Evelyn put up a cat photo on Geokittehs earlier today, and it reminded me of anatexis, the process of partial melting. Anatexis is my favorite way to produce a migmatite. In this model, the light-colored (felsic) ginger cat is derived from the partial melting of another cat, partly dark (mafic) and partly felsic (ginger). Where … Read more
Rob Simmon of NASA’s Earth Observatory is the source for today’s Friday folds. Last week, he tweeted this image to me: That’s a excellent example of the outcrop pattern of a more or less horizontal outcrop of folded rock. To the north is a synform (notice that where streams have eroded it, the bull’s-eye pattern … Read more
Callan has a conversation with Scott Mandia, a community college professor working on the national level to improve the public’s understanding of climate science.
In the past 24 hours, Erik Klemetti and Siim Sepp both gave us their top ten reasons for loving their branches of geo-science. Their lists demonstrated their passion for (respectively) volcanoes and sand, and so I feel inspired to make a list, too. Here are the top 10 reasons I love structural geology: 10. It’s … Read more
Nice straight-limbed syncline in the Helderberg Group of West Virginia (Devonian limestones, mainly): Alan Pitts shot a sweet GigaPan of this outcrop which you can explore here, or you can just look at this zoomed-in detail: Aaron Barth is down there in the lower right corner for scale.
I got to San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, flying in on the same flight from DC as Rob Simmon and Maria-José Viñas. MJ and I took the BART downtown, and then met up with Jess Ball for Thai dinner and a yummy dessert of banana wrapped in roti with Nutella and coconut ice cream. Then, … Read more
The geology program at the College of William & Mary turned 50 years old this year, and last weekend they held a party to celebrate. Of the 800 or so geology majors the department has produced in 50 years, about 100 came to this event – that’s a pretty great ratio, I think: 1 out … Read more
Here’s the talk I gave at GSA last month: [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXt5aZIu5Xk”] It’s presented here at a slower pace than the actual talk was, since I didn’t have to run and catch a plane 45 minutes after presenting it, but there are some PowerPoint bugs with some of the animations. Oh well – recording it and … Read more
At the end of the summer, there was a conversation on Twitter about having a meet-up (“rendezvous” sounds more authentic, it was pointed out) for folks involved in geology social media: stuff like geoblogs and Twitter, but pretty much open to whoever’s into meeting up in some interesting place and exploring some geology together. Following … Read more
Lee Allison, State Geologist of Arizona and exemplar of public outreach via blogging, sent me an e-mail yesterday regarding that awesome coastal Greenland shot by Alistair Knock that I featured as the Friday fold. Lee, like many of you, found the image entrancing and intriguing, and as he explored the unannotated version, he made some … Read more