Rapid burial
Like the margin of a foreland basin with high sediment supply, some recent posts by other bloggers out there have been buried rather quickly. I’d like to exhume just a few of them.
- Discussing how to develop a seminar for writing and understanding summaries of scientific research over at All of My Faults Are Stress Related
- The ideal grant proposal law at Southern Exposure
- Follow the link through Sabine’s Garden for the Uncyclopedic definition of geologist. Absolutely hilarious.
- The Where on (Google)Earth? series is not dead! Wo(G)E #39 is over at T-Rex eats Fish.
- A fantastic essay by Laelaps titled Homo sapiens: The Evolution of What We Think About Who We Are. It is not often bloggers have the time to write such a comprehensive and thoughtful essay. Even if you can’t get through it in one sitting, bookmark it and come back to it from time to time.
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It’s all about water
ScienceDaily has an intriguing little article today called Keeping the Earth’s Plates Oiled. I haven’t had time to dive into it, but I’ll put a few blurbs from it here.
Björn Winker, a mineralogist at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, believes that the key to the asthenosphere is water. “We have to have water in the asthenosphere to get it plastically deforming,” he explains. This water is no longer in its liquid state, but is bound to oxygen in crystal structures to form hydroxyl (OH-) groups instead.
Winkler, and another researcher Refson’s study attempts to address the nature of the water through experimentation.
Unfortunately we can’t get samples from the asthenosphere … Winkler finds samples of these candidate minerals on the Earth’s surface and…subjects them to the pressures and temperatures estimated for the asthenosphere.
What they found was that…
…clinochlore was found to be good at holding onto water, but showed some interesting changes in its structure at around 8GPa. “The nature of the hydrogen bonds start to change and the layers within the structure slide,” explains Refson.
The article then moves on to a separate, but related study.
These kind of results have been invaluable for Hans Keppler, a geologist at the University of Bayreuth in
Germany. He has been trying to work out why the asthenosphere exists. Previous theories have suggested that this ‘wet’ and slippery layer exists because minerals leave their water behind them when they melt and turn into magma. “This explains why the asthenosphere appears beneath oceans, but it doesn’t explain why we have an asthenosphere beneath the continents,” says Keppler. Lava continually bubbles up at mid-ocean ridges, but continental plates don’t have an equivalent spring of constant magma. It also fails to explain why there is a lower boundary to the asthenosphere.
What Keppler found was that…
…water solubility in olivine continuously increases with temperature and pressure, whereas in aluminium-saturated enstatite the solubility reaches a distinct minimum at asthenosphere temperatures and pressures. “It means that the mantle minerals cannot contain all the water and the excess water forms a hydrous silicate melt”
I’m not a mineralogist/petrologist by training, so I honestly can’t comment on the details of these studies (I welcome comments from my geoblogger colleagues). But, reading it made me take a step back and think about the question posed at the beginning of the article regarding why the plate tectonics operating on Earth seems so unique. Water is key to subduction, and subduction seems to be what is unique. Other planetary bodies have different forms of volcanism, but not subduction (as far as we know).
These ideas are nothing new (see reference below, for example), but it should be very interesting as we explore other planets in the future. We will be able to put Earth’s plate tectonics into a broader context, which will certainly help us understand it better.
Like I said, I’m used to studying modern and ancient Earth surface processes, so I encourage any comments about other papers or ideas out there.
Ragenauer-Lieb, K., Yuen, D. and Branlund, J., The initiation of subduction: criticalilty by addition of water? Science, B. 294, p. 578-580, (October 2001)
image above from here
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A graph is worth 1,000 words
This weekend has been kind of fun. First, the anti-evolution blogs jumped all over the hominid study that was in Nature. And, then when they were challenged by scientists to clarify why they thought this was a ‘hit’ against evolution….well, they couldn’t. Some mostly good discussions ensued from there of a more philosophical bent (which I enjoy). See more coverage and links here, here, and here.
And, in a strikingly similar fashion, the global-warming-is-a-hoax crowd* has been having an orgy over the announcement of an error in temperature data from the NASA GISS lab. All of the sudden, the basis for global warming has been completely shattered! I’m not gonna go into the details here; you can get more information here and here (and updated more here). And just for kicks, check out the numskulls on this blog….yikes.
What I do want to point out is that Tamino over at Open Mind has yet again boiled all the hub-bub down to its essence (by the way, Open Mind one of the best climate science blogs out there). Please follow that comment thread if you want to get into the nitty gritty.
Here, he plots the temperature data before the correction (in red squares) with the now corrected data (open diamonds).
Alrighty then.
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UPDATE: This is just too good to not mention. I’m not sure why I did it….maybe I was bored, but I went onto the blog I mention above (the numskulls) and got into some back-and-forth commenting. I was being civil (at least compared to the tone of the rest of the commenters), and I simply pointed them to Tamino’s graph and asked them why the error and its correction is proof that global warming theory is all of the sudden invalid. I got a response that didn’t address the data or my question; it was a ranting non sequitur (and I even tried to pre-emptively discourage non sequiturs to focus the discussion). Then I was called a “leftist”. Good argument. And then, finally, the blog owner removed my comments. If you go down to the comments numbered in the mid 80s or so, you’ll see my comments clipped with a snarky response, but the actual full comment was removed. But, I just hit refresh and some other comments were further manipulated….so, who knows.
People can do whatever the hell they want on their blogs. But, if you say this…
Comments are welcome, even those that contradict the main post. However, comments may be deleted for profanity, racism, threats, harassment, spam, or if they are deemed inappropriate.
…and then delete them anyway, you’re completely misrepresenting yourself. I guess my comments were deemed “inappropriate” because they challenged their narrow-minded view. Plus, i’m sure the blog owner didn’t want that pesky link to a graph for his followers to see….they might be educated and leave his blog. Go on over to this post at Deltoid to see “The Ace” in action (starting around comment #110 or so)….very entertaining!
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*I’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again. The mixture of the evidence for warming, attribution, and policy in this global discussion is unfortunate. I do think that the real debate to be having now is what should we do and how should we do it (i.e., policy). But, the denialists continue to muddle that serious debate with nonsense about the scientific basis, claims of conspiracy, or simply their hatred for Al Gore. When having discussions with people I always try and “tag” each aspect into (1) data; the measurements, (2) attribution; the cause, and (3) policy; what to do about it. I found this clears up the mud significantly in serious discussions and causes nonsensical and emotional partisan arguments to be revealed rather quickly.
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So What
It’s been too long since I had a post about music. If you like jazz, you’ll love this rendition of trumpeter Miles Davis’ “So What” featuring John Coltrane on saxophone from 1958.
I especially like how these cats hang around in the background just chillin’ during Coltrane’s solo. Good stuff.
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Friday Field Foto #25: Ancient organic detritus
Many modern river delta environments are chock full of organic matter (think Louisiana swamp). Much of it is plant and other woody material. In some cases, this material is buried and remnants or evidence of it are preserved when the sediment lithifies.
The photos above show the bedding plane view (looking down on top of the surface of sedimentary layer) of a deposit rich with organic detritus (i.e., pieces of stuff). A lot of it is preserved woody fragments. Also note the dark black flecks…this material is mostly carbonaceous shale, which is kind of like coal. Click on these to see the high-res versions.
The organic detritus is abundant in thin (~1 cm) layers. The photo below is a cross-sectional view where you can see the layering of the sedimentary rock. The darkest layers (the pencil is pointing to one) are dark in color because they are full of this organic detritus and coaly bits.
But, wait, these are turbidites? It says so in the post label. How can you have all this terrestrial organic matter on the deep sea floor? In this case, this turbidite system is being fed by a delta. In the upper photographs, notice how broken up all the organic matter is. It has been ripped up and flushed off the delta environment and into the deep sea, where it was likely buried rather quickly. We find abundant organic detritus on the very tops of turbidite beds….this material is relatively light compared to the medium-grained sand and, therefore, is deposited after the sand as the flow slows down (ending up on top).
The organic detritus-rich nature is, in fact, one of many lines of evidence telling us that these Cretaceous strata are delta-fed turbidite deposits.
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On the nonlinearity of drafting a manuscript
Do you write papers in a neat, orderly fashion? Kind of like they taught you back in grade school — with the outline first, and then you go write each section and subsections?
I sure as hell don’t.
I’ve been writing up another big chunk of my dissertation work lately (you’ll notice my posting frequency has increased too…hmmm). I find it hard to stay in one section of the paper for more than 10-15 minutes. While working on the Introduction, I think of something I need to discuss in the…well, in the Discussion, so I type a few reminder phrases as a place marker. As I scroll back up to the Introduction I remember that I forgot to look up the number that goes where the highlighted red “X” is. That’s right, I need to address that aspect in the Introduction so when I reveal my data later it all fits together nicely….yes, that’ll be awesome! But, oh crap…now i’m opening a spreadsheet. Oh crap…I found a seemingly small, but cascading error in one of the tables. Did I really do that wrong? That was stupid. How bad is it?
Instead of dealing with it right away, I decide to go back to the text and finish my train of thought. What train of thought?
cartoon above from here
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Nanobots controlling your consciousness
If you haven’t been to the TED website yet…do it. TED is an annual conference held in Monterey, CA designed to share ideas. Speakers included scientists, economists, sociologists, artists, and many others. Their website hosts the videos for these ~20-minute talks from meetings over the last five years or so.
The “T” in TED is for technology.
This talk is by Ray Kurzweil, who is best described as a futurist. His ideas about the acceleration of technology are controversial but incredibly interesting. Even if what he talks about doesn’t actually happen, I think having the conversation in the first place is valuable.
Here’s the description blurb from the TED website:
Prolific inventor and outrageous visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why — by the 2020s — we will have reverse-engineered the human brain, and nanobots will be operating your consciousness. Kurzweil draws on years of research to show the speed at which technology is evolving, and projects forward into an almost unthinkable future to outline the ways we’ll use technology to augment our own capabilities, forever blurring the lines between human and machine.
I’ve embedded the video below…or click here to watch it on TED site.
I’ve read Kurzweil’s latest book, called The Singularity is Near, which I mean to write a review of at some point. This talk is a very condensed version of the ideas he puts forth in his book.
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Visual relation-based search engine for books
It seems more and more when I am looking for a book or a review of a book I end up on a page that links to Amazon. I can’t remember exactly how I found this site (amaznode), but it’s a way to search through Amazon’s catalog visually.
The way it works is that it connects books through the ‘customers who bought this also bought this’ data. It’s kind of interesting.
For example, in the screenshot image above I put in ‘Patagonia geology’ into the search box and the book cover thumbnail images started popping up. Another moment later, connections denoted by lines were drawn. This image is a snapshot in the process…it kept going until it filled in the entire Amazon catalog that satisfied the search terms.
The main group of books near the top are a bunch of travel and trekking books. The group to the right is a bunch of Patagonia fly fishing books, and the third major group near the bottom of the image represents a group of South American cookbooks. I’m not sure where the geology search term comes in here….hmmm.
And then you can move your cursor over the thumbnail and the book title pops up. If you click on it, a little box pops up from which you can go to the regular Amazon page or say ‘put in cart’ and keep going.
This style of searching and the visual revealing of links is becoming more abundant on the web. I’m not sure it’s robust enough (yet) to replace any searching methods, but it is an interesting additional way to find things. Especially, when you are curious about how the different books are linked. I would guess those researching marketing trends might find this very interesting.
It’s fun. Try it.
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Blog devoted to extrasolar planets
You may have seen the news earlier this week about another discovery of a planet outside our solar system. These discoveries are coming fast and furious these days…it is exciting.
Are you feeling a little unsatisfied after reading the press releases and mainstream news articles? Are you yearning for more information?
Check out the blog Systemic, which is devoted to extrasolar planetary systems. And they don’t just post about the latest news, but also are engaged in collaborative research:
The near-term goal of the systemic research collaboration is to improve our statistical understanding of the galactic planetary census. This will be accomplished through a large-scale simulation in which the public is invited to participate. No prior experience or expertise with Astronomy is required. All you need is an Internet connection and a desire to learn and explore.
Not only is Systemic informative, but it is beautifully designed.
Check it out.
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United States federal funding of science
Check out a news brief just released by the AAAS regarding the federal (United States) spending on scientific research proposed for the 2008 budget.
As of the August congressional recess, Congress is poised to add billions of dollars to proposed budgets for the federal investment in research and development (R&D) for fiscal year (FY) 2008. The House and Senate would endorse large proposed increases for select physical sciences agencies in the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) and would continue to support Administration plans to expand development investments for new human spacecraft. But instead of cutting funding for other R&D programs as requested, the House and the Senate would provide increases to every major nondefense R&D funding agency, and would turn proposed cuts into significant increases for the congressional priorities of biomedical research, environmental research (particularly climate change research), and energy R&D. The added billions in FY 2008 appropriations so far would turn a requested cut in federal support of basic and applied research into a real increase, after three years of decline.
Could this be some good news? Maybe so, maybe not…
But these increases depend on an overall congressional budget plan allocating $21 billion more for domestic appropriations than the President’s budget; because the President has threatened to veto any appropriations bills that exceed his budget request, these R&D increases could disappear or diminish this fall in negotiations between the President and Congress over final funding levels
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Clastic Detritus 