Geology – Page 14

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Frozen Storms in Sandstone

December 19, 2006

Impress your friends at the water cooler with this phrase: “hummocky cross-stratification.” Let’s call this mouthful HCS and talk about it. It has a story to tell. HCS is a kind of geological formation characterized by alternating three-dimensional hummocks (convex up) and swales (convex down). Discussed in the geological literature since the 1970s, […]

Physics

Crisis in Comet Formation Theories

December 18, 2006

Results from the Stardust mission last week (12/15/2006) are causing quite a stir. Detailed analysis of comet dust particles from Comet Wild 2, published in Science Dec 15, reveal the wrong stuff. Scientists found olivine, pyroxene and osbornite – minerals said to form at high temperatures – instead of the cold volatiles expected for an […]

Dating Methods

How Not to Date a Volcano

November 13, 2006

Two teams of geologists looked at the same volcano field in Nevada, but came up with vastly different dates.

Solar System

Moon Gas Indicates Recent Geologic Activity

November 9, 2006

It’s aliv-v-v-v-e! Evidence for recent geological activity on our moon has been reported in Nature.1 Katharine Sanderson introduced the findings in News@Nature, in an item titled, “The moon has gas: Eruptions confound the idea that our nearest neighbour is a geological dead zone” – Some think the Moon has been geologically dead for billions of […]

Solar System

Geologists Puzzle Over Egyptian Craters

November 1, 2006

A set of craters deep in the Egyptian desert has geologists scratching their heads. Discovery Channel News says that they look neither like impact craters nor known volcanic phenomena. “It is a strange and new thing,” reported one French scientist. Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona remarked, “There’s nothing in our current geological literature […]

Uncategorized

Key Reference Rock Formed Five Times Faster than Thought

October 25, 2006

Strata in the Niagara Gorge, used as a reference for Silurian dating, formed much quicker than previously believed – in just 1/5 the time, according to a press release from Ohio State. Bradley Cramer and his advisor Matthew Saltzmann used high-resolution carbon isotope stratigraphy to re-examine the rocks in the Niagara Gorge. “Rocks that were […]

Dinosaurs

Dinos Not Killed Off by Meteor, but by Worms

October 24, 2006

Confident speculations that a big meteor hitting southern Mexico caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs appear to be unraveling. Gerta Keller [Princeton, 09/25/2003], a doubter of the story that has been a leading contender for years with its smoking-gun crater called Chicxulub in the Yucatan, has been getting a receptive hearing among geologists with […]

Origin of Life

New Titan Ethane Theory Proposed

October 18, 2006

They wonder where the ethane went (see 09/14/2006 and its links). The case of the missing ethane on Titan has only gotten more puzzling since the Huygens Probe landed last year and found almost none, when oceans a mile deep were anticipated. In Nature last week,1 D. M. Hunten (U of Arizona) posited a new […]

Fossils

Oxygen YoYos and Wings

October 18, 2006

Molecular oxygen: you can’t live with it, and you can’t live without it. We breathe it in constantly or else we would turn blue and die within minutes. Yet we take antioxidants because of the harm that oxygen radicals can wreak in our cells. Like fire, it is a useful substance, but only when tightly […]

Geology

Gold Can Form in a Geological Instant

October 15, 2006

You can’t say something is old just because it looks old, like gold.

Cell Biology

Science Potpourri

October 13, 2006

Interesting articles from recent issues of Science have piled up in the queue. These might have made separate entries in CEH if time and space were unlimited. Deep Impact: The team of the Deep Impact mission to a comet published spectral results in the July 13 issue. “Emission signatures due to amorphous and crystalline silicates, […]

Astronomy

Nature Potpourri

October 11, 2006

Articles of interest from Nature have been piling up in the CEH queues. Perhaps a brief mention is better than nothing, before they fall into archive oblivion. Carbon 14: In the Sept 14 issue, there was a give & take between critics of a carbon-14-dated study and the author. The critics pointed out, “We appreciate […]

Physics

Bacteria Generate Hydrocarbon Reservoirs

September 21, 2006

Ethane and propane have been detected in ocean depths near the Galapagos, reported EurekAlert. These heavy energy-rich hydrocarbons may be widespread in ocean sediments. The authors of a paper in PNAS1 believe it is formed by bacteria metabolizing acetate from organic material in the sediment, and that this “upsets the general belief that hydrocarbons larger […]

Astronomy

Upset Update: Globular Clusters, Atmospheric Methane Tear Up Textbooks

August 28, 2006

Here are a couple of updates to stories we reported earlier in the category “Everything we thought was wrong.” Globular cluster ages: Our 10/05/2003 entry reported that beliefs about globular cluster ages were undergoing a radical revision. You can almost feel the rumblings in a related story on News@Nature; “In a complex Universe, astronomers thought […]

Solar System

Mars Annually Pops Its Polar Cork

August 17, 2006

A unique geological phenomenon has been found on Mars. Every year, when the southern polar cap heats up, carbon dioxide gas forms underneath a layer of translucent ice. This gas levitates large portions of the ice cap until it finds weaknesses, and bursts out at over a hundred miles an hour in spectacular fumaroles (see […]

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