Saturday, October 31, 2009

Apollo 17 lunar landing site...

revealed in stunning detail in latest LRO images (click to enlarge). The descent stage of the lunar module Challenger, and footprints by astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt - the only geologist to fly to the Moon - as well as various scientific instruments, show clearly in the high-resolution images of the last place we visited on our nearest neighbor in 1972.

Previous related posts here and here.

An inconvenient set of facts...

shows that the North Atlantic hurricane season is the slowest since 1997, and that the global and northern hemisphere tropical cyclone activity remains near 30-year historical lows. This stands in stark contrast to predictions that global warming would increase storm frequency and intensity. Hmm, and I thought the debate was over.

Mr. Gore, do you have a comment?

Zoom through orders of magnitude...

of scale from a coffee bean - millimeters - to a carbon atom - picometers - at this web page: Cell Size and Scale. Just grab the slider below the graphic, move it incrementally to the right, and go along for the ride. Zoom zoom!

Very, very cool.

Boo!

Happy Halloween.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Local weather prognosticator...

predicts mild winter:
"Quinn expects the winter of 2009-10 to produce about 25 inches of snow in places like Cheney. 'That’s half to less than half of normal snowfall at lower elevations,' he said."
I'd warn you, however, not to bank on this. EWU geography professor Quinn was in error by more than 100 percent in his forecast for last winter when the Spokane region received nearly 94" of snow.

"Norwegian Fjords to Spitsbergen"...

photo-journal that documents my travels with Zegrahm Expeditions above the Arctic Circle this last summer is now on-line (the link takes you to a 2.54 MB .pdf file). About a third of the images featured in this book that was provided to passengers on the voyage were taken by your humble correspondent.

Take a look, people who like to take looks.

Landslide season commences...

in the Seattle area: What homeowners can do to prevent problems. While the primary natural trigger is water-saturated soils, here's a revealing fact from the linked article:
"A city landslide study found that 86 percent of landslides were caused by human activity such as excavation, fill placed on steep slopes, broken pipes and uncontrolled stormwater."
Recent years haven't been as bad as the winter of 1996-1997 which this on-line report details: Landslides Triggered by the Winter 1996-97 Storms in the Puget Lowland, Washington.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Alaska Way Viaduct earthquake simulation...

"Yuppie 911" causing problems...

for rescue agencies: personal locator beacons make it (too) easy to summon help.

My personal perspective is that these gadgets allow for ill-equipped and inexperienced people to push beyond their capabilities. Frivolous use of the system should be met with stiff fines as well as compensating all costs associated with the "rescue."

You must forego hot showers...

in order to save the planet. If you don't then you're a bad person. And stinky.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Insomnia in the lab...

Seven Questions That Keep Physicists Up All Night

Successful launch of the Ares I-X...

rocket occurred this morning at ~8:30 am PDT. Read more here.

UPDATE: Here's a video of the lift-off.

Great gourd grabs the record...

and squashes previous enormous squash: Giant Pumpkin Breaks Record. The subject of the linked article, grown in Ohio, attained 1,725 pounds at the time of harvest.

No, none of the great pumpkins shown above (click to enlarge) come close to the record holder, but these babies are grown by my former neighbor just down the lane, and each weigh in at about 900 pounds. That's the pumpkin-mobile, a cherry-condition 1974 VW Super Beetle that my late wife inherited from her father, for scale.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Isn't that special...

Dinosaur Museum Presents Biblical View of Origins
"We are totally different from the Museum of the Rockies in that we present fossils and all the exhibits in the context of biblical creation," said Otis E. Kline Jr., the museum's founder and director.

Jack Horner, the curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, agrees the two museums are fundamentally different.

"It's not a science museum at all," Horner said. "It's not a pseudo-science museum. It's just not science. …There's nothing scientific about it."

It's ironic that this so-called museum exists smack in the middle of an area in western Montana rich with paleontological sites that have yielded tremendous scientific information about dinosaurs. But perhaps that's exactly why it is there.

Hat tip: Geogal.

Ugly bats have...

quite the chompers. Indeed, the wrinkle-faced bat (Centurio senex; shown above - click to enlarge) is less than attractive, but calling it ugly only hurts its self esteem.

Remember: bats need friends.

Weather delays launch...

of the Ares I-X rocket. NASA just announced that they are scrubbing today's test launch. The next attempt to put this new rocket in the air will occur tomorrow at 5:00 am PDT.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Old and new are side by side...

at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The image above (click to enlarge) shows the space shuttle Atlantis on pad 39A (foreground) and the Ares I-X on pad 39B (background) during the rare circumstance of two different launch vehicles being readied for lift-off at nearly the same time.

Big bug mugs...

in the form of macro portraiture photography.

Entrance into a possible...

Martian microbial underworld imaged on Arsia Mons (click to enlarge) that is estimated to be 160 to 200 ft (50 - 60 m) across. It is hypothesized that this is a skylight into a lava tube that could potentially protect life - if it exists - from "radiation, extreme temperatures and dust storms" that occur on the surface of Mars.

Link to technical abstract.

Image credit: NASA/JPL.

Ares I-X test launch...

is in nominal launch condition for its scheduled lift-off at 5:00 am PDT tomorrow morning, though developing bad weather may be a factor.

Previous related post about NASA's next generation launch vehicle.

An image of Earth...

from space showing the expansive Snake River Plain (click to enlarge). Where to begin to highlight the various physiographic and geologic features shown on this satellite image?

The Snake River scribes a meandering course as it flows westward across the volcanic plains, with irrigated farmlands adjacent to the mostly incised channel. That's Yellowstone National Park near the upper right, with the Great Salt Lake - and associated salt flats - in the lower center. The geologic structures associated with the Basin and Range Province are easily seen both north and south of the Snake River Plain.

Image credit: MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC; acquired 29 August 2008.

Wise words...

Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

-- Stephen Jay Gould

Sunday, October 25, 2009

That'll teach you...

to drive your furniture while under the influence: Man Pleads Guilty To DWI In Motorized La-Z-Boy.

Hat tip: RO'Q

Previous related post involving drunken driving on a bar stool. For goodness sake, don't drink and drive (even furniture).

Spelean flowstone river ...

is world's longest speleothem: World's longest cave formation still growing. The mineral deposit in Fort Stanton Cave, New Mexico, dubbed Snowy River, is 7.5 km long and is no older than 850 years. Here's the technical abstract.

The annual Halloween party...

hosted by EWU's Dean of the College of Science and his wife is fast becoming a tradition, and I'm on the A-list of invitees for some reason. Everyone is required to wear a costume, and here are some pics (click to enlarge) of various faculty from the event held last night (names are being withheld to protect the potentially embarrassed):



Saturday, October 24, 2009

So-called "net neutrality" rules...

have been drafted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that govern wired and wireless broadband connections to the Internet. I'm just getting up to speed with this important issue and have found the following helpful:

Historic window into...

the Spokane aquifer is provided by the first hand dug well constructed in 1907. This view (click to enlarge) looks nearly vertically down into the 28 ft diameter, 40 ft deep well, the bottom and lower part of which is open directly to gravel and sand. These unconsolidated outburst flood-deposited sediments have extraordinarily high porosity and permeability and are host to the prolific aquifer that today serves nearly 500,000 people in the greater Spokane area.

Here's a previous related post about the Spokane Valley - Rathdrum Prairie aquifer.

Top ten scientific...

music videos from Wired.com. My favorite is "The Nano Song" but the "Large Hadron Rap" is pretty creative.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Rainy day for a geology field trip...

but the weather you get is the weather you get (that's almost Zen-like).

I'm presenting a lecture about the geology of the Missoula Floods in the Spokane area this morning, then leading an afternoon field trip for the Inland Empire Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society. If the weather cooperates, and I get a good pic or two, I'll post them here as an evening update.

Window into lunar lava tube discovered...

during close scrutiny of recent imagery: Found -- First 'Skylight' on the Moon.

This is the first of a great many, I suspect, though many tube entrances are likely buried by ejecta or collapsed regolith.

Breaking news: bat loose in Congress...

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Major reversal...

regarding the remains of Everett Ruess: Navajos to reclaim bones misidentified as poet's.

National Geographic, the long-accepted arbiter of accurate information, needs to reassess its fact-checking, in my opinion. This is a gross failure in scientific analysis and reportage.

Previous related posts here and here.

Hat tip: LS (thanks, neighbor, for keeping me informed about this interesting controversy).

70 years of radio astronomy...

and the telescopes behind the science: an image gallery from Wired.com. My favorite is The Very Large Array on the Plains of San Augustin in New Mexico, and I've visited the facility several times during my travels through the area.

Wise words...

Teachers open the door... You enter by yourself.

-- Zen proverb

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

So it's not Everett Ruess...

after all: Remains Found in Utah Not Poet Everett Ruess. Hmm. The article is short on details so it's hard to know what to think about this 75 year-old mystery.

Previous related post (a must read in light of this latest bit of news.)

Hat tip: LS

The first exam in sed/strat...

is tomorrow, Thursday, at 11 am. Good luck to my fledgling sedimentologists; be sure to study hard tonight.

This will give you nightmares...

for sure, and just in time for Halloween: Even-More-Gigantic Giant Orb Spider Discovered. The female arachnid is about five inches in diameter, the size of a CD/DVD (images at the link).

Take a look, people who like to take looks.

The Internet is altering our brains...

according to a recent neurological study at UCLA, and for the better it seems, resulting in "cognitive enhancement in older adults". Here's the abstract for those who have the cognitive abilities to understand it: Neural activation patterns in older adults following Internet training.

I regard this as great news, especially when I ultimately transition into my doddering years.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Rolling back the origin...

of complex life: Fossils Push Back Earliest Complex Animals 40 Million Years.

It's getting more and more difficult to recognize my ancestors.

The shape of things to come...


I like the organic look and feel of this prototype. Kinda creepy, too.

What I'm reading...

right now: Bretz's Flood by John Soennichsen.

This is not a book about the geology of the channeled scablands of eastern Washington (well, it is a little), but rather a treatment of how the understanding of this peculiar terrain evolved through time. The primary focus, necessarily, is on J Harlen Bretz, but it also includes other scientists, particularly Joseph Pardee and Richard Foster Flint.

Ares I-X rolling out...

to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida early this morning, shown here outside the Vehicle Assembly Building (click to enlarge). This is NASA's first new rocket in more than a generation, and its first test launch is scheduled for 27 October. This launch vehicle is enormous, standing 327 ft (100 m) tall, more than twice the height of the space shuttle. Link to NASA's Ares I-X web page.

UPDATE: The test launch of Ares I-X will delay the lift-off of space shuttle Atlantis until 16 November. Previous related post.

Monday, October 19, 2009

50 years of space exploration...

diagrammed on a map of the solar system (click to enlarge). Very, very cool visual.

Graphic courtesy National Geographic.

Encylopedia Galactica...

now contains more than 400 exoplanets with the recent discovery by astronomers of 32 new planets outside the solar system.

Here's the official census.

Something has been missing...

at Balanced Rock in Arches National Park, Utah for quite a while. The smaller pinnacle - named Chip Off the Old Block - toppled during the winter of 1975-1976.

The upper photograph shown here was taken in 1972 by R.B. Colton (click on image for the historic, un-cropped archival photo from the U.S. Geological Survey) while the lower image, taken at a different angle, was acquired this last summer by your humble correspondent.

Wise words...

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

-- Victor Hugo

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Not Chicxulub, but Shiva...

killed the dinosaurs during the KT event, according to a new hypothesis. Link to technical abstract.

And I thought it was due to smoking. I need to make a better effort to keep up with the current literature.

Best buds...

The most stunning medical images...

in 2009: an image gallery at Popular Science, including aspirin crystals, villi, sensory nerves, and more.

The developing mouse head is kinda neat, too.

An image of Earth...

from space showing more than 60 lava flows emanating from the Craters of the Moon area on the eastern Snake River Plain in southeastern Idaho (click to enlarge). Highly fluid basalts extruded in this region have been dated from 15,000 to 2,100 years before present and cover an area of ~1,600 sq km (620 sq mi) with a total volume of 30 cubic km (7.2 cubic mi).

That's a lotta lava.

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, based on Landsat 7 data from the USGS Global Visualization Viewer.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

OK, that's really cold...

Large Hadron Collider: The Coldest Place In The Universe

The 17-mi diameter accelerator has now achieved the operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271 C; -456 F) in all eight sectors of the LHC. This is nearly the final step in preparation for its re-start in late November.

And to the end of all things on Earth. It's been nice knowing you.

Puny plume on the Moon...

of vapor and fine debris from the Centaur impact was indeed caught by LCROSS instruments (click to enlarge). The high-contrast image shown above was captured 15 sec after the impact and shows a plume 6-8 km in diameter. Still no word on the analysis of the spectra and the composition of the ejecta.

Previous related posts about this mission here and here.

Friday, October 16, 2009

It's another field work Friday...

measuring groundwater levels on the Rathdrum Prairie. I haven't made the rounds for a couple of months due to travel and other scheduling conflicts.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Huge holes...

in the Earth: an image gallery of open-pit mines as seen from space from the good folks at Wired.com.

More about big holes from a previous post.

EWU Retirees Association...

has invited me to make a presentation at their monthly breakfast meeting on campus this morning. The group consists of retired faculty, staff and administrators that are still actively engaged in intellectual discourse. I will be discussing the groundwater system in the surrounding area, including its geological framework, the finite nature of the resource, and the rates of water usage in the local communities.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Space shuttle Atlantis rolling out...

toward launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in preparation for a 12 November launch to the International Space Station. Read more about the STS-129 mission.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The "Nile Valley Slide"...

is the name given to the recent mass movement near Naches, Washington by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The slide diverted the Naches River, blocked State Route 410 in Yakima County, and forced the evacuation of several residences. Updated information:
Image courtesy WSDOT.

Geologic map of North America...

has been mounted in the hallway across from SCI 137 among many other geology displays (click to enlarge). While this isn't exactly a new map - it was published in 2005 - it is considered to be the best depiction of the geology of North America. (The map can be purchased from the Geological Society of America.) That's Professor emeritus E. Kiver examining the colorful cartograph.

Acknowledgments go to the Bu Dad who helped with constructing the mounting panels, and to CS who assisted with the Plexiglas overlay.

Good question...

BBC: What happened to global warming?

Locally: Record cold hits region; snow on the way.

Bundle up.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Lunch with former students...

is always enjoyable.

A graduate student of mine from the past stopped in quite unexpectedly to say hello today. We caught up on his busy career working as a consultant in mined-land reclamation over a nice lunch. Thanks, RL, for the visit, and for picking up the tab.

Miniature columnar jointing...


cooked up in the lab by colleague SK and her students using corn starch (click to enlarge). Not only are the vertical columns nicely developed but the polygonal jointing on the upper surface is similarly well represented.

Here are the details about how to conduct this experiment from a previous post.

Manatee with an airbag head...

Wise words...

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

- G. C. Lichtenberg

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Landslide near Naches, Washington...

occurred this Sunday morning, diverting the Naches River and closing a state highway.

UPDATE: Added image from The Seattle Times (click to enlarge). Credit: Sara Gettys/AP.

Fungi thrived...

while most everything died during the Permian mass extinction. Pull quote:

"Microfossils that show up in large quantities in ancient rocks deposited during Earth’s largest mass extinction are fungal spores, not algae as some recent studies had proposed, new research suggests.

About 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period, life on Earth had its closest call: In a geologically short period of time, a mass extinction claimed more than 95 percent of species in the oceans and 70 percent of those on land."

Jovian Eden...

on Europa? Article: Europa Capable of Supporting Life, Scientist Says. The global ice-covered ocean, coupled with an abundance of oxygen, could provide optimum conditions for life.

Link to abstract.

Image courtesy NASA.

Getting more serious...

about my photography, and as a consequence, have begun using Adobe Lightroom 2 to manage and edit my digital images upon the recommendation of photo-friend ER. Like a lot of software its complexity can be described as an iceberg: 10% of it is easy and intuitive to use but the real power lies beneath the surface. Right now I'm climbing the learning curve.

An alternative is ACDSee.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

More dams coming down...

to promote better fish habitat: Rogue River freed after 88 years.

Previous related post.

"Roktoberfest 2009"...

at the EWU Kennedy Library should be good fun, and it's a fundraiser in support of the university library. I'll be attending the campus event with my friend RT and other faculty colleagues.

Tsunami sweeps parking lot...


in American Samoa on 29 September, triggered by a large earthquake in the region, and captured by a camera at the FBI office.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Art through the lens...

of a microscope: a showcase of beautiful color images.

Moon bomb is a dud...

in terms of the visual observation of the impact, but good spectrographic data has been returned and is being reviewed by NASA scientists. Results will be forthcoming.

Be patient, especially those who aren't patient.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Centaur Moon bomb...


will strike the lunar south polar region early tomorrow morning as depicted in the embedded video above. The impact of the spent Centaur rocket stage should send bits of lunar regolith and suspected water ice deposits into ballistic trajectories high above the crater rim to be imaged from Earth. The LCROSS spacecraft itself will fly through the cloud of debris shortly thereafter with its own on-board sensors and imagers, transmitting data back to Earth. It will also strike the Moon releasing a second debris plume, all in an effort to verify the presence of water ice.

Previous related post with websites and observation times if you're keen on following the mission in real time.

UPDATE: Both objects have struck the Moon. I did not observe the impact events with my telescope, nor did other amateurs.

From Spaceweather.com: "The impact flash from the Centaur booster rocket was not bright, but mission scientists say that could be good news, indicative of an impact in loose, relatively water-rich regolith."

Animation courtesy NASA.

South Pacific rattles again...


and this is the trace of a series of large magnitude earthquakes in the Vanuatu region earlier in the day as recorded by our seismometer in eastern Washington (click to enlarge.)

Dodged that bullet...

it seems: asteroid Apophis' trajectory refined. Here's the bottom line:
"Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million."
That doesn't mean we can't party like it's 2012, at the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar.

I'm a big fan...

of these dudes: the Mythbusters. They're smart, have all sorts of cool tools, and they get to blow stuff up. Maybe it's a guy thing. Or a geek thing. Very likely both.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Meet Iris, a broccoli-aholic...

EWU students getting nothing...

for the 14% tuition increase they are paying this year. The administration is banking the ~$4.75 million new dollars (likely higher due to higher enrollments,) spending nothing on new faculty or understaffed programs.

Without a doubt this is the most academically ruinous administration this university has seen in the last 25 years. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

USGS bedform sedimentology site...

is useful for advanced geology students to learn to visualize sedimentary structures in three dimensions, and to watch the processes involved in their development. Here's the link to the website which contains a lot of Quicktime animations. Highly recommended.

Ahem, are my sed/strat students listening?

Wise words...

When you seek it, you cannot find it.

-- Zen proverb

Mars rover Opportunity discovers...

yet another meteorite, this one tagged "Shelter Island." The pitted rock is about 47 cm (18.5 in) long (click to enlarge.)

Previous related post.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Imaging bats in flight...

using IR technology: Infrared video of 500,000 bats emerging from Carlsbad Caverns.

Very, very cool. And set to good music. Check it out, check-it-outers.

Hat tip: Chris, a reader of this blog.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Examining sand and gravel...

deposits with my fledgling sedimentologists this afternoon (click to enlarge.) Here's half of my GEOL 411 class focused on sketching an exposure in a wall of a local aggregate pit. The coarse-grained and cross-bedded units seen here are the product of deposition in the waning stages of the Missoula outburst floods during the Late Pleistocene.

OK, that's really fast...

The University of Tennessee's Kraken supercomputer is the first at a university (fourth in the world) to break petascale, capable of "performing more than one thousand trillion operations per second."

I believe the answer it will ultimately calculate is 42.

Microbes may inherit...

the rusty planet Mars: How Mars Rocks Could Preserve Signs of Life.

Once we human explorers get there, how would one say "take me to your leader" in microbe-ese?

An image of Earth...

from space showing an enormous dust storm sweeping the semi-arid plains of the Columbia Plateau in eastern Washington on 4 October 2009 (click to enlarge.) A local news report said that wind gusts reached 43 miles per hour and Interstate 90 was closed for a period of time due to a number of accidents.

Image credit: NASA, MODIS Rapid Response Team.

Fireworks on the Moon...

scheduled for early this Friday morning (9 October) when two objects intentionally strike the south pole of our nearest neighbor. Projected lunar impact occurs at ~ 11:31:30 UT (4:31:30 am PDT.)

Here's the one-stop shopping for information about this flashy experiment:
My plans? I'll likely be out in my backyard observatory, in a puffy down jacket with a steaming hot cup of java, peering intently through the eyepiece of my telescope like countless other astro geeks at time zero.

But I'll also TiVo the NASA television feed of the event just in case I don't catch the two flashes with my own eyes. Always a good idea to have a Plan B.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Signs along the road...


in Indian Creek Canyon, Utah, near Newspaper Rock State Park. Admittedly the surfboard decal is a nice applique but the better sticker lies beneath the human figure (click to enlarge.)

UPDATE: Um, OK, maybe it's a hula hoop.

Wise words...

I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.

- Albert Einstein

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Lubrication for the second day...

"Samson" still looking...

for someone to go home with: T-Rex fails to impress Las Vegas bidders. Key bit:
"A 66-million-old Tyrannosaurus Rex named Samson failed to sell at a Las Vegas auction after the top bid of 3.6 million dollars fell way below the minimum price [$6 million].

Samson, a female T-Rex found on a South Dakota ranch in 1992, also trailed the record 8.36 million dollars that Sue, another T-Rex, sold for at a 1997 auction."

I guess the economy is tough on everyone, even dinosaurs.

Previous related post.

Enjoy the full Moon...

tonight, the so-called Harvest Moon. That moniker is assigned to the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox (22 September) when the bright apparition apparently assisted farmers during the harvest of their crops.

So take a glance, people who like to take glances.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Diggin' holes today...

at the Washington Division of Fish and Wildlife office in Spokane with members of the Northeast Chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society. The group secured a $10,000 grant to create a demonstration garden surrounding the government office.

High water use plants traditionally used in urban landscapes were excavated and replaced with water-conserving native species as shown below.

Those are subalpine firs in the foreground, and aspen in the background (click images to enlarge.) The understory will be planted during the year ahead, also using native plants, with the project completed in 2011.

Friday, October 2, 2009

An image of Earth...

from space showing a smoky Pacific Northwest region on 19 August 2009 in a true-color image (click to enlarge.) Smoke from fires burning in British Columbia, Canada (red dots on enlarged image) obscures Vancouver Island, the Puget Sound lowland and parts of eastern Washington.

Perhaps more interesting, from a geological perspective, the channeled scablands scoured by repeated outburst flooding from Glacial Lake Missoula in western Montana during the Pleistocene appear in stark contrast against the tan-colored farm fields in eastern Washington.

Image credit: NASA's Aqua satellite, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.

Times are tough...

all over: British girl attempts to sell granny on eBay. Why, you ask?
"Well, she was annoying me."
There were 27 bids reaching $3,500 before eBay removed the listing.

Heh.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Christmas comes early...

for our geochemist, Dr. C. Nezat, as she's finally secured her promised start-up monies to purchase this wiz bang instrument to support her research interests in aqueous geochemistry: ICP-OES. Congrats!

And no, despite its appearance, the sophisticated device doesn't do laundry.

Moving atoms...

one at a time. I particularly like the nanometer-scale sign that says "If you can read this you are too close."

Turbidity current unleashed...


in the sed lab yesterday morning as a demonstration for my sed/strat students. The image above shows a time series of shots taken seconds apart (click to enlarge.) Yeah, that's a chunk of kerogen-rich oil shale from the Green River Formation at the right side of the image. Read more about turbidity currents and turbidites.

I have to confess that my sand box was one of my favorite toys as a child, and it seems like I haven't really grown up.

Wise words...

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

-- Alexander Graham Bell