so efficient is actually fairly cheap. Cheap enough that the initial costs are minimal, and the long term costs are much lower than if he had built a conventional home.

Far and away the focus of his talk was on cars. Specifically, the advances that RMI has helped to develop that can make cars lighter, safer, more efficient, and...wait for it....cheaper. The main advance is a composite carbon-fiber body with more crash absorbing power than steel, but at a fraction of the weight. The carbon-fiber is so light that even modern hybrid engines can give you excellent acceleration and towing power. They are more aerodynamic, so they are safe from big rig wind gusts, and because of a reduction in tire width, have as much traction as your standard WMD, err, sorry, I mean SUV.

OK, that part was great, yay technology! But at it's core I felt his argument was this: Efficiency is profitable, the technology is already there, so if we spread the gospel of the RMI and it's associated advancements things like CO₂ emissions and Peak Oil become irrelevant, they will just get fixed. He actually went so far as to say that Peak Oil didn't really matter.

This comes awfully close to the "technology will save us" argument, which I particularly get annoyed with. On some levels it makes sense, but realistically I feel it pays little attention to history.

The point, especially in regards to Peak Oil, is not whether or not we will run out of oil in the future. That is a certainty, at some point, non-renewable resources will become exhausted. That is why they are called non-renewable. What is worrisome is the path we will take to get there. Throughout human history, too many wars have been fought over scarce resources for me to put my faith entirely into the market and technology. One can make the argument that we are at a special point in human history where technology can bypass the nastiness that seems to accompany different groups of people fighting over dwindling supplies of some necessary good, but that is still not all that comforting to me.

I also am suspect of arguments like the one Lovins made. The idea that every company can make a big profit and, perhaps more importantly, position themselves as a leader in their industry while saving energy. I am sure there is inertia in all industries, but I find it hard to believe that there are all of these companies passing up profitable ventures. If it is such a no-brainer, as Lovins suggests, then why hasn't it been adopted wholesale?

In truth I was very excited about most of the talk, and most of my critiques stem from three "party fouls." First, Lovins was at our University as part of a University-wide speaker series in honor of a geologist who passed away 3 years ago. Yet he was at best dismissive of the use of the earth sciences in addressing global environmental problems. I thought that was bad form. I have heard that Lovins is a big proponent of "speaking to your audience," or using the correct message for your particular group of listeners. This talk would have been right for a group of people who's primary concern is how much they have to spend on gas for their next SUV, not for a group of academics with a heavy showing of earth scientists, in honor of a well-known geologist who worked on climate change!

Second, PowerPointless. Lovins used the kind of PowerPoint presentation I have been trained for years to avoid. Text text text, in random colors, tiny print, the works. Graphs with unreadable axes that he did not bother to explain. Stats and numbers and profit margins without any reference or discussion of where the data comes from, or what other forces may have contributed to the trends. If he was a student in my class I would have told him he should have spent more time preparing the presentation. My guess is that he gives this one, or some variant on it, dozens of times a year. He should hire a second year graduate student to smooth it out.

And finally, much of the talk focused on potential energy savings from transportation. Let me rephrase that, much of the talk focused on making more fuel efficient cars. That is a good goal, but not once did he mention applications of these technologies to public transportation, or RMI's position on creating well designed high-density housing integrated with business and commercial properties, you know, cities. As much as I love the idea of living in a sustainable home at 7100 feet in the Rockies, I also believe that any calculation of the amount of energy required by the house must take into account transportation to and from the house. You know, to the grocery store, hardware store, soccer practice, work.....These things weren't mentioned once. Again, maybe he was "talking to his audience," but I felt it a glaring omission. It actually reminded me of a recent trip to Washington D.C. to visit metcaffeination. We went to the National Building Museum, and ended up looking through the Green House Exhibit. Although I thought some of the displays and materials were interesting, almost all of the example homes were in the fricking middle of nowhere! Oh look, I have to drive 30 miles to get to my house but when I am there I can do my laundry with 33% less water. Well, why not put those things in city homes? Near public transport? Within walking distance to work?

OK, a little bit of a diatribe. In general I was impressed by his talk, the examples he gave of profitable and energy saving innovations were really interesting. But, I left the talk in general feeling very disappointed. Lovins missed the mark with me. RMI is doing good things, don't get me wrong, and Lovins has done a lot of impressive things. Anyone else have similar experiences? I'd be interested to know.

While thermal models run.....

2007-11-20T16:28:00.000-05:00

I owe him little thermochronology and less love.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

....I mess around online

Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the thermochronology of war.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet, and her Thermochronology.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Come not between the thermochronology and his wrath.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

O thermochronology! O gentle thermochronology!
Nature's soft nurse, how I have frighted thee.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

and finally, for when I get the ICPMS results back and calculate the ages for my (U-Th)/He samples

Presume not that I am the apatite I was.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

This could go on forever, I must now stop, head upstairs, and check the feldspar MDD models.

UPDATE!
Ha! This will never grow old!

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your thermochronologist.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Beware the geologist of March.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Red Rock Canyon State Park

2007-11-18T22:23:00.000-05:00

Red Rock Canyon State Park, in southern California, is usually the first stop on the Death Valley field trip my graduate department used to run over spring break. I had the chance to TA this trip once, and went on the trip a few other times. These pictures are from the apring of 2006, the last time I went on the trip, and the last time I've been in the area.

The Red Rock area has some spectacular exposures of Miocene fluvial sandstones, eroded in many areas into badlands style topography. During the Miocene, basin and range style extension was active all throughout western North America, eventually creating the corrugated morphology we see today. As I mentioned in this post, as the crust was stretched apart, it was broken into upflited ranges and downdropped basins.

The ranges are beautifully exposed, from California to Utah. Many geologists have made their careers understanding the ranges. The basins though, are buried, and therefore much more difficult to study. There are a few places where the basins have been dissected or are otherwise well exposed, and Red Rock Canyon is one of them.

The pictures are various views of the area, showing the Ricardo Formation dipping to the west. The beds have variable dips, reflecting their deposition during basin formation. In the first picture, I am standing on one of the interbedded basalt flows. In the background of the image you can see a more gently dipping surface.

And a close-up of the actual rocks

The Ricardo Formation is famous for it's fossils. This page is dedicated to the paleontology of Red Rocks, and includes boatloads of images of some of the finds. And to finish, some scenery from near the Ricardo campground.

A Joshua Tree

And a student on his way back to camp.

Mineral Separations Part 2

2007-11-13T19:51:00.000-05:00

So I was really interested in all of the comments I got for my first mineral separation post (here). So I decided I'd try to make a list of the various steps people seem to use. This may be a little repetitive considering my last post, but it's been in my head, so if you are tired of mineral separations, go read one of the other fine blogs in my sidebar.

Separating minerals has the end goal of pure piles of individual minerals. You are often searching for relatively small and not all that abundant. Mineral separation techniques are equivalent to burning the haystack to find the needle; taking advantage of various properties that remove minerals you don't want, and leave what you do.

The first step is almost always turning your rock sample into a pile of individual minerals. There are two primary ways people do this.

Crushing and grinding. Jaw crushers (like the Bico Chipmunk) reduce fist sized rock chunks into small pellets. Disc mills, or pulverizers (like the Bico UA Pulverizer) break these small pellets into sand. The hope is that the minerals preferentially break along grain boundaries, but themselves stay realtively intact. Realistically it is difficult to tell what percentage of the desired minerals are broken beyond recognition (a real problem in the (U-Th)/He world, as I blogged about here and here), but I would not be surprised if the total yield from a standard pulverizer was 50%. As far as the actual machines go, there really aren't that many options when it comes to the jaw crusher, you can buy large ones and small ones, but they operate in the same way. With the pulverizers, there are two main options in style; you can have them belt-driven or direct-drive. Unfortunately Bico no longer makes the direct drive model, and if anyone knows of another supplier, please let me know. The belt drive models are OK, but much less powerful and much more difficult to set up. Pulverizers work by grinding your sample between two metal plates, and the quality of your grind depends on how far apart the two plates are set. Belt drive plates tend to drift during grinding, whereas the direct drive plates stay set. Think of coffee, you want a standard drip grind, but the belt drives give you some drip, some espresso, and some french press. The other option with pulverizers is the material the grinding plates are made of. You can get various steel alloys, iron, and even ceramic. I have recently started using the super expensive Mo-steel plates and have now become a complete convert. Iron plates leave filings in your sample, which have to then be removed. The Mo-steel plates do not "shed" and consequently do not wear down as fast. Again, I'd be interested in other other experiences.
Electric Pulse Disaggregation (EPD). EPD machines are now commercially available, although they are still pretty pricey. They were originally developed for use on lunar samples, where the waste generated during standard crushing and grinding would have just been unacceptable. The company marketing them now is called SelFrag. They have a pretty good website (complete with downloadable video), but don't show enough examples of separated crystals. EPD works by sending an enormous pulse of electricity through your sample, causing it to fall apart along grain boundaries. EPD separates whole crystals, even preserving delicate surface features. Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat at North Dakota State University has a nice page showing images of EPD separated minerals, I think made using a home made device.

Once your rock sample has been turned into a pile of sand, the order of the steps becomes somewhat arbitrary. It depends on preference, what mineral you are aiming to separate, rock type, and sample size. So I'll present the options in the order I tend to do them. The next step, for me, is to concentrate the dense minerals (namely zircon and apatite, but monazite and sphene also count). This is typically done hydrodynamically, using machines that are basically big gold pans. Gemeni tables and Wilfley tables work on the same principle: your sample is slowly introduced onto a sloped and vibrating grooved table that has a constant stream of water running over it. The "heavy minerals" are preferentially caught in the grooves, while the "light minerals" get washed away. You then collect the heavy and light fraction in buckets, and can effectively reduce your pile of sand from a big bucket to a small beaker. At one point in grad school I collected and separated some of the Fish Canyon Tuff. I was unimpressed with the total amount of apatite and zircon I ended up with, and decided to go back to the light fraction from the gemeni table and see if I had missed some substantial amount of apatite. I tried everything and ended up discovering that there was absolutely no apatite or zircon in the gemeni light fraction; they are pretty efficient machines.

I've also heard rumors of skilled geologists using actual gold pans to separate minerals. I am terrible at gold panning, and have never tried it with anything but river sand.

After hydrodynamic separation, some samples may need to be cleaned and/or washed. For granitoids, this means just time in an ultrasonic and rinsings with ultra-pure water. But you may also want to soak in acetic acid (to get rid of carbonate cements), hydrogen peroxide (do dissolve organics), or some other chemical (again, I'd love to hear more examples).

Two of the primary minerals geochronologists are interested in are non-magnetic (apatite and zircon). Minerals have slightly different magnetic properties, so the next step in separations is to take your cleaned heavy fraction from the gemeni table and run it through a Franz magnetic separator. Using a Franz is simple, your sand is slowly let into a vibrating metal channel that runs through a large electromaget. The magnetic field acts on the grains as they move down the channel, pushing the "magnetc" fraction to one side of the channel. You end up with two different streams of mineral grains, the magnetic and the non-magnetic, which can easily be collected once they exit the magnet. You can vary the power of the magnet, and really skilled users can effectively separate out very pure piles of magnetic minerals, including monazite, sphene (yes, I still call it sphene), different micas, amphiboles, etc... When you are done with all of the magnet powers, you are left with the non-magnetic fraction. This is hopefully mainly apatite and zircon, but is usually contaminated with quartz and feldspar that made it through the gemeni table. That means, time for the heavy liquids.

In my last post I mentioned a lot of heavy liquids, but I realized afterwards I should be more systematic in my presentation. So I'll try. First with a list of the heavy liquids I know about, then a brief discussion of the different ways to use them. All heavy liquids separate minerals by floating things less dense than the liquid, and letting the rest sink.

Heavy liquids I know about (most available from GeoLiquids or Sometu):

The Tungstates: Sodium polytungstate (SPT), lithium polytungstate (LST of FastFloat) and lithium metatungstate (LMT now discontinued) : ρ=2.5-3.1 g/cm³. These liquids have the distinct advantage over all other products in the fact that they are non-toxic. Many of the other liquids I'll mention are nasty things, but the tungstates don't even require a fume hood. Their only downside is their relatively high viscosity, which means it takes a while for your heavy minerals to sink, and filtering the liquid is kind of a pain. But I don't care, the safety and freedom from the hood is well worth it. SPT, LPT, and LMT will float quartz and feldspar, and sink apatite, zircon, and pyrite (argh, pyrite).
Tribromomethane or Bromoform : ρ=2.85 g/cm³. Bromoform is not pleasant to work with; it is very toxic and you have to avoid both skin contact and inhalation. It can be especially bad for your liver and kidneys, oh, and even better news, it might be a carcinogen. Bromoform has the same use as the tungstates, which begs the question, why does anyone buy bromoform?
Thallium foimate or Clerici Solution : ρ=4.32 g/cm³. I've only heard of this in legend, well, and I've seen a locked cabinet with a "Warning, Clerici Solution" on it. I am guessing you use it to sink zircon and float apatite. Or you use it to destroy your enemies, I am not sure. I think I'd rather hand pick apatites from a pile of sand than use it. From the MSDS "May be fatal if swallowed. May be fatal if absorbed through the skin. Causes respiratory tract irritation. Causes eye and skin irritation. May cause digestive tract irritation. May cause central nervous system effects. May cause liver and kidney damage. May cause cardiac disturbances."
Acetylene Tetrabromide or Tetrabromoethane (TBE) : ρ=2.96 g/cm³. TBE, by the way, is also called Muthmann's Liquid, I like that name, had never heard it before tonight, and thought I'd mention it. (could diet coke be called Thermochronic's Solution?) TBE is nasty, but allegedly less nasty than Bromoform, but is dangerous in similar ways, it attacks organs, is an inhalation hazard, and can be easily absorbed through the skin. TBE has the same general uses as Bromoform and the tungstates (separating apatite and zircon from quartz and feldspar). I've used TBE to make "feldspar juice" ρ=2.58 g/cm³, which lets you float k-feldspar and separate them from quartz and plagioclase feldspar. I've been able to get very pure feldspar separates, some of that data I'll be showing later.
Methylene Iodide or Diiodomethane (MEI) : ρ=3.32 g/cm³. MEI is also nasty, but it has a really low viscosity and you typically don't need to work with large volumes, thereby decreasing the hazard. MEI will float apatite and let zircon sink, which is what it is mainly used for. Using MEI isn't too bad, the real danger is that you wash it with acetone, and the mixture of MEI and acetone is very flammable. If it catches on fire you would rather not be in the vicinity. But that is easy to avoid.

So as far as I can tell there are three primary ways people use the heavy liquids. I have only tried two of them, but here we go:

Separatory funnels. These are straightforward to use, the have a valve at the bottom, you fill them with the liquid, dump in your sample, and let things settle. You can then open the valve, let out the dense minerals that have sunk to the bottom, but leaving the light minerals in the funnel. Separatory funnels have the advantage of being simple and easy to buy, but they use a large amount of liquid (50 - 100 mL), and because of their design can often leak. In addition, many are made with plastic valves, which get abraded and can actually have lots of little mineral grains stuck in them, that are almost impossible to clean.
Constriction tubes and knitting needles. If you've never tried this, check out the classic paper Dumitru, T.A. and Stockli, D.F., 1998, A Better Way to Separate Apatite From Zircon Using Constriction Tubes, in P. van den Haute and F. De Corte (eds) Advances in Fission-Track Geochronology, p.325-330. These allow you to separate small samples using only a few mL of liquid. Check out the article for a description, and when the web resource describing the technique become available I'll post a link. Any description I try to do will just be confusing.
Liquid Nitrogen. I've never tried this, but Ain't From Around Here says she's going to try it, so I am eagerly awaiting the results. The idea is that you put your sample and the liquid in a tube. Some people then centrifuge the tube, but even if you don't, you give things time to settle and separate. You then stick the bottom in liquid nitrogen, freezing the bottom liquid and effectively trapping the heavy fraction. The light fraction is then poured off, and you then just have to wait for the frozen liquid to thaw, and then pour off the heavies. Allegedly the liquids are not damaged by the freezing.

After this you are left with piles of pretty pure individual minerals. Some phases are easier to separate than others, but this is at least a good place to start. Each technique you use, at least for geochronology, has more steps, but they all begin with pure separates. If I missed something please comment or email. Mineral separation is really an amazing thing to watch. Parts of it are a pain, but some of the steps are just incredible. My favorites are the Franz and using MEI. In both of those you immediately see the separation....very gratifying.

The Art of Mineral Separation

2007-11-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

UPDATE - My next post is a more complete discussion of mineral separation.

When many people in the geochronology/thermochronology community talk about new gadgets and gizmos on their wishlist they seem to focus almost entirely on the sample analysis side of things; particularly multi-collector noble gas mass spectrometers and various high end lasers. I'll admit, these machines are impressive and could be potentially very exciting, but if I had a pot of money to spend to increase the quality and quantity of the data my labs produce, they would not be the first thing I'd look into.

In a broad sense, doing meaningful thermochronology requires 4 basic techniques.

1. You must be able to identify tectonic and/or geochemical problems that can be be at least partly addressed thermochronologically. This starts with the big picture, but includes consideration of available lithologies and access to the necessary samples.

2. You then need to collect and process the samples. This means turning a 5 kg sack of rocks collected carefully in a very specific location to individual mineral separates ready for your lab.

3. Once you have mineral separates, you need to analyze them in a lab. Although actually collecting data in a lab is fairly trivial, running a lab well enough to insure that your data actually means something is not.

4. Once you have the data, you need to interpret it, again in order to answer the original tectonic and/or geochemical problem you set out to solve in the first place.

Steps 1 and 4 are probably the most complex, and in my opinion are the hardest skills to develop. To design and interpret good projects you need a strong background in basic geology and need to consult all of the experts that relate to the study. In my own work I need enough background to understand what the petrologists, sedimentologists, geophysicists, geomorphologists, structural geologists, and geochemists think. This requirement is not unique to thermochronologists. I'd argue that any geologist who considers tectonic questions is necessarily broad in scope. So steps 1 and 4 I see as general considerations for any earth science study.

Step 3 receives a great deal of attention. I've been a thermchronologist for less than a decade, but even in that time the number of new and expensive machines and techniques has ballooned. I've been involved with building and maintaining labs, and therefore have paid a lot of attention to these advances. As I've gone on in my career, I've started maying more attention to who gets what lab upgrade funded, or what people get with their start-up packages, or what they negotiate for when they have leverage. Right now the flavor of the day seems to be multi-collector noble gas magnetic sector mass spectrometers; these allow for the simultaneous measurement of all of the different isotopes you need to measure for whatever technique you are involved in, thereby cutting down the uncertainty and time lags of changing magnet power, yada yada yada. I won't get started on that.

What I do want to talk about is step 2, sample collection and preparation. In particular I want to talk about turning a rock into an individual mineral, a process called mineral separation. Mineral separation fascinates me, but what really amazes me is how many people either ignore or do not understand the process.

Here is the problem: for almost all analyses you need to analyze pure mineral samples. Techniques which work on small single crystals (fission-track, (U-Th)/He, U-Pb) typically require minerals that are small (100-200 microns in length) and not overly abundant in the average granite (maybe form a 5 kg sample I'll get a few milligrams of apatite). Techniques that work on multiple crystals (biotite, muscovite, and k-spar Ar/Ar), typically require a few milligrams of very pure separates. They both, therefore, require methods of separating a rock into piles of individual minerals. Mineral separation is a blanket term that describes the various ways to turn a rock into a sample. The first step is almost always reducing the rock into individual mineral grains. This is typically done by crushing and grinding the sample, trying to get the minerals to break apart along grain boundaries.

In my experience, the next step is to run your sample over a rogers or gemeni table. These are basically large gold pans that concentrate the denser minerals (apatite and zircon in particular) into a smaller pile. This is then washed and dried, and run through a magnetic separator, basically a large magnet where you can vary the power and separate minerals based on their magnetic susceptibility. This is done is a series of steps, and a skilled mineral separator can obtain almost pure concentrates of the various "magnetic minerals" such as biotite, hornblende, and monazite. When you are done, you are left with a pile of non-magnetic mineral grains, including apatite and zircon.

If you need to get apatite and zircon, you must then enter the world of heavy liquids. Heavy liquids are exactly what they sound like, liquids with very high densities, anywhere from water (1.0 g/cm³) to 4.4 g/cm³. Because minerals have fairly specific densities, they will either sink or float in different heavy liquids. Zircon is very dense (4.6-4.7 g/cm³), and will sink in a liquid like MEI (Methylene Iodide density=3.33 g/cm³), while apatite (density 3.2 g/cm³) will float. Heavy liquids have been used in geology for a long time, but the particular liquids and their methods of use have changed significantly. Many of these liquids are toxic, and therefore kind of a pain to work with. Two of the nastier liquids I have fortunately never worked with, those are Clerici's Solution (Thallium Malonate density=4.36 g/cm³) and Bromoform (Tribromoethane, density=2.89 g/cm³). Clerici's Solution and Bromoform are not all that common anymore, mainly because there are now less toxic alternatives. TBE (tetrabromoethane density=2.95 g/cm³) is also fairly nasty, but is still in use in many labs, primarily because it has a lower viscosity than its non toxic alternatives SPT or LMT (Sodium Polytungstate or Lithium Metatungstate, density 2.85 g/cm³).

I was lucky in my graduate education to learn from one of the masters of mineral separation. While many people have used the same techniques and materials they learned on decades ago, my min sep teacher has continually improved and refined his techniques, trying as best as possible to increase cleanliness, and efficiency, and reduce unnecessary exposure to toxic liquids. He tells me he will soon have a web resource of his methods available, which will be advertised heavily on this blog. I am presently trying to implement some of his methods in my new lab. This is the first time I have had to work with TBE, or with large quantities of MEI, both of which, in my opinion, are completely avoidable.

But what fascinates me is how little attention this necessary step in thermochronology, or geochronology, typically receives. Would anyone dream of asking NSF Facilities for money to upgrade a mineral separation lab? The amount of time and money wasted in mineral separtion is really astonishing. I think though, that one of the reasons these facilities rarely receive the attention they deserve has to do with the hierarchy of the average thermochronology lab. One of the first jobs you delegate with increasing seniority is mineral separation. Right now we have a fleet of undergrads working for us helping crush, grind, and separate minerals. The drive to streamline the procedures is reduced when those of us in charge no longer have to do them. My main reason for trying to improve the set up is primarily because I don't like the idea of an 18 or 19 year old handling liters of TBE on my behalf, especially when there are good alternatives. Although old ways die hard, I think I have convinced a critical mass to support my efforts, and was even able to put in an order with our glassblower this week.

Aside from heavy liquids, I think the most exciting (albeit expensive) recent advancement in the art of mineral separations is the introduction of commercially available electric pulse disaggregators (EPD's). Instead of physically crushing and grinding rocks, EPD's send a pulse of electricity through your rock, which causes minerals to break apart along grain boundaries. The technique has the advantage of retrieving the crystals from the rock intact, that is, you don't run the risk of physically breaking them apart (a huge advantage for separating apatite.) The method was developed originally to work with small and relatively expensive lunar samples, but is amazing in what it can retrieve from a rock. The link above includes a movie showing how quick and easy the process can be. Although it would increase the quality and throughput of samples, they right now are pretty pricey (well, from a geologists point of view, from a college athletics perspective it would cost about 0.33 D1 college football coach yearly salaries, and in my current situation would have only 2 fewer wins.)

I believe wholeheartedly in the garbage in, garbage out philosophy. This is one reason that I think a great deal about mineral separation. I think when it comes to bang for the buck, this could be one of the best ways to improve lab productivity. I'd be interested in other people's experiences with mineral separation, especially if you have used something safer or less toxic that the heavy liquids I described.

Fighting Pseudo-Science, Prime Time Edition

2007-10-16T08:27:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately I did not write my contribution to the Accretionary Wedge #2 (How the Earth Can Kill You). I am going to post this thought though. although I understand it is a poor replacement. Read the Accretionary Wedge first, there are some excellent contributions this time around, then you can come back here.

During an ad break in a football game Sunday I overheard a promotion for a new show on NBC, called Phenomenon, which is allegedly in search of the world's new "mentalist". The show is starring Chris Angel (who had a magic, err, excuse me, mentalism show called MindFreak where he entertained with a "distinct blend of magic, mentalism, and dazzling pyrotechnic effects") and Uri Geller. That's right, wanna-be magician, swindler, liar, and all around jackass Uri Geller is trying to make a comeback. For those of you who don't know who Uri Geller is, (or why he is always standnig around with an ED-afflicted spoon) he came to fame in the 70's with his claims of psychic abilities, including his most famous illusion, bending a spoon with his "mind." The folks over at the Denialism Blog have a nice summary and two exceptional videos showing 1) Geller getting debunked live on the Tonight Show thanks to tips from skeptic and debunker-of-BS James Randi, and 2) One of Geller's "secrets" getting caught on camera.

Even though Geller was before my time, I know of him primarily through my brother, who became a big fan of Randi's when we were young. My parents also took us to a live show where James Randi was the main speaker (and where my brother got to be the person who held the magic spoon as it was bent and broken by Randi's "mind"). I have no problem at all with illusionists, I think they can be entertaining, but whenever anyone tries to pass off their tricks as proof of supernatural abilities, well, that's just too much. People like Geller (or even worse Peter Popov, also featured in the videos I linked to) often use their tricks and personality to swindle people. Although these are two extremes, I think these characters and their techniques speak volumes about our role as scientists in society. We do not know everything, we aren't always right, and science has been used for plenty of bad reasons, but one of our duties, I believe, is to single out and call Shenanigans (or BS) when applicable. Although many things we see are not as blatant as Geller or Popov, they can be much more dangerous. Most pseudoscience is really just a slight variation on their themes, misdirection and manipulation. We see it with the ID crowd, the young-earth crowd, the "CO₂ is life" crowd, it's really the same idea, misdirect and make it so there appears to be only one possible answer. I think the use of the term "irreproducible complexity" (a Beheism) is a direct analog to the "mentalist" illusion; It must be ESP/Supernatural Forces, what other explanation is there?!?!?

What is most baffling to me is this: Geller's whole spoon thing is completely debunked, so how does he get away with it? Maybe that is his real magic trick, convincing people to continue to believe his BS even when he's been outed a thousand times. Popov at least went bankrupt, but now Geller gets a new show?

And finally, am I the only one who is convinced that Uri Geller was the inspiration for Gob Bluth from Arrested Development, perhaps the funniest American television show of the last 5 years? You be the judge, can you guess who is who?

And just in case the video link from the Denialism Blog isn't working, here is one of the videos I mentioned

The Barton Garnet Mine and Fall in the Adirondacks

2007-10-14T12:16:00.001-04:00

This Saturday I was able to tag along on a mineralogy field trip to Gore Mountain, in the Adirondack Highlands, home of the Barton Garnet Mine. I was especially excited about this, even as far back as my mineralogy course (12 years ago?) I remember seeing samples of these garnets. First a little background.

The Barton Garnet Mine is an open pit garnet mine that operated for more than 100 years (1878-1983). The mining level is now below the water table, so to avoid the costs of pumping water out of the pit the operational mine has moved about 4 miles away. What is left at the original mine is now open to the public. The biggest part of the tourist attraction is the first pit (shown below), where you can search for gem-quality chunks of garnet. The garnets themselves can be enormous (10cm or so), but small chips of them, especially some of the darker red chips, are gem quality, can be cut, and are therefore potentially valuable. That is the main draw it seems, you can keep whatever you find (well, at $1 a pound, but that is almost nothing for chips of garnet).

The picture above is from the main pit, where you can collect the chips. You can see it was a superb fall afternoon. The mine is at about 2600 feet, and with the wind made it pretty chilly, but that just kept other folks away.

The garnets are entirely hosted by a hornblende-rich garnet amphibolite unit that is itself in fault contact with a meta-syenite to the south, and grades into an olivine meta-gabbro to the north. The garnets can be enormous, up to 35cm in diamter, even though the modal percent of garnet is not all that unusual for the Adirondacks (5-20%). I think the most impressive thing about these garnets is how the are often mantled with thick haloes of hornblende (shown below). The larger the garnet, the larger the hornblende halo. The garnets are largely pyrope (Mg-garnet 37-43%) and almandine (Fe-garnet 40-49%)

Although it is pretty and would make an exceptional counter top and/or stone fireplace, the primary reason this garnet is mined is as an industrial abrasive. Garnet is hard (8 or so on Mohs scale, although according to our guide this particular garnet can top out over 9), and because garnet does not have any cleavage (which means it is a self-sharpening abrasive, every time it breaks it is a conchoidal fracture, which creates a new sharp edge), garnet is a very good abrasive. Most sandpaper is made with garnet, the polishes used on the lens of the Hubble telescope were garnet based, most sandblasting is done with garnet, the list is endless. And (again according to our guide), 95% of the world's industrial garnet comes from this mine. The founder of the mine (Henry Hudson Barton) was actually a jeweler who married into a wood-working family, and used his knowledge of minerals to pioneer the use of garnet as the abrasive in sand paper.

Aside from the garnets it was a great day outside. Fall has arrived in the Adirondacks, and the colors were exceptional. Just some pictures from right near the visitor's center at the mine.
To finish with the pictures of fall, I'm just going to end with this. Fall colors always remind me of this poem, and in particular of cruising down M street on the back of my Dad's bike on my way to school.

October's Party by George Cooper

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

The Chestnuts came in yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses Maple
In scarlet looked their best;
All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by;
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.

Then, in the rustic hollow,
At hide-and-seek they played,
The party closed at sundown,
And everybody stayed.
Professor Wind played louder;
They flew along the ground;
And then the party ended
In jolly "hands around."

Quick Advertisement

2007-10-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to advertise this blog for a while, but todays post finally reminded me at a time when I was at my computer. It is not a geoblog, but a good chemistry based science one. The long posts are usually pretty informative and worth reading. It is A Man, A Plan, A Trash Can, check it out.

Tomorrow I am heading on a short field trip, hopefully pics will follow!

Congratulations IPCC

2007-10-12T09:02:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to send a blogospheric congratulations bouquet to the folks at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The IPCC has been a reliable source of climate related information for quite a while. I am especially interested in the connection the Nobel folks made between natural and environmental forces and human quality of living and interaction. It appears as if news stories will be dominated by the other co-winner of the Peace Prize this year (and congratulations to him), so I thought it appropriate to focus on the "et al" part of the news coverage.

Oh, and I shared an office in graduate school with someone who now works for the IPCC, which means I am somehow on the "in" with a Nobel Laureate. Go me.

Tambora, Frankenstein, and Darkness

2007-10-06T15:13:00.000-04:00

One of the things I've been most impressed with in my new department is the number and quality of invited speakers we have. Almost every week we have a new person visit for two days, culminating in at least one talk (sometimes 2 and on rare occasions more), and plenty of time to visit.

The talks this week were especially interesting. I am still undecided about whether or not I want to blog about the main topics the speaker covered, but one thing has been stuck in my head and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

The first lecture dealt a great deal with paleoclimate, and in particular the effect that the solid earth has on climate. When I say solid earth I mean tectonic processes, as opposed to things like weathering rates, space dust clouds, Milankivic cycles, and the like. As an example, the speaker talked about the effects of the Mount Tambora eruptions in April of 1815. It was a massive eruption of a stratovolcano, which most likely would have injected enormous amounts of SO₂ into the stratosphere. ****Interesting aside, I had always assumed it was the ash from volcanoes that affected weather, turns out the SO₂ has a much longer residence time in the stratoshpere and ends up significantly increasing the earth's albedo for much longer.**** Tombora led to a reduction in average global temperature by ~3° C, and resulted in 1816 being referred to as "the year without a summer." The cold of 1816 led to all kinds of distasters, crops failures and mass starvation in particular. ****Another interesting aside, the effect of enormous volcanic eruptions is similar to what we might expect from a nuclear winter.****

That same summer, a 19 year old Mary Shelley (among others) was visiting Lord Byron in Switzerland. The weather was so miserable that most of the normal summery outdoor activities had to be put on hold. Shelley took to a challenge from Lord Byron to write a scary story, allegedly to fit the mood of the weather. What she produced, of course, is one of the most memorable and famous stories of all time, Frankenstein. First I need to get past the fact that at 19 I spent most of a summer cataloging my CD collection and deciding what the best mix tape for heading back to college would be (almost as productive as Shelley). Frankenstein is full of weather related imagery, not the least of which is the fact that it is set in part in the Arctic. That weather was the direct result of geologic phenomena, which is in itself interesting. But what I am even more interested in is the potential of literature (and art in general) to provide insight into how humans will respond to some of these "extreme" geologic events.

Byron himself was also effected by the terrible weather, and I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say it is obvious in the first few lines of his poem Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went -and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light;

Uplifting, I know, like a Morrissey song. The poem goes on to even mention volcanoes! The influence on weather on art and literature was the subject of an NPR story you can listen to here. For now, I have decided to try to collect as many artistic and literary references to geologic phenomena as possible. Loose Baggy Monster informs me that many authors dealt heavily with emerging geologic theories back in the day, now I just have to find them! Any ideas, please email or comment.

The Geobola Virus

2007-10-03T20:14:00.000-04:00

I complained in this recent post that geology does not get enough respect as an exciting, relevant, and important science. I wondered why that was, and today learned at least one of the causes. That is, the geobola virus. The geobola virus manifests itself as members of the geoscience community who do not appear to care at all about geology, or in it's most virulent forms downright do not like geology. Infection can devastate a department, and may take years to recover from.

Things I heard professional geoscience educators say today:

"I mean, we spend so much time on all the rocks and minerals and it is just so boring!"

"They ask me 'when are we ever going to need to know any of this rock and mineral stuff' and I tell them the truth is you never will, it's really just not relevant!"

The geobola virus eats departments from within, beware! It is contagious! Mortality rates are high!

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Review

2007-10-02T22:40:00.000-04:00

Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is a book about food. That might sound simple, but when I say "about food" I mean about all aspects of food: production, consumption, evolution, emotion, health, community, enviroment, and philosophy. What Pollan set out to do was to describe the creation of 4 different meals. This would take him to restaurants, grocery stores, feedlots, farms, and hidden mushroom gathering sites in the Sierra Nevada, all the while discussing the importance of the food gathering activity in social, economic, political, and environmental terms. His four meals all centered around different aspects of American food culture, and can be thought of as:

Industrial - A fast food dinner bought in a drive through and eaten while cruising in a car.
Industrial Organic - Organic food bought at a local Whole Paycheck and cooked at home, with ingredients from all over the world, but each grown "organically."
Local - After a week's stay at a farm in Virginia, Pollan cooked another meal using only local ingredients (things grown and produced within a defined geographic area).
Hunted and Gathered - A meal, once again cooked by Pollan, with food he hunted and gathered within a days drive of his home in Berkeley, California.

If you don't want to read the whole post, in short, it is an excellent book, is now in paperback, and will be thought provoking to anyone who eats food on a regular basis.

Before I go on much further, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I am a vegetarian. I have been for about 13 years now, and started reading the book with more than a decade's worth of thought on food (specifically meat and meat production) swirling in my head. Just so you don't think I am a completely unreliable food critic, however, I must also admit that I am a vegetarian who thinks many other vegetarians are incredibly annoying (almost as bad as the people who try to convince me to eat meat or otherwise say idiotic and derogatory things about veggos.) I believe there are a lot of excellent reasons to be a vegetarian, and I get annoyed by people who make up completely new (and usually groundless and/or non-sensical) reasons. For example, claims that meat is inherently unhealthy or that humans cannot properly digest meat really burn me up. Add that to how inundated vegetarian grocery stores and magazines are with all kinds of shark-cartilage-plant-extract-dietary-supplement-snake-oil-nonsense and you can see why anyone might get a little ticked off. Why make up B.S? Why not just stick to the obvious and well proven facts? Why not have an intelligent discussion about the pros and cons of all aspects of food production and consumption? A-Ha! You thought I was digressing, but I just brought us right back to Dilemma.

The first meal Pollan describes is the ultimate in modern industrial fast food. To see where the food comes from, Pollan visits a feedlot where a calf he "bought" is spending it's last days getting fattened up on corn and antibiotics. He also visits some large scale industrial farms in the lower midwest. A large part of the first part of the book deals with the central role that corn plays in our modern industrial food production. Corn, or some corn byproduct, has worked it's way into almost every processed food item that we eat, including most of the beef sold in the US. This last fact is no small feat, especially considering that cows don't naturally eat corn, and in fact cannot digest corn well without help. Corn has the advantage of getting cows fat quickly and adding "marbling" to the beef, but only with the help of drugs and vets. Most feedlot stays are relatively short, so the goal seems to be to pump them full of anything that can get them to the slaughterhouse fat. ****This by the way has stuck in my head. You always hear about "corn-fed" beef like it is some mark of authenticity. Cows don't eat corn! They eat grass! Corn-fed beef is a relatively new invention that requires a veterinary staff armed with drugs to implement. Why did that surprise me?****As one could expect, there aren't many positive sides to the industrial meal, the production and consumption of the food is filled with huge wastes of money and energy, disgraceful animal living conditions, exploitation of labor, absurd government subsidy structures, and consumers inhaling unhealthy food with little connection at all to it's source.

The first part of the book was really not clicking with me. These were arguments I have read and heard many times, and were some of the reasons I swore off meat in the first place. I am beyond the time in my life where I want to read affirmations of my own thoughts, and put the book down for a while. Fortunately I picked it up again, because the stories surrounding the last three meals are fascinating. One aspect of the first section I do want to mention though is his discussion of "reductionist nutrition." Basically, the idea that we know all of the essential fundamentals we need to eat, and if we synthetically fortify foods with these basic building blocks then we will have healthy diets. This is a dangerous way to think, every year there are new things we never knew we couldn't live without, lycopene, antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, the list goes on. The antithesis to reductionist nutrition is eating a variety of fresh foods, what we have evolved eating. I think this discussion especially struck a chord with me because I was also reading (at the time) Apsley Cherry-Garrard's amazing The Worst Journey in the World, a chronicle of Robert Falcon Scott's fatal attempt to reach the south pole. This relates because Cherry-Garrard spends a lot of time on the various diets they experimented with for polar travel, all different combinations of fat, sugar, and protein. This was well before people knew about the importance of vitamins, let alone omega-3 fatty acids. Anyone who thinks they've nailed down what a healthy diet needs (in a reductionist sense) should read these accounts and gain some perspective. These explorers, at the time, were on the cutting edge of understanding what a body needs to survive, and they were missing huge parts (with deadly consequences.) Back to the book...

The second meal, industrial organic, deals a great deal with the arguments for and against organic food. For example, is it better to eat a "conventional" apple from a farm down the road, or an organic one flown in from New Zealand? And just what is "organic," or "free range" anyhow? This section of the book really made me scratch my head. I don't want to just repeat his points, but man, "organic" farms sure can look a lot like conventional farms....

The third meal was the most interesting to read about. Pollan spent a week working on Polyface Farm, a self contained grass farm run by a man named Joe Salatin that raises cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, rabbits....and I think that is it..... The idea is that instead of importing nutrients in the form of chemical fertilizers (or corn grown with said petrochemicals), Salatin uses a very well planned and intricate system of animal rotation to raise everything using only his own forest and pasture land. This system fascinated me; allegedly grass grows better if it is nibbled on (but not overgrazed), and with this system Salatin (and his father) have turned an overgrazed wasteland of a farm into a very efficient and productive plot of pasture and forest. Salatin's system is absolutely fascinating, and I'd recommend the book just based on this section alone. It has even made me hunt down a local grass farmer who I know by my eggs from (saturday farmers market). I think what got me thinking the most in this section was the interplay of meat, vegetarianism, organic, and local food. My default preference has always been organic vegetarian, but is that always the "best choice." All organic produce requires animal derived fertilizer, and after the industrial organic section I am now putting more favor on local food. Anyways, those are my dilemnas, the point is that the workings of Polyface Farms and the whole grass farmer idea has made me think more about food and farming than anything I've read in the past decade. No, it hasn't converted me, I'm just saying, it's worth the read.

The final meal was about as close as one could come to the who hunter-gatherer model. Pollan hunted mushrooms, wild pigs, and random greens and fruits to make a dinner focused on things that he "found" himself. I wasn't expecting much from this meal, but once again Pollan does an excellent job of integrating so many aspects of the experience, hunting, foraging, etc., that you get sucked in.

What I ended up really liking about this book was Pollan's sense of even-handedness. When he talks about killing animals, either in a slaughterhouse, on Salatin's farm (he participated in the processing of the chickens), or in the forest of northern California, he uses intelligence without sounding removed, and emotion without sounding sappy. That is a tough balance to strike, and it is easy to slip down either side (either to reaffirm your choice to not eat meat or convince yourself it is OK to). He even nailed on the head one of the hardest parts of being a vegetarian, that is feeling like an inconvenience when friends invite you for meals, feeling like a constant problem, or just a rude and unappreciative guest. When he discussed organic versus local there wasn't always a clear winner, there are pros and cons. In the end, the book isn't so much about what you should do, but more about how you should think about food. I think it has something to offer everyone, and I can't recommend it enough. As a warning, the first part where he keeps talking about corn, that can get a little repetitive, but power on through and trust me it is worth it.

Pollan is an excellent writer, and I just want to end this with a few quotes. First, some of his thoughts on the meals he hunted and foraged:

Perhaps the perfect meal is one that's been fully paid for, that leaves no debt outstanding. This is almost impossible ever to do, which is why I said there was nothing very realistic or applicable about this meal. But as a sometimes thing, as a kind of ritual, a meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted. The reason I didn't open a can of stock was because stock doesn't come from a can; it comes from the bones of animals. As the yeast that leavens our bread comes not from a packet but from the air we breathe. The meal was more ritual than realistic because it dwelled on such things, reminding us how very much nature offers to the omnivore, the forests as much as the fields, the oceans as the meadows. If I had to give this dinner a name, it would have to be the Omnivore's Thanksgiving. (pp. 409-410)

And finally to wrap things up

This is not the way I want to eat every day. I like to be able to open a can of stock and I like to talk about politics, or the movies, at the dinner table sometimes instead of food. But imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a manner of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost. We could then talk about some other things at dinner. For we would no longer need any reminding that however we chose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world. (pg. 411)

I'm sorry, I must have missed it when you said "and geology"

2007-09-27T11:31:00.000-04:00

I was reading two articles on the New York Times Science section today (in 12 minute bursts, keeping in time with the machine I am running). I had first thought of posting about the intersection of the two. The first article was about a creationist film crew that allegedly tricked actual scientists into taped interviews. The interviews were done by entertainer, eye-drop enthusiast, and noted blowhard Ben Stein*. The scientists involved are now raising a ruckus, although I am not sure why they'd agree to be interviewed for a project they didn't know much about. The second article was talking about when Sputnik was launched, and how it made the US realize how behind it was in preparing future generations of scientists. This led to a big push to improve American science education back in the middle of last century. Unfortunately, we have once again seen American students fall behind much of the world in science education. As a country, this threatens our competitiveness, and I thought the first article did a decent job highlighting just how bad our national science education is. The ID crowd is just one symptom of a broken system of science education, and in my opinion their attempt to include supernatural powers in the definition of science is an enormous threat to the U.S. (for more on my feelings, check out my very first post or a letter to the editor I wrote.)

OK, so I was getting all riled up about this, but then as I finished the second article, I came across this

Some experts on science education also point to the typical sequence of high school science instruction: biology, chemistry and then physics. It would make more sense in reverse, these people say, because the principles of physics underlie chemistry, which is crucial for an understanding of biology.
Perhaps the leading champion of this “physics first” approach is Leon M. Lederman, a particle physicist, Nobel laureate and former director of Fermilab whose focus lately has been on improving science and math education. He said the current biology-chemistry-physics sequence dates from the late 19th century, when “we didn’t know enough” and biology was considered a “descriptive” subject.
In fact, Dr. Lederman said, “biology is the most complicated of all subjects, and it is based on chemistry and physics.” And, he added, “there is nothing in chemistry, no fact of chemistry or process of chemistry that if you ask ‘Why does this happen?’ you don’t go back to physics.”

While I don't disagree with the premise of teaching physics first, where the hell is geology? Seriously, we want to build up to inclusive and interdisciplinary sciences that are important for the problems of the world, and no one mentions geology? For f@#k's sake! I am sure we can all post for years about why geology or even the generic earth science are not considered important disciplines (even by Nobel Laureates, and in the same article that worries about global warming), but what this makes me most frustrated about is our inability as geoscientists to sell the significance of our work. As Lederman points out, biology used to be thought of as a descriptive science, so it came first. Is that the problem with geology? Are we thought of as describers of rocks and finders of oil? I've heard this before, that geologists are seen mainly as suppliers of products (minerals and oil), and not as scientists. OK, time for Thermochronic to get some air...

*By the way, Stein is apparently trained as an economist, where did he pick up his scientific background? What makes him qualified to comment on the subject at all? What's next, Ben Stein tells you how to treat Alzheimers? Ben Stein debunking the myths, cigarettes are good for you? Ben Stein talks about the pros and cons of Pfeiffer and Varian roughing pumps? Shouldn't you actually have some expertise in a subject before you spout off strong opinions? Should I be telling Loose Baggy Monster about literature or history? Perhaps I can be called upon to give my opinion on the effect of American corn subsidies on foreign currency markets? Hell, I have a Ph.D., somebody get me a camera! Stein discussing the biological sciences must look a lot like the panelists on the video below

Situation In Nigeria Seems Pretty Complex

Academic Job in Geology article at the Chronicle of Higher Education

2007-09-26T14:53:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to bring attention to an article I read today in the Chronicle of Higher Education written by a post-doc in the geosciences. S/he (it is anonymous) has had a very successful run as a post-doc both from a funding and publication perspective, and is writing about the academic job hunt and the importance placed on teaching at research universities.

So now I'm wondering: Are department heads interested in research because they place such value on the selfless pursuit of knowledge? Or does all that grant money just help them make the case for a new building? Is the learning environment better once a university has that new student center with a Starbucks and Macintosh G4 workstations for checking e-mail? Maybe. Does it facilitate student learning to have those state-of-the art classrooms that wirelessly beam PowerPoint slides to students' laptops? Probably. But wouldn't it be even better if the faculty could put some of that 80-percent effort back into teaching, so those PowerPoint slides beaming across the classroom make sense?

Just as an aside, the Chronicle of Higher Education actually has a fairly steady stream of good articles on all aspects of being in academia. Unfortunately I can't seem to add them to google reader.....

The earth, the atmosphere, and 40Ar retention

2007-09-25T14:53:00.000-04:00

When I started getting into noble gas thermochronology (i.e. ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar and (U-Th)/He) I realized that there were different types of geoscience literature involving noble gas research. First, there are the studies I was most interested in, involving either the behavior of radiogenic noble gases in common crustal minerals or their application to understanding tectonic problems. The other noble gas studies, which I tended to ignore, used them as geochemical tracers of a whole boatload of earth processes, including whole-earth degassing and formation of the atmosphere. In the past year through collaboration between my research group and some excellent geochemists, and in light of a recent and excellent Nature article announcing some really surprising findings, I have gained a new appreciation for the role of noble gases in geoscience.

The article, which came out in the September 20th issue of Nature, is called ⁴⁰Ar retention in the terrestrial planets. It presents the results of a whole series of experiments examining the behavior of ⁴⁰Ar in forsterite ( Mg₂SiO₄) and enstatite (MgSiO₃), the two minerals that make up most of the mantle. The common perception of noble gases is that they are relatively incompatible in minerals. Not only do they diffuse out quickly, but during partial melting events, the noble gases are strongly partitioned into the melt. The melt then ascends (say at a mid-ocean ridge), the gas exsolves, and escapes into the atmosphere. For ⁴⁰Ar, we should be able to calculate the percent of the planet that has degassed if we know the K content of the planet (⁴⁰K being the radioactive parent of ⁴⁰Ar, and therefore the source of most of the Ar) and the total amount of ⁴⁰Ar in the atmosphere. Some studies have concluded that the earth may be only ~50% degassed. This is confusing if you accept that noble gas diffusion is relatively fast and noble gases are strongly partitioned into melt during partial melting events; why hasn't the whole mantle degassed by now?

The data presented in this paper are discussed in terms both diffusivity (the speed at which ⁴⁰Ar atoms move through the crystal lattice) and solubility (the total amount of ⁴⁰Ar that could be stuffed into a crystal lattice given unlimited time, temperature, and ⁴⁰Ar). The authors took highly polished slabs of minerals (both natural and synthetic crystals) and put them in ⁴⁰Ar rich atmospheres at different pressures and temperatures. After set amounts of time, they removed the samples, and looked at concentration profiles of ⁴⁰Ar in the crystal using Rutherford Backscattering Imaging. From this they are able to construct concentration versus depth plots for all of the various temperature and ⁴⁰Ar pressure scenarios, which are then fit these profiles with equations relating to diffusive uptake, which then allow for the calculation of some of the fundamental parameters of diffusion (diffusivity and solubility). These measurements are different from the bulk loss profiles I am used to, where we infer the concentration profile based on step heating experiments. These instead are direct measurements of the distribution of ⁴⁰Ar in the solid. The paper discusses many of the potential problems of the experiments and measurements, but I won't go into that here. Their punchline is that ⁴⁰Ar solubility is actually fairly high in both forsterite and enstatite, and that ⁴⁰Ar diffusivity is actually fairly low. In fact, during partial melting events, ⁴⁰Ar can almost be thought of as a compatible element, that is, it is not strongly partitioned into the melt at all; both forsterite and enstatite can hold onto significant amounts of their ⁴⁰Ar during partial melting! As I mentioned earlier, this is in contrast to previous thoughts and experiments on the topic, but does at least fit with the suggestion that the earth is not fully degassed.

Like most Nature papers it is not terribly long (they have a maximum of 4 pages to work with), but well worth the read. The implications could be tremendous. Even from a thermochronology perspective, it makes me wonder about the validity of our diffusion experiments that try to infer the concentration profiles of gases in minerals indirectly. Hmmmm.

Because it just got printed I decided not to include any of the figures in this post, but anyone interested should check out the original paper (Nature has the advantage that even most public libraries carry it). Allegedly there is a much more detailed version in the works, I'll keep you posted.

Heat Islands

2007-09-15T19:53:00.000-04:00

Recently Loose Baggy Monster and I moved into a new apartment. This is nothing new, in fact, it is our 11th apartment since finishing college (1998). This move has been excellent, in addition to saving money, it is a 15 minute walk from work, we have excellent neighbors, and it is a fantastic neighborhood. One thing about this neighborhood reminds me of the one I grew up in, namely that there are tons and tons of trees everywhere. Trees make anything look nicer. The move, in combination with a report I heard on NPR, inspired this post.

I grew up in Sacramento, CA. Sacramento (the political, cultural, and intellectual capital of California) is in the middle of the Great Valley of California, and during the summer it can easily top out over 100° F. But, I still consider this to be the most comfortable climate I have ever lived in (even though I never lived anywhere in Sacramento that had air conditioning). Three things make Sacramento summers beautiful: 1) It is dry, unlike my new home, where it can be 90° F and foggy, 2) The delta breeze brings cool air from the delta into the city at night, with night time temperatures often falling into the 60's with a nice wind, and 3) the trees. Sacramento [allegedly] has more trees per capita than any other major city in the world.

So that is why I got so interested in this report and associated images from a NASA pilot project looking at urban heat islands. The images below show the temperature distribution in downtown Sacramento on July 29, 1998 at 1:00 PM. According to the reports, on this day the local temperature in downtown can vary by more than 40° F. The white areas (mainly rooftops) are ~140° F, while the darker green and blue are in the high 80's and low 90's. The Sacramento River runs N-S on the left of the image, and the American River cuts across the top of the picture. The big orange-red mess in the top of the image are the railyards, and in the bottom image, you can see the State Capital and associated gardens. Obviously, the coolest areas are the parks, but what I love about this image is how nice and cool all of the tree-lined residential streets look. The NPR story also talked about Sacramento's drive to increase it's tree canopy, and the temperature reduction and associated energy savings abundant trees (and other passive heat remediation goodies like cool roofing material) offer.

Anecdotally I knew that even on hot days most of the tree-lined parts of the city stayed surprisingly comfortable, but I am even amazed at how wide the range of temperatures are here. It also made me notalgic for Sacramento summer evenings. If your only experience with Sacramento is on the interstate blowing through to the beach or to Tahoe, you have no idea what I am talking about. But if you are driving to or from Sacramento, especially from the south along I-5, you will pass hundreds of new home developments that because of both their youth and planning are not covered with trees. It kind of goes against my gut common sense to think that the downtown of a city is the coolest place to be in the summer.

No in depth analysis. I am trying to get back on the blog wagon, blogon? Anyways, a combination of lab work, paperwork, deadlines, and reviews, has taken me far away from geobloglandia.

Defending Champs

2007-09-03T11:18:00.000-04:00

In a completely earth science unrelated post, I feel the need to comment briefly on the upcoming NFL season. As some of you may know, I am a fan of the NFC Champion Chicago Bears. Although they had a disappointing Super Bowl, the Bears were easily the best team in the NFC last year. As a Bears fan, I am constantly asked about our quarterback, Rex Grossman. Grossman had an up and down year last year. During the first few games of the season, he was unstoppable. On track for MVP consideration. Then something happened, Rex lost confidence in his throwing, and he alternated between solid games and truly horrid games. In the end, he did lead the NFC Champion Chicago Bears into the Superbowl, which they lost (but I primarily blame that on the defensive play calling, don't get me started.)

What bugs be is how negative people are about Grossman. He is the best quarterback I have seen in Chicago since the injury prone Jim McMahon. Comparing ourselves to the Green Bay Packers, who have one of the best quarterbacks ever, is just embarassing. Here are the 20 Bears starting quarterbacks since Favre started his first game in September 1992 (he hasn't missed a start since)

Jim Harbaugh
Peter Tom Willis
Will Furrer
Erik Kramer
Steve Walsh
Dave Kreig
Rick Mirer
Steve Stenstrom
Moses Moreno
Shane Matthews
Cade McNown
Jim Miller
Chris Chandler
Henry Burris
Kordell Stewart
Rex Grossman
Jonathan Quinn
Craig Krenzel
Chad Hutchinson
Kyle Orton

So what kills me is how much crap Grossman is getting. 2006 was his first complete year as a starter, and he took the team to the super bowl! Why are we complaining. I know the most popular person in a city is always the back-up quarterback, but give him a break. Let's compare his first full season with the early seasons of other quarterbacks.

	Rex Grossman 2006	Peyton Manning 1998	Brett Favre 1992	Brett Favre 1993	John Elway 1983	John Elway 1984	John Elway 1985
comp/att	262/480	326/575	302/471	318/522	123/259	214/380	327/605
Passing %	55	57	64	61	47	56	54
TD	23	26	18	19	7	18	22
INT	20	28	13	24	14	15	23
Team Record	13-3	3-13	9-7	9-7	2-7	9-7	13-3
Rating	73.9	71.2	85.3	72.2	54.9	76.8	70.2
Games Played	16	16	15	16	9	16	16
Playoffs	yes	no	no	no	no	no	yes
Conf Champ	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no

1983 was a full season for Elway, it was a strike year so they only managed 9 games

I am not trying to say I think Grossman is the next Favre or Manning or Elway, what I am saying is that at the time, how many people thought Favre, Manning, or Elway would be so good? Perhaps a few, but looking at the numbers we should be giving Grossman a lot of credit. Stats-wise he is right in there, even better than some of them, and you'll notice he is the only one to lead his team to the Superbowl!

I think a lot of the push to replace Grossman or not give him time to develop stems from the upsurge in fantasy football, and our current obsession with stats. No one in 1983 had a fantasy league season ruined by Elway. Even Manning in 1998 was before the main rise in popularity. Quarterback take time to develop, which is why I am perfectly happy giving Grossman time. When he is on, he is unstoppable. With experience comes consistency.

And what happened to giving people time? My favorite example, Mike Krzyzewski, perhaps the greatest modern college basketball coach, was 38-47 his first 3 seasons, and 13-29 in conference! How many D1 schools would stand for that now? His second and third year he didn't even make the NIT!

And with that, Bear Down!

Becoming Thermochronic

2007-09-02T19:05:00.000-04:00

This post is part of the maiden voyage of The Accretionary Wedge, a Geology Themed Blog Carnival. In this installment, geology bloggers describe why they study geology, or how they came to be geologists.

I had always been interested in science, and was pretty sure that's what I wanted to do coming out of high school. In high school, I had had excellent science teachers, especially in chemistry, biology, and an amazing course called "The Plants and Animals of California." These classes, and the beginning of regular outings with my mom and brother to go birdwatching, sparked my interest in the natural world.

Even though I went to high school in arguably the most geologically diverse and active states in the country, I had extremely limited exposure to geology. I entered college determined to be a biologist, I saw it as the best way to make a career out of understanding the natural world. One of requirements for the major (Environmental Biology), was Geology 105, Earth History. This course was taught by a Paleontologist, but we covered basic mineralogy, petrology, and structural geology in the labs. Within a few weeks I was hooked. I decided to sign up for the department's annual extended field trip, a two week adventure to some distant part of the country. That year we headed to the Colorado Plateau. The day after the college's graduation we packed up big twelve seater vans, piled in, popped in a mix tape, and headed west. This part of the country was entirely new to me, and I don't think in a blog I could ever do its uniqueness and beauty justice. On the trip, we spent time with some local professional geologists, seeing what they do for a living. We also spent perfect days hiking around looking at various geologic features, fossil sites, famous formations, and my favorite of the time, the enormous cross-beds of the Navajo Sandstone. I remember coming home from that trip. I got dropped off in Rock Springs Wyoming so I could take an Amtrak back to Sacramento. By the time the train was coasting down into the Great Valley of California I knew I was going to be a geologist.

What I ended up discovering was that geology is an incredible way to learn about the world surrounding you. That's actually what you study, everything around you. You take classes that utilize all other branches of science, you think about the history of life, the physics and chemistry of minerals at high temperatures and pressures, the time evolution of complex 3D structures, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, ripple marks, Hemichordata, Diatryma, polysynthetic twinning, oil, groundwater, nucleosynthesis.... At its core, geologists want to understand the world we live on, which means that all aspects of that world are open for inspection.

Geologists also study processes at such an enormous range of scales. From the billion year history of a craton to the almost instantaneous dynamics of earthquakes and fault slip; from the arrangement of atoms adsorbed to the surface of crystals to the structure of the entire planet. Because of the range of time and size scales we deal with we must think outside of human experience; something a million years old is young. There is something philosophical about that, professionally I am constantly bending my mind to scales of size and speed that I can physically never experience.

So why do I study geology? A brief list.

Geology encompasses so much, it allows you to incorporate so many other skills and interests. We all know geologists who could pass as biologists, physicists, chemists, statisticians, engineers, or even hobos. For someone who is interested in all aspects of the natural world, geology is such a natural fit. Even as you specialize you still can incorporate such a wide range of information into your work.
Geology involves a great deal of uncertainty. The experiments we are most interested in occurred millions (or billions) of years ago an an open system. Although we may use laboratories or very controlled and precise results from laboratories to understand geologic processes, there is a fundamental limit to the degree to which we can constrain geologic events. I enjoy this. I am constantly impressed with the degree with which we can untangle the past (see point #3), but the mystery of what we are undoubtedly missing is part of the excitement. How many deformational events can be recorded in a single thin section? I've seen up to 5 or 6 reported, but even that is a stretch. Geology is continually working to obscure itself.
Geology is forensic. What I mean is that we work with scraps of events with infinitely complicated histories. I love the fact that people can work out complex series of deformational events simply by observing relationships in the field. I love P-T-ometry, and the fact that it works. Same with geochronology and thermochronology, we pick out these tiny minerals from a rock and can understand so much. Nutrient cycling and stable isotopes, short lived isotopes, basalt geochemistry, and ¹⁰Be. So little to work with but so much we've learned.
The most important skill for a geologist is observation. On all scales, becoming a good geologist means learning to observe. This means that everywhere I go I try to pay attention to as many details of the natural world as I can. Some of the most significant discoveries in the history of geology weren't even made by classically trained geologists, but by people with exceptional skills of observation and reasoning (Alfred Wegener was a meteorologist.)
Field trips and field work are some of the most enjoyable forms of work I can think of. I was drawn into geology through field trips, and have been able to do field work in the coast mountains of British Columbia, all over the US, in eastern China, and the Pyrenees. In addition to seeing these places, I've been able to experience them in ways most tourists, and even most hikers or backpackers, wouldn't.
I've also been lucky to continually find excellent colleagues in geology. I've made great friends, and been surrounded by people I want to learn from. I don't know if other disciplines or fields are the same way, but for some reason I get along with other geologists very well. This may be different at other colleges, graduate programs, or universities, but for me, the geoscience community is a large part of my decision to become a geologist.
Geology has more puns and funny sounding terms than almost any other science: love a geologist and feel the bedrock, tuff schist, have a gneiss day, perfect cleavage, apparent dip, subduction leads to orogeny, you know them all. They make me roll my eyes but I always chuckle.
Geology is both beard- and flannel-friendly.
Geology can be practical or esoteric or both.
Seriously, who wouldn't want to be a thermochronologist?
Every landscape is now interesting. I used to be bored with I-80 across Nevada, now I am always envisioning rotational normal faults and half-grabens. And don't even get me started on having the window seat on a clear day flying over the Sierra Nevada, canoing on kettle lakes, or staring at the "marble" or "granite" counter tops in the local coffee shop. If I am stuck at a boring party with no one interesting to talk to, I can entertain myself for hours with a stone fireplace.
One of my committee members told me that the entire reason he became a geologist was that he liked being able to eat lunch in beautiful places. I tend to agree, it's hard not to be excited about field trips to spectacular landscapes. I remember in particular a scene from my 3rd or 4th year in grad school where a small field party was sitting around campfire as the sun was setting in the mountains east of Death Valley, drinking hot chocolate and whiskey and re-reading a Geological Society of America Bulletin article out loud.

In truth I feel lucky to have found geology, ended up in an excellent undergrad department, somehow got into and through a great graduate program, and now after 9 years of training and a post doc almost making as much as the average college graduate (almost is the operative word).

Holy crap, the fireplace is overturned!

2007-08-31T14:25:00.001-04:00

One of my absences this summer from blogging was due to a trip to see the family at our yearly retreat deep in the woods of northern Wisconsin. Well, maybe not that deep, but it is certainly an excellent place. Nice sized lakes formed during the retreat of the last ice sheet, good for swimming, canoeing (which might be spelled wrong but as it is the weirdest looking word I've typed in a while), or just sitting on the edge of. I know geologically that lakes are very ephemeral, especially lakes like these. I heard once that the only climates that preserve lakes well in the geologic record are very arid climates. That is kind of counter-intuitive, since I tend to associate lakes with places like the great northwoods of Wisconsin. But I suppose it makes sense, these lakes exist thanks to a high water table, and will someday be replaced by a well organized system of rivers. But, I have no reference or expertise in lakes or sedimentary environments, so I'll have to leave any real discussion to our good friend now at Clastic Detritus. So first, a picture of the lake I took one morning. During the week, the lake is nice and quiet. On weekends, people with skidoos, ski boats, and other machismo replacement machines crowd the water, bringing the soothing sounds of a tractor pull to the quiet of the great northwoods!

So it turns out that this will be the last year our family will be staying at this particular lake. As such I was spending some time looking around the rental cabin and stumbled upon evidence that the fireplace has been overturned! Check out my picture and associated line "drawing"

As I am sure is the case with most geologists, I love to look at rocks all over the place, even restaurant counter tops, retaining walls, and my personal favorite, stone fireplaces. Especially in a place like northern Wisconsin, the rocks used are all local, which means most likely from glacial till, which means anything that outcrops north of Spooner and south of the North Pole. If you aren't familiar with geologic "up indicators", I found this site through a quick google search, but the basic idea is that many geologic processes create asymmetric structures, and some of those structures (like the migration of sand dunes) can tell you what direction was up when the sediments were deposited. Cross-stratification in rocks can therefore help you unravel the geologic history of a region. In the line drawing above, the heavy lines are the erosional surfaces. The arrow points to geologic up.*

Also in this fireplace, but not shown, were some nice chunks of the Wisconsin State Rock, a red granite (or here for an abstract.) This is one of my favorites, brings me back to my days as an undergraduate geology major on field trips throughout the state.

*disclaimer, yes, of course I know geologic up has no meaning for glacial boulders or fireplaces, but I enjoy determining which direction is young, just as I enjoy complaining that the "granite" counter tops are actually granodiorite or diorite and informing people that their kitchen is 90 million years old.

Living observers of continental drift

2007-08-30T08:06:00.000-04:00

OK, so the title of this post might be a little misleading, but I wanted to point out this article that I found in the New York Times Science section.

Some of the strongest evidence Alfred Wegener put forward in support of continental drift was the existence of identical plant and animal fossils on land masses that were now separated by great distances. For example, fossils of mesosaurus, a freshwater reptile, can be found in both Africa and South America. It seemed highly unlikely that mesosaurus could have swum the open ocean, so Wegener's idea was that the species evolved and lived during a time when the continents were joined, and they have since been pulled apart. There were many other fossil links between now distant continents, as well as distinctive rock units and successions, and glacial deposits.

This article uses a living species, the mite harvestman, a tiny relative of the daddy longlegs, to do the same thing. The mite harvestman has been around in an identifiable form since the Devonian (see Dunlop J.A, Anderson L.I, Kerp H, Hass H. Preserved organs of Devonian harvestmen. Nature,2003;425:916), roughly 400 million years ago. Harvestman now include about 5000 species living on every continent except Antarctica. DNA sequencing of some of these species shows when they split off from various common ancestors, and the timing of those evolutionary splits is consistent with various continental collisions and rifting events. In other words, the DNA in a variety of mite species whose individual range is rarely over 50 miles actually traces 400 million years worth of plate tectonics.

I am not surprised by the findings, but I really enjoy studies like this. It is always amazing to me when very different approaches to the same problem come up with the same answer. Different techniques, different goals, different scientists, same result.

For those interested, the data was formally presented in

Sarah L. Boyer, Ronald M. Clouse, Ligia R. Benavides, P. Sharma, Peter J. Schwendinger, I. Karunarathna, G. Giribet: Biogeography of the world: a case study from cyphophthalmid Opiliones, a globally distributed group of arachnids. Journal of Biogeography (OnlineEarly Articles). doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2007.01755.x (here).

And. for your continued enjoyment, some images of mite harvestman fossils from Cretaceous amber.

Halitherses grimaldii new genus and species. The first fossil harvestman from Burmese amber, Lower Cretaceous (amber). (a) Lateral aspect of holotype Bu-1583a; scale bar, 1mm. (b) Detailed lateral view of holotype Bu-1583a; scale bar, 0.5mm. (c) Front end of lateral view of holotype Bu-1583a showing extended right pedipalp; scale bar, 0.5mm. (d) Detail of Bu-1583a tarsus and tibia of right pedipalp showing the clavete setae; scale bar, 0.1mm. (e) Ventrolateral view of paratype Bu-1583b; scale bar, 0.5mm. (f) Posterodorsal view of paratype Bu-1583b; scale bar, 0.5mm.

Image and figure caption are stolen shamelessly from

Giribet, G., and Dunlop, J.A., 2005, First Identifiable Mesozoic harvestman (Opiliones: Dyspnoi) from Cretaceous Burmese amber. Proceedings of the Biological Society, v. 272, n. 1567, pp. 1007-1013.

Being chased by Marc Bolan

2007-08-22T14:09:00.001-04:00

vs.

According to this article on cnn.com, T. Rex could reach maximum speeds of 18 mph, fast enough to out-run L.A. Galaxy superstar David Beckham! Not bad for an early glam rock superstar, although they don't mention if that was with or without the super tight pants. They also didn't mention if it was Manchester United Beckham, Real Madrid Beckham, or L.A. Galaxy Beckham.

Towards a complete Thermochronocracy

2007-08-21T21:26:00.000-04:00

Thanks to our good friend at ...Or Something, I have been inspired to come clean. His post relates to a rather sad opinion poll from the retreads at World Nut Daily, whose readers overwhelmingly believe that "behind the junk science of global warming is a globalist power agenda." (Although in fairness it should be noted that the second most popular response was "[global warming] is the biggest scam in the history of mankind", well, perhaps behind the Apollo moon landing and Bigfoot.)

So, in the spirit of the international globalist agenda...

We all know that if you are serious about world power and total domination, you first must go into earth and/or atmospheric science. Just think of all of the despots, dictators, and great world leaders started out as scientists working on very complex problems, I mean, I'd name them all if they weren't so obvious. The power that the average university scientist wields over the country, the world, hell, over all of mankind, is just staggering, if you think about it. I can see why they are such suspect characters. I mean, it isn't like they are normal people, with jobs and families, retirement accounts, bills, neighbors, hobbies and the like; they are power hungry wanna-be conquerers, why else would you go to grad school?

Thermochronologists are no different, we too have a plan in action for world domination. I am only writing this because of my anonymity in the blog world, the punishment for going against the inner circle is harsh. The thermochronolongic plan for world domination was formulated high in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City back in 2005, when the worlds most powerful convened for a secret workshop. Here we developed our plan to overthrow the world order, and install in every country a thermochronocratic government.

I outlined some of the principles of thermochronocracy in my comments to ...Or Something's post, but I feel the need to expand.

A thermochronocracy is based in a strict adherence to classic Dodsonian principles. The free market will be replaced with volume diffusion of capital. Non-Arrhenius behavior is forbidden. GDP will now be described in terms of activation energies, all temperatures will be converted to 10000/K notation, and all errors must be propagated with both the x- and y-axis variables taken into account. Worker activity must increase with temperature, but not linearly. On really hot days, everyone's age is reset to zero, although larger people or people with high Cl/F ratios may reset much more slowly. LabView will be standard in all classrooms and become what Esperanto should have been, and ³⁹Ar will be declared the official national man-made isotope. Every house will install an electric pulse disaggregator, and the country's brightest minds will focus on developing non-toxic, low-viscosity alternatives to SPT and MI (this is actually an altruistic goal since the leaders of the (r/r_o)evolution will immediately make underlings perform all of our future mineral separates.)

It will become a capitol crime for reviewers to suggest thermochronologic studies "belong in a more regional journal," or to question why we cleaned the separate in both acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide. All makers of mass spectrometers must automatically include LabView drivers and guarantee free software upgrades at least once a decade (this is of course the most unrealistic goal so far.) Diffusion domains must equal the grain radius, unless it doesn't, but might fall out of the equation anyway, and all worthwhile procedures must not appear in an easily accessible and readable form, but must instead be spread out through at least a dozen appendices and figure captions in no less than 6 separate journals spanning at least a decade (this was a special request from one of the inner circle members-who-shall-not-be-named.) Oh, and of course, anything you put on a poster must be guaranteed to not agree with "some data I collected a few years back but never published [and won't share]." Reactor constants are constant, and there is always a good reason to disregard standards that don't quite fit. All atmospheric pressures must be reported in terms of millitorr, or mean free path. We will commission famous landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy to create a tribute to the leaders of the coup made entirely of discarded ConFlat gaskets and broken heating tape.

As powerful as we are, I do fear for the future of the thermochronocracy. I already see divides, disputes over standards and decay constants, for-profit labs are becoming a serious threat to the forces of unpublished data, and the multi-collector mafia has placed their people in very high positions. We must be wary.

That is why I am getting the word out. Register thermochronocratic. Vote thermochronocratic. Let's show the "readers" of World Net Daily just what kind of future despots we scientists are!

Utah coal mine collapse moment tensor

2007-08-17T09:46:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in the last post that analysis of the seismic waves produced during the August 6th coal mine collapse in Utah has led seismologists to conclude that the collapse was not caused by an earthquake, but instead that the seismic event felt and sensed by the seismographs was caused by the collapse of an underground cavity. I was reading this report from the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and wanted to post this figure, which sums up one of the reasons they say this was not a natural earthquake. If you've read the primer on focal mechanisms, you will know that they are made by determining whether the first motion a seismograph senses from an earthquake is compressional (pressure), tensional, or neither. Many results are then plotted up, and based on the arrangement of compressional and tensional first motion waves, seismologists can determine how the fault moved. The diagram below shows the first steps of the beach ball diagram. All of the small open circles represent the results from individual seismic stations, the fact that all of the circles are open, and not filled, means that none of the stations recorded compressional first motions. This is not how natural earthquakes work, and is best consistent with the collapse of an underground cavity.

source Berkeley Seismological Laboratory Figure 5a located here

The owner of the mine, Robert Murray, has insisted that the collapse was caused by an earthquake, although he has not provided any data to support his feeling, and all scientific reports coming in from seismologists have all pointed to a cave in.

Understanding the types of events that cause seismic waves is not just used to understand faults and earthquakes, this is also one of the best ways to monitor underground nuclear bomb testing around the world. Just like a cave in, underground explosions have distinctive signatures that allow seismologists to differentiate them from natural earthquakes (or mine cave-ins).

Earthquake location and fault movement

2007-08-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

There have already been informative posts in the geoblogosphere about the recent very large earthquake in Peru (see Highly Allocthonous). I thought I'd put up a brief post relating to earthquakes, but not one specific one. When I have posted on various earthquakes, one thing I have always tried to do is put up a map that includes that focal mechanism for the earthquake. The USGS actually maintains a large historic database of these focal mechanisms, which are really interesting to browse through. I will not explain how to read them here, mainly because Professor Vince Cronin at Baylor University has already put together a very well written and easy to read guide on them (download the pdf by clicking here). If you are curious, I highly recommend checking it out. For educators in the crowd, the hand out also includes some exercises, it is something he created with teaching in mind.

In short, earthquake focal mechanism solutions are the beach balls that appear on maps like those below. They are produced by compiling and analyzing the waves that are produced by an earthquake and recorded by seismographs. As the handout explains, they provide a wealth of information, including information on the type of fault motion that occurred, that is was it a strike-slip, reverse, or normal fault.

Some of the compilations of historic focal mechanisms show exceptionally well the modern state of deformation in different regions of the world. For example, the most recent Peruvian earthquake occurred on a thrust fault (dipping at ~27° according to the USGS). Most of the beach balls shown from historic earthquakes are the same character.

From the USGS website here.

Which are different from strike slip faults, which dominated in the two images below.

From the USGS website located here.

From the USGS web site located here.

Learning to qualitatively read these focal mechanisms exponentially increases the amount of information you can read from earthquake reports. The USGS also has a good figure showing the basics of the beachball diagrams. It is by the analysis of these waves, by the way, that geologists have determined that the recent coal mine collapse in Utah was not caused by an earthquake (also here) but instead produced the earthquake sensed by regional seismographs.

Google Earth KMZ files from the USGS

2007-07-30T23:01:00.000-04:00

The U.S.G.S. has some free earthquake related .kmz files you can download from here and view using Google Earth. The above image is from the Quaternary Faults file, and shows historic faults in the Owens Valley (Owens Valley Fault System, that's Mono Lake in the bottom corner). The Poor Man's GIS just keeps getting better and better!

Activate interlock! Megathrusters are go!

2007-07-29T22:31:00.000-04:00

I have yet to see the new Transformers movie, but in a related movie post.... A few days ago I made a comment on Ron Schott's blog comparing the geoblogosphere to Voltron, Defender of the Universe. The basic idea is that we as a community are all creating something much larger and greater than our own blogs. That reminded me of Voltron, and no, not the lame-o vehicle Voltron but the excellent one where there were 5 lions that formed Voltron. Long story, but I was then messing around on iMDB and found out that there is a Voltron movie in production as we speak, ready for 2008.

The Tenure Itch

2007-07-29T11:59:00.000-04:00

I've had two really interesting discussions in the past week with friends from grad school; first, it was a visit from ..Or Something and his girlfriend Dr. Friday Glasses, and then last night on the phone with a friend we will call Professor rgh. (Neither of the two nicknames have been agreed to by the parties involved, they are simply my suggestions). These were also augmented with lengthy discussion with Mrs. Apparent-Dip-But-With-A-Different-Last-Name, usually during a time when we should have been packing for our upcoming move. ..Or Something, Prof. rgh, and I are all at various stages of the whole academic job process, either in the process of finishing the Ph.D., as a post doc, or as a full blown Assistant Professor. We have also all observed different aspects of many job searches in different departments, and even a very sketchy case of tenure denial.

The aspect of these conversations that has stuck in hy head the most revolves around the value given to junior faculty, or potential junior faculty. Many institutions, at least those I have been associated with, are very keen to focus their hiring on senior faculty, in short, buying faculty who have earned tenure at another institution. Although some faculty searches are restricted to junior faculty (only hiring at the assistant professor, or pre-tenure level), my view now is that these are more the exception than the rule. I fully understand why some departments would want to attract and hire big wigs every once in a while, but as the regular way to replace retiring faculty or fill new positions I think it is a bad idea.

What is even worse, I feel, is that on the odd chance that junior faculty are hired, their chance at tenure seems almost comical. I wonder how many of the current faculty would have earned tenure with such requirements. I am not sure what is worse, not offering the positions in the first place, or setting the tenure bar far higher than could be expected, or is even possible.

I've heard many arguments for hiring senior faculty whenever possible, but all of the points completely devalue what junior faculty bring to a department and ignore the role senior faculty play in the development of young scientists. For example:

Senior faculty typically are more proven at bringing in large research grants, and are therefore a better economic decision for a department. You cannot compare someone who has been a faculty member writing grants for 20 years with someone fresh out of graduate school. What you have to do is try to predict what the young person will be like in 20 years. Although the senior faculty may bring in more, or publish more, or have more accolades, they will also contribute to the department for 20 fewer years. Departments should be interested in the integrated contributions, not the present rate.
Junior faculty are risky to hire. In some ways this is true, you have less information to base your decision on with younger hires, they are risky, but cheap-risky. If the don't work out, there is a built in way to not keep them around, called the tenure process (which I still think is abused, but more on that later). Senior faculty, on the other hand, are typically brought in already tenured. Their start-up packages and salaries are often many times larger than what a junior candidate would expect, and if they don't work out, you are hosed. What can you do? Unless they kill someone they can't be fired, and you spent an absurd amount to bring them over. I have seen senior faculty get hired, be given an absurd amount of start-up money, and then become what I consider dead weight. They have no interest in performing any of the boring and annoying but essential aspects of being a professor (you know, teaching, advising students, collaborating, etc..). This is not true for all, I know plenty who have continued to be productive and valuable members of a department, so let's move on to point #3.
Hiring high profile faculty is a good way to make a department more respected and competitive. This may be true, but it is often a false and ephemeral way to improve a department. When I think about what departments are really solid, I always associate the department with certain faculty. These professors made their name at the university, and they are the reasons departments gain a certain stature. If they move to another university later in their career, I don't necessarily transfer their accomplishments to their new campus. I think the best way to improve a department in a long term sense is to let faculty develop and prove themselves. I call this the Michael Jordan rule. When I say Michael Jordan, most people think Chicago Bulls. Who associates him with the Washington Wizards (or even better the Birmingham Barons)? Maybe a scattering of Wizards fans who hoped he'd spark the team, but I think it is safe to say that 99% of folks who know of Jordan associated him with the Bulls. It is where he made his name. Seriously improving a department takes time and investment, end of story.

What I think is really tragic about these reasons (all of which I have heard) is that they completely ignore the role senior faculty have in mentoring and developing younger faculty, as well as all of the positives young faculty bring to a school. Many of the assistant professors I have interacted with are exceptionally motivated. They are hungry to prove their worth and make a name for themselves, and they have a serious interest in what the department will be like in 20 or 30 years. These are all great things.

In addition, when faculty searches are restricted (officially or not) to senior faculty, you might as well throw any hope for diversity out the window. Earth science departments (at least in the US) have a tough time attracting students, or making a case for increased university and/or government funding; homogenous departments of old white dudes do not help the matter (although in interest of full disclosure I hope one day to be an old white dude in a department).

And then there is tenure. Even when a department hires an assistant professor, how many actually have a realistic shot at tenure? For some disciplines in some schools, junior faculty positions are little more than 6-year post-docs. I am sure plenty of us have seen exceptional junior faculty denied tenure. Are the bars set unreasonably high? Would present senior faculty have received tenure with those expectations? Is denying tenure to solid and productive faculty a way to try to boost the image of the depatment? I know there are plenty of factors that I, as a student or post-doc, are not privy to, but in my conversations I keep getting the sense that another big factor is an overinflated memory of what their tenure packages looked like 20 or 30 years ago. I've been looking for statistics on the average age of faculty when they receive tenure, but haven't found anything too useful yet.

Just as it is the role of faculty to help guide the development of students, I believe it is the job of senior faculty to guide the development of junior faculty. This creates productive, stable, and competitive departments. It is also a positive feedback loop, departments that help develop faculty create excellent senior faculty who in turn help guide the next generation of scientists.

Again, I am not always against the hiring of senior faculty, and I understand why that is sometimes a good idea. But it can't be the norm. Geology will need geologists in the future, so it is the professional duty of anyone who thinks geology is important to help foster that new generation.

I'd be interested in your thoughts; I'd especially be interested if anyone knows sources for relevant statistics on hiring and the like. Or, if you have been involved in more faculty searches than I, I'd be interested in the perspective.

Marmota marmota

2007-07-28T10:10:00.001-04:00

Alpine marmots (Marmota marmota) were introduced into the Pyrenees in the 1940's, and are thriving. We heard plenty of them (very loud high pitched whistles that echo all through the canyons), and got close enough to this guy to take a bunch of pictures. The were the only mammals we saw consistently above treeline, well, besides other hikers and one dog.

Credit for e-cademic work

2007-07-27T10:12:00.000-04:00

I came across this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education the other day and thought it might be interesting for the blogosphere; especially for those of us who put up original work in our blogs. The article is about a professor who started creating an on-line bibliography of work dealing with "a modern figure in early modern studies." After years of adding to and updating the bibliography, he was asked to review a recently published book on the same topic, only to find that his entire web site had been copied, wholesale (errors and typos included) without giving him a shred of credit. It represented a tremendous amount of work; he had no problem with his work being used, but the fact he was not given credit anywhere in the book meant that it would not be something he could include in his own CV or in the tenure packet he was putting together. The author of the article was not trying to get some slice of the proceeds from the sale of the book, mainly just the proper acknowledgment that he was responsible for a great deal of the contents.

He pursued the issue with the publisher and got responses from both the publisher and one of the authors. The publisher responded with two legal questions, first whether or not a copyright could be asserted for a web site, and second if a bibliography could itself be copyrighted, since "presumably all bibliographies are compilations of previous bibliographies." I don't like either of these questions myself, although admittedly all of my legal training is from "Law and Order" episodes, and to my knowledge they haven't yet tackled a case like this. Whether or not it is legally copyrighted is besides the point, it goes straight to the heart of academic honesty. How many times do you see personal communications referenced in papers? Especially when the product is something you are hoping to sell and make money off of, the legality should be secondary. The second point the publisher makes, about whether or not bibliographies can be copyrighted at all, makes me want to retype their book, print it off at Kinkos and sell it for half price, I bet we'd then see how copyrighted they think bibliographies can be.

The author responded with an apology and explanation that in the rush to finish and publish all reference to the web site or its creator was accidentally omitted. This excuse, to me, is lame. Perhaps it could be accepted if it was one reference or some small little factoid, but from the description in the article the web site represented a tremendous amount of work. That is academic dishonesty, plain and simple; either that or the book author is a complete buffoon and/or donkey.

But what protection does any of our original work have? I've never worried about it, this is not something I am doing for money, and I have yet to publish anything that I'd consider a serious academic contribution. I also don't care if people use anything I do on a not-for-profit basis, that is kind of the whole point. Other bloggers have certainly done more original work (or are aiming to do more) and although they see this as an open way to provide quality earth science educational materials, I am not sure anyone would be happy seeing their work copied in a textbook, especially one of those $125.00 gems intro students now have to pony up for. I suppose the hope is that since we provide the information free of charge that there is no incentive to copy our e-cademic work, but are there really any protections? Will our web sites become open farms for textbook authors with fast approaching deadlines?

Cardboard Baozi Retraction

2007-07-19T13:27:00.000-04:00

Looks like this story might have been made up, my apologies.

Although, as the anonymous commenter points out, who's to say this isn't a face saving maneuver by the already food scandaled Chinese government? It would be interesting to see the original news piece (assuming I could understand mandarin, of course).

Tanzania Earthquake

2007-07-18T07:56:00.000-04:00

I am signed up for the US Geological Survey's automated earthquake alert system, and yesterday received an alert about a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in northern Tanzania, about 100 miles south of Nairobi, Kenya. Normally, a moderate quake in a remote region would not get me too worked up, but it so happens that my dad is in Nairobi right now, and some of the African news sources I check described the scene this way

Residents of the Kenyan ca pital city of Nairobi have been thrown into panic after a sixth earth tremor shook the city in the early hours of Tuesday.

source Afriquenlique

As usual, the USGS has all the technical information in an easy to read and access format, here is the location of the quake along with some fore- and after-shocks

And from the Fast Tensor Moment Solution, you can see this is an excellent example of an earthquake on an extensional, or normal fault (this one trending to the northeast.) The quake is related to the opening of the East African Rift.

So, panic in Nairobi, I was worried about my dad. This morning I got the first hand account, whch I now present as a special update from Apparent Dip's foreign correspondent Professor Sunshine

Thanks for the e-mail explaining the earthquake
around here. I didn't feel it, but Margaret said
she did at the [Solar Cookers International] office. It's front page news here,
but no disruptions in Nairobi that I'm aware of.

Good news all around I'd say.

Big Earthquake in Japan

2007-07-16T11:14:00.000-04:00

A M6.7 (6.8 according to the USGS) earthquake hit the north shore of Japan today. I've heard of at least 6 fatalities, and that the quake caused a fire at a nuclear power plant. My Japanese is a little rusty (I learned it all from reading menus), but some of the video here is interesting. In particular, I am always looking for how people react in the videos. Most of the time people look confused and rarely do they do what they are supposed to do. Never having been in a large earthquake, I am in no position to criticize, but maybe it says something about our earthquakle preparedness?

UPDATE 11:14 PM my time - Reports are now that a very small amount of contaminated water leaked out of the reactor and into the Sea of Japan. In addition, another M6.8 quake hit the same region, farther out at sea and fairly deep (316 km according to the USGS, compared to the earlier one at 55km,) so we'll see if it does much damage.

No thanks, I only eat organic free-range cardboard

2007-07-14T21:16:00.000-04:00

I am leaving this post up but it turns out it might have been all made up, see my retraction here. The authenticity of the original report and the later correction are both debatable.

I have recently hinted that my recent field work in the Pyrenees was augmented by exceptionally good food. For my Ph.D. I did field work in eastern China, and while in general I thought the food was also quite good (can't say the same for the wine but that's OK), there were some things I was a little suspect of. Baozi, little steamed buns filled with pork, sweet bean paste, or nothing, were pretty standard both at breakfast and lunch (and pictured above.) I considered them pretty harmless, especially in constrast to the Thousand Year Eggs. That was until I read this article. In case you don't want to link to the article, a Chinese television crew found that at least some baozi makers will substitute up to 60% of the wheat or rice flour dough with cardboard softened with industrial solvents. Yes, you read that correctly, cardboard softened with industrial solvents. Allegedly the buyers couldn't tell the difference. In my experience, most baozi are pretty bland. To be fair I didn't have the pork ones (I'm a vegetarian), but the sweet bean and plain ones were not that memorable. Although my adviser and I did devise a genius plan to make them marketable in the US by stuffing them with cheese, beer battering and deep frying them and then serving them with a ranch dipping sauce.......I digress. My point is that even though they are not the most flavorful things in the world I am shocked that 1) someone would think of this, 2) someone would actually follow through on this once they had the terrible idea 3) no one could tell the difference, and 4) the folks at Hostess didn't think of this one first.

As a kind of side note, I also just [finally] finished Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I will write a proper review, but suffice it to say it is an excellent book, and it got me thinking about all kinds of things. In the last part of the book, Pollan describes a dinner he prepared almost entirely made of food he collected (foraged, hunted, gathered, etc..) from the forest. I wonder if cardboard baozi count as a forest food?

Where on (Google) Earth #28

2007-07-12T16:06:00.001-04:00

This could be hard, or Ron and his army of undergrad assistants (Yami let out that secret here) could have it figured out before I return from my coffee run. Anyways, here it is, Where on (Google) Earth #28!

Apparent Return

2007-07-12T10:44:00.000-04:00

I have now returned from the field, and am ready to once again rejoin the geoblogosphereo, armed with field pics, a new appreciation for cheese, vertical profiles, and a few hundred pounds of nice fresh granite. First the field pics and a little geology.

For those of you who don't know I am working on a project in the Pyrenees, a very interesting [mainly] Cenozoic convergent orogen. This was my first trip to this area, and I think like many geologists visiting their field site for the first time, my appreciation for the project and of the many papers already written about the geology of the area increased dramatically.

This is also the first time that I've used thermochronology to study the uplift of a convergent orogen. In the past, I have mainly focused on extensional orogens and normal faults. Normal faults are in many ways the most ideal system for thermochronology. This is a highly simplified schematic diagram showing how large rotational normal faults operate. There is no scale on this diagram, but it is meant to depict a fairly large cross section of the brittle upper crust, let's say 8 or 10 km thick.

The three images above depict three different time slices during the extension of some chunk of crust. Normal faults are the kinds of faults that accommodate extension (you can see that the final image, on bottom, has been thinned and stretched, or extended). The faults rotate as they move, and in the end, rocks that were originally very deep in the crust (some of the grey bars), are exhumed, or brought up to the surface. This exhumation can happen relatively rapidly, and results in the cooling of originally hot rocks (hot because they were deep in the crust). This cooling is what we can measure using thermochronometers.

Thrust faults are completely different, not only in terms of what environment they form in, but also with respect to what they do thermally for a rock. The figure below shows time slices of an idealized thrust system

(stolen shamelessly from http://ic.ucsc.edu/~casey/eart150/Lectures/4ThrustFlts/4thrustfaults.htm)

Although thrust systems can make some impressive topography (think the Himalayas, Rockies, and many other major mountain systems), they actually do not exhume rocks. You can see this by tracing how deep any one point is on the diagram above, or on this excellent animation of a thrust fault. Since thrust faults don't exhume rocks, they don't cool rocks (well, that isn't strictly true but we will save that discussion for later), and therefore we can't necessarily use the same thermochronologic approach to study them.

Fortunately for us, the large welts in topography often formed during thrust faulting are often associated with very high rates of erosion. Erosion removes rocks from the top of the thrust sheets, thereby exhuming and cooling the deeply buried rocks we want to study. One of the reasons the Pyrenees are such a great place to work is that the products of this huge erosional event (aka the sediments in the foreland basin) are very well preserved and in many places very well exposed. In fact, many of the older sediments are themselves caught up in younger thrust sheets, which are then eroded and exposed for us to study. Many Spanish and French geologists (along with colleagues from around the world) have done an exceptional job reconstructing the history of deformation and fault activity by mapping these sediments and associated thrust sheets. And, just as a disclaimer I would like to point out that my thermochronology would be completely and entirely meaningless were it not for the labor of the structural geologists and sedimentologists who have studied this area for decades. As another disclaimer I am not a sedimentologist, and can only pass for a structural geologist by association.

On our way to the field site, we passed through places where these sediments are well exposed. One of the more impressive things about the Pyrenees are the piles and piles of conglomerate you see, some like this exposed in thousand meter high cliffs.

these conglomerates were all deposited, then deformed, during the main contractional event in the Pyrenees (early to mid Cenozoic). Some of you who have travelled to Spain may be familiar with similar looking exposures at Montserrat, these are not directly related to the Pyrenean orogen (but instead the younger Catalan Coast Range orogen), but did add to my feeling of this part of Spain as the land of conglomerates.

The thrust sheets are themselves impressive, and although I don't have the information on the unit exposed here, it is a pretty picture

But alas what I came to sample and study were the granites. Most of these granites formed (well, crystallized from a magma) during the Hercynian orogeny (late Paleozoic) where they intruded a Paleozoic sedimentary succession. The Paleozoic sediments are now all deformed and metamorphosed (that will be a later post). Many of the granites were then exhumed to at or near the surface. We know that because we can still find places where the granites are overlain unconformably by Triassic sediments. You can see that in this picture

The reddish layered rocks at the very top lie uncomformably on the granite below (the greyish stuff). The contact is itself folded (don't let anyone every tell you granites don't fold), and has now been eroded nicely for us to sample and study.

In order to do proper thermochronologic studies, you need to sample the greatest amount of structural relief you can. In extensional terrains, this is nice. Because the blocks rotate as they exhume, you can often collect samples from many kilometers of structural relief, sometimes without climbing more than a kilometer of actual altitude. Areas where the exhumation is accomplished mainly by erosion are very different, here, for example, structural relief roughly equals actual relief. So, to sample 15o0 meters of structural relief requires hiking up 1500 meters of elevation.

Not to complain, I was with an excellent field group and was able to do some exceptional (albeit long) hikes. The pyrenees are filled with very nice marked trails that take you up big granitic mountains. I was even able to bag my first 3000 meter Pyrenean Peak (3221 to be exact). But it did give me a whole new appreciation for vertical profiles. They are definitely the way to go for thermochronology (perhaps another post as to why), but they are tough things to collect.

This was also my first trip to Europe, which was incredible. But more on that later.

Anyways, a brief intro to my field season, some of my bajillion pics, and even a little geology.

Apparent Void

2007-06-14T09:09:00.000-04:00

My posting has been pretty poor lately, all due to my preparation for my upcoming field work. I am leaving this evening for an obliquely convergent Cenozoic orogen, and will be back in July. At least then there will be plenty of field pics to enjoy! Cheers, and enjoy the rest of June.

On-line Thermochronology Community

2007-06-11T10:12:00.000-04:00

Lest you think Apparent Dip is the only on-line refuge for Thermochronologists, I'd like to point out the OnTrack Forum, an on-line forum for the international fission-track and thermochronology community. The Forum is edited by Matthias Raab, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne. Although originally a fission-track journal (hence the name), it incorporates all manner of thermochronology, and provides a forum for discussion, networking, meeting announcements, and the like. You must register to take part in any of the discussions, but that is free and worth it if you are a budding thermochronologist.

Communicating Science

2007-05-31T14:47:00.001-04:00

Mrs. ADBWADLN directed me to this article by Chris Mooney written for Seed Magazine. The article discusses some of the hurdles faced in communicating science to the public, focusing on the climate change debate, but applicable to a great deal more. In short he discusses the disconnect between scientists and what the general public believes, pointing out some of the misconceptions that make their way into media and political discussions

But I wonder if the scientific community as a whole can truly continue to passively accept the ongoing translational failures that seem to ensue on virtually every occasion that scientific information enters the political and public arena.

Worth the read.

Radon, Humidity, and Earthquakes Update

2007-05-29T21:51:00.001-04:00

Just a back track to a previous post of mine that many of you commented on. On of the authors of the paper commented today on my post, the comments, and his paper. He also provides references to his data set and other explanations.

Related Cartoon

2007-05-29T11:45:00.001-04:00

I thought I'd link to this cartoon (from of my favorite political cartoonists Ann Telnaes) that relates to a recent post of mine

Broader Impacts

2007-05-28T22:26:00.000-04:00

I spent most of the holiday finishing off the last of the bajillion temperature steps I ran on a k-feldspar from my new field area (collected by someone else, but mine now!) I got to thinking about my thesis, and then about how much I contributed to the world's knowledge base. Here is a diagram I came up with, in case you are curious.

Yes, they are different.

Show us your lab - BWRU edition

2007-05-26T21:07:00.000-04:00

Following Lab Lemming and Sara at Life is Nich si mal as well as the related field photo post from ...Or Something I am contributing pictures of my old lab. This is kind of cheating, because I no longer work there, but I don't have pics of the new place yet.

How much you pay for gasoline

2007-05-25T14:48:00.000-04:00

Because gasoline is an earth science related commodity, I feel I can still call this post earth science related even though it will largely be an airing of grievances. As anyone in the U.S. who ever listens to the radio, picks up a newspaper, or clicks on a TV can tell, gasoline prices are at an all time high right now, just prior to a big travelling/driving holiday weekend. I am not sure what the average price is, but at the Exxon station down the street from my house it is $3.15 a gallon for regular. This seems to be a huge story, oil prices are down, but gas prices are up, oil companies are gouging us, what will congress do to save the consumer? The hard working American? The major news outlets are particularly fond of this, pointing out how gas costs are starting to really hurt middle class America. Even NPR is devoting an amazing amount of newstime to the issue, and to top it all off, the other day I got an email from MoveOn.org rallying for a petition to stop oil companies from price gouging, save America! While I agree price gouging for any product it wrong, and if that is happening I want people held accountable, I am shocked by the focus. Has anyone (even the "progressive" MoveOn.org) used this as a rallying cry for increased funding of public transportation? How about tighter fuel standards? Of course not, the focus is all on how much you pay at the pump. It burns me that spending an extra $30 or $40 a month shares headlines with all of the truly horrible things happening in the world.

This gets me riled up, because what everyone seems to be ignoring is that you decide how much you are going to pay for gasoline WHEN YOU BUY YOUR CAR. Fluctuations of the price at the pump really don't make that much of a difference. For example, my wife and I own 1 car, a 1999 Saturn SL, which easily gets over 35 mpg in the city, and often tops out of 45 mpg on the highway. We drive more than we like to; we now live in a city with poor public transportation, and previously lived in a situation where Mrs. Apparent-dip-but-with-a-different-last-name could either spend 5 hours round trip on public transport or make the same round trip in 1.5 hours in the Saturn. Anyways, my point is that we drive, but when we bought our car our first concern was mileage. The big myth is that if you want a high mileage car you have to plunk down over $20,000 for a hybrid, that just isn't true. Many 4 cylinder cars get good mileage, and are on the cheaper end of the car price spectrum (lik ours.) So, we bought a car, we take public transportation when we can, but we end up driving a fair amount. The recent spike in gas prices means that every month I pay maybe $25 more for gas now that I did 6 years ago. That's it. A few less schwanky coffee drinks per month? Maybe cut my own hair, instead of my usual expensive professional 'do? I am paying less for gas now than the driver of some behemoth SUV compensation monstrosity did 10 years ago. Even the most fuel efficient SUV's rarely break 20 mpg, which means that if they bought gas at half of it's current price they'd still be paying as much as I do now at the current record high prices. The point of this is that anyone who has bought a new car in the last 10 years intentionally decided how much they wanted to pay for gas and what kind of mileage they wanted, and if they went with a low mileage, then instead of complaining about oil companies they should realize that it is mainly the fault of their terrible decision making skills that fluctuations in gas prices cost them so much. Especially when they ponied up $25,000 or more for a 6 or 8 cylinder SUV or "luxury" sedan; you knew what you were buying, so stop complaining so much! And if this is a rallying cry for anything it should be for public transportation and intelligently designed (read walkable and bikeable) communities.

I am not pro price gouging, or a huge fan of all of the business dealings of oil companies, but they are companies, and the reason they make so much fricking money is because we use so much of their fricking product. Nail them for price gouging if they are doing it, but seriously, there are more than one party in the wrong here.

OK, have a good holiday weekend.

National Parks in 3D, on Your Laptop!

2007-05-19T23:40:00.000-04:00

I've been checking out the Branner Earth Sciences Library Blog lately, and it just pointed me towards a National Park Service site that offers 3D pictures and images relating to the geology of national parks. Here's a classic example.