The only legitimate reaction to academic papers you don't understand....

It's been a long day. Maybe you've been doing revision, maybe you have an essay due and what are you faced with? A long, esoteric journal article that you just know contains the perfect piece of data/info/trivia-to-woo-your-marker-into-giving-you-a-first. But there's one tiny little problem...

You don't understand a single word written on the page because it's an esoteric journal article written by super-geniuses for the reading pleasure of other super-geniuses.

After the existential crisis of realising that if you can't ever understand this paper how will you ever know enough so that you too can also be a academic super-genius you conclude you have only one option left...

No, seriously, there is only one true reaction when all other options have failed you, and it is this...

Nah, I'm only joking, I just wanted to write a bit of satire before bed.

(The head-desk is courtesy of John Green, noted American Vlogbrother, thanks goes to a person on tumblr (probably) for making the .gif).

Getting a sense of scale.

xkcd, as many will know, is a web based comic on science, satire and (sometimes) silliness. But he also does some rather excellent info graphics, like this one. Note in particular the volume of the Marianas trench verses Mauna Kea! Slightly mind blowing...
(for a full size version go to: http://xkcd.com/1040/large/)

Blue John and other geological oddities in fiction

 



Recently a vein of fluorite (fluorospar if you're old-fashioned) has been rediscovered in the Castleton mine after 68 years. (See below for the link).
Blue John, a corruption of the French bleu-jaune, is so named after its distinctive purple-blue colour with yellowish banding. Personally to my eyes I've never really seen the blue in even good pieces of Blue John, more just extremely attractive shades of purple but apparently no one sees colours the same as someone else so I guess such debate is moot. (I've probably only seen one real piece of Blue John in the stone so to speak anyway).

Rare geological curios always seem to make their way into fiction, in fact one of my very-guilty pleasure reads, the Lovejoy novel, 'The ten word game' by Jonathan Gash features two Blue John pieces, Edwardian set Amethyst, the legendary Amber Room, a page on the rarity of early Russian set Alexandrite jewellery and why perfume is a killer for pearls (amongst other things).

The Koh-I-Noor has featured as a major plot device in an episode of 'Doctor Who'  for instance ('Tooth and Claw' for the interested) and thefts of rare diamonds, both fictional and non-fictional have featured in crime stories for many years. Quite a lot of gems have stories more romantic or gripping than many made up tales.

Gems, with their great wealth and rarity are symbols throughout fiction.
In 'Stardust' by Neill Gaiman the symbol of power of the Stormhold thrown rests in a Topaz crystal. In the 'Lord of the Rings' Aragorn possesses the Ring of Barahir ("Two serpents with emerald eyes. One devouring, the other crowned with golden flowers.") which represents his true heritage, and, in the film adaptation, he carries the Evenstar given to him by Arwen half-elf as a symbol of their love.

But there's one geological oddity that doesn't get much good press in fiction and that is geologists themselves. Often portrayed as a stereotype, the film geologist is slightly dorky, often bearded and never the hero. There's no 'Indiana Jones' of geology. At least not yet. (The closest we've come is probably the faux-docu-drama 'Supervolcano' produced by the BBC).

You could argue the reason for this is that geology just doesn't have the same romantic history as Archaeology. True for every five digs outside Cairo that Archaeologists dug during the Edwardian there was only one geologist... and he was probably walking around a muddy field in Scotland being paid by the mile of geological contact he found. (You could also make some jokes about a film about geology moving at a glacial pace but that would be mean).

Now I'm not here bemoaning the lack of geologists in fiction. I'm sure a lot of professionals whose professions are represented in literature and television cringe at the miss-representation so I'm certainly not asking for that. My point is more that it's nice to see the very romantic side of geology, gemmology, enriching literature. Perhaps the mention of a Alexandrite necklace in a book might be just enough to lead someone to find out about the Russian emerald trade and Tsar Alexander II.

It's like that word association game....
Black,
White,
Snow,
Cold,
Antarctica,
Ice,
Diamonds,
Jewels,
Queen Elizabeth,
Prince George... (Sorry, couldn't resist since everyone else is going on about him!)

I might write again soon on other geological curios in fiction et cetera.

References:

The Blue John mine discovery: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-23559735
Blue John bowl picture: http://www.bluejohn-cavern.co.uk/products/blue-john-bowl.php

Funny latin names... I mean, they've discovered a new dinosaur!

So after my quick moan about pay walls for journal articles in my last post I'm happy to announce that this time the article in question is free, yay!
(here's the link: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1766/20131186
also, ooo! it's in the proceedings of the Royal Society, classy!)

Ok, so to the topic in question:
Nasutoceratops titusi or if you'd rather it in English, 'that there dino with a big nose, horn-face'. No seriously it translates as 'big nose, horn-face'.
Well, that certainly made the day of one of my friends who actually posted a link to it on Facebook which is where I first found the BBC article (link below). (Look, I make no apologies for using the BBC as a source, it's free online (unlike certain science magazines (I'm looking at you, New Scientist)) and easy to use and access. It also should be fairly unbiased which is what I look for in my science-related news stories.
Wow, I've got off topic, ok, Nasutoceratops.

Found in Utah in 2006 the fossil has only just been cleaned up and pieced back together well enough to discover that it's unlike any other triceratops that have been found before. The triceratops dated from the late Cretaceous period and like its lumbering herbivore triceratops cousins weights 2.5 tonnes.

I'd quote directly from the abstract of the journal article to tell you a little more about what the partial skeleton and skull that they found looked like but unfortunately I don't speak palaeontologist. So we're going to have to stick with it has a big nose and a horned face for now. However, to help matters, here's a picky of the beasty in question:

Figure 1: taken from the original journal paper (full reference below) this is a reconstruction of the skull from the fossil found.

 



 

It seems from the article that the purpose of the facial appendages are a matter of debate either for male competition as weapons or species identification or part of mating. Well, I'll leave that to the palaeontologists but its nice to see natural sciences (read, geology) make the news recently.

 

 

In other science news....

 

A gas cloud has been imaged spiralling into a black hole. Astrophysicists are hoping to get images of the cloud as its ripped apart by gravitation forces. The sadists. (Joke). (Link below)

 

In other news that I made up because I thought it sounded interesting...

 

OK, so genuinely this just happened ('just' being when I'm writing this). So I wanted to pluck a random journal article out of the aether to talk about so a quick bit of Science Direct searching later for some up to date (2013) articles with the search word as 'magma' has lead to none other than an article co-authored by a member of my own dept. at my University (!):

 

The rheology of two-phase magmas: A review and analysis

(rheology is just how something flows. From the Greek, rheos meaning flow)

 

Apart from the fact that this will be just perfect to read for my project next year here's a quick summary of the abstract and my cursory glance:

The paper addresses two different types of two-phase magma, one that is liquid and crystals and the other, liquid and gas (bubbles). It reviews the rheological analysis of each and presents numerical modelling techniques for calculating each.

Or to put it into newspaper headline speak:

"Scientists confirm their mathematical simplifications of physical processes marry up with their analogue simplifications of physicals processes. In some cases."

(Kind of reads like the headline of every science press release ever, right?)

 

More exciting geology news next time!

 

What do you call a dinosaur with no eyes? Do-you-think-he-saw-us



 

References:
Sampson, S.D., Lund, E.K., Loewen, M.A., Farke, A.A., Clayton, K.E., 2013, A remarkable short-snouted horned dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (late Campanian) of southern Laramidia, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences), Vol. 280
BBC article on the dinosaur: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23329193
BBC article on the black hole: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23343563
Mader, H.M., Llewellin, E.W., Mueller, S.P., 2013, The rheology of two-phase magmas: A review and analysis, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Vol. 257, p.135-158

Redoubt Volcano, Alaska (and a lesson in how much information actually makes it to the press)

Yesterday I read an article on the BBC website about the Redoubt Volcano in Alaska. The full article is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23317368
but I'll give a brief over-view.

The title of the article was 'volcanic 'scream' precedes explosive eruptions'. The article more or less chews the cud over new research done on the seismicity before the 2009 eruption at Redoubt, focusing on the increase in the frequency of earthquakes leading up the eruption, leading to a crescendo of 'sound' before the event.
Here's a link to said seismic events sped up 60 times to audible hearing:
https://soundcloud.com/uw-today/redoubtscream

(The idea of harmonic tremors indicating magma movement are nothing new but this isn't what is been analysed here. A harmonic tremor, also known as a long-period event, is the sort of wave form that you might get inside a capped organ pipe. Such a tremor indicates that magma is rising up a path within the volcano and so an eruption is imminent!)
The identification of the seismic pattern can be just one more tool in the arsenal of earthquake forecasters and predictors.

And so my quest began to discover a little more about this phenomena by tracking down the article. Luckily the author of the BBC article cites that the material was from the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research which helps in limiting a search.
A quick keyword search on Science Direct* lead me to the top article which wasn't the one I was looking for. Scrolling down the lists I noticed that all these recent articles on the same volcano were published in the same edition of the journal. A further quick Google search confirmed my suspicions that Vol. 259 of the journal was a special edition on the Volcano.

Interesting...

And so for 424 pages of hard-graft scientific research how much of it actually makes it into the public sphere (read, the BBC)? A summary and simplification of just 10 pages of it. Which is pretty good going really, because most journals get overlooked by the press and pass like phantoms in the night never to be seen or read by anyone other than those in the specific field of research. (I might also point out that as a guest on science direct the best someone without a subscription can do is only see the abstract of that original article, it being behind a $31.50 pay wall. Some of the other articles from that edition of the journal are free... for what it's worth...)
Just scrolling through the titles in Vol. 259 of the journal prove that it was a pretty comprehensive analysis of the eruption and it's a bit sad that some of the excellent research and (hopefully) excellent analysis may never be used or referenced.

I am somewhat reminded of a video by PhD comic's Jorge Cham. He argues that the current system of how information about cutting edge science reaches the general public is at best inefficient and there must be better ways of doing it. His suggestion, get the scientists to talk directly to the public. Easier said than done but it does happen such as with projects like The Brain Scoop on YouTube (links to both will be below), it just takes a bit of initiative but unfortunately more work.

Well that's all for now. In other volcano news, Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano has become more active recently since its awakening in 1999 causing 200 people to be evacuated (link below).

References

The original BBC article (again) : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23317368
A list of the journal's articles : http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03770273/259
Jorge Cham's TEDx talk on the 'science gap': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzcMEwAxSP8
The Brain Scoop's YouTube channel page : http://www.youtube.com/user/thebrainscoop
News on the Ecuador volcano : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/ecuador-volcano-tungurahua-records-explosion-021908220.html?vp=1#EWRcXe2

*(God bless full access to scientific journals through university subscription, it really is worth its theoretical weight in gold (and costs about as much too!))

This week's geology-related news (that I found on the BBC...)

So here's a round up of the geology related news stories this week (week beginning 8th July 2013) so you don't need to go and find them yourself:

So starting off with a quick one, a volcano:

Video footage of the Popocatepetl eruption has been captured by Mexican military aircraft. The footage (for those to lazy to click the link) shows a smoking single vent at the top of the volcano:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23267354

Lake Vostok:

For several years an Antarctic drilling programme has being happening over the sub-glacial Lake Vostok. The task undertaken has not been insignificant as the teams only operate during the summer months and battle against extreme colds in their quest to drill through 4 kilometres of ice to the lake that lies 200 m below sea level.

But the big news is that the lake may contain all manner of extremophiles and possibly even fish! The energy source of such creatures maybe from nutrient rich hydrothermal vents on the lake bed.

It's all quite a thought when considering the environments that might be suitable for life on other worlds or, closer to home, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, Europa and Enceladus (respectively).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23230864

(As aside this article mentions tardigrades, for more info. see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H0E77TdYnY)

The blue planet of silicate rain:

I'm going to pause for a second and let you wrap your head around the implications of an environment that has liquid sand as rain instead of water or light hydrocarbons (a more celestially common substance to find in a planet's rain).

Not so for HD 189733b which orbits it's sun extremely closely 65 light years for our own blue planet.

Where as our blue sky colour comes from the refraction of light in our atmosphere when light is refracted through silicate rain in an atmosphere over 1000 degrees centigrade it produces a stunning azure blue colour.

The planet was observed crossing its sun (which is one of many ways astronomers now have for detecting planets) and joins the myriad of exotic worlds that we are only just discovering.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23275607

(For more info. on exo-planets check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFPnOUSdMdc)

Journey to the centre of the Earth...:

So the core. We know it's hot, dense and made or some sort of iron alloyed with... err... something. Ok, here's the thing, we actually know very little for sure about the Earth's core and considering that the core is approximately a third of the Earth's volume and takes up half the radius that's pretty embarrassing. Anything we do know is from seismic waves which have the unfortunate property of not being particularly good at being able to distinguish what the wave speed is actually being affected by.
Here are the following factors that can control wave speed of a seismic wave (from, say, a nice big earthquake):
Mineral composition, mineral phase, mineral density, melt fraction, mineral alignment and, finally, temperature.

Yeah, it's a wonder we know anything at all.

Anyway, the big news is there's some new theory about the structure of the Earth's core, for more information see this nice article here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23180271

If you go down to the woods today...:

And finally, scientists have discovered a 50,000 year old forest that was totally submerged and covered until Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico removed the sediments. Now it's a race against time to discover as much about the forest as possible before the sea water does its work and rots the forest away to nothing...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125801-Scientists-Discover-50-000-Year-Old-Underwater-Forest

-------------------

Hopefully I'll have so more science-y news for you next week otherwise I'll just have to wax-geological about this article I'm currently reading about the rheology  of suspended solids in solution.

I keep up to date with the latest news in nuclear technology.... I'm a dedicated follower of fission.

Popocatepetl- The smoking Mountain

Aside from having one of the greatest volcano names on the planet (it's up there with Batu Tara (Indonesia) and Erta Ale (Ethiopia) as one of those volcano names that just trip off the tongue in a delightful ribbon of phonetic sounds), Popocatepetl has an interesting mythology and geology to go along with its frequent activity.

Popocatepetl has been recently in the news (with some very pretty images accompanying it (see below)) for increased activity which has disrupted the airspace over Mexico City (which is approximately 60 km North-West of the volcano). The activity has included near-continuous explosions on Saturday 6th July, gas and ash emissions. As of writing (Monday 8th) reports are that the volcano is on yellow alert (phase 3 of 5) with a 12 km exclusion zone. Sunday 7th saw intermittent eruptions with a steam and ash plume 3 km high.

(Figure 1, reference below)

Like many ridiculously photogenic stratovolcanoes (kind of like the ridiculously photogenic Syrian rebel (dft.ba/-5rebel1) only more deadly), Popocatepetl was formed due to the collision of two plate boundaries, the North American Plate (which the volcano sits upon) and the Cocos Plate that is being subducted beneath it. Fluids are liberated from the subducting plate causing the mantle above the plate to melt and rise up through the crust. This magma mixes with other components creating an Andasitic magma which is viscous, volatile rich leading to explosive eruptions.

(Figure 2, reference below)

 

But let's now talk about some interesting trivia to do with our dear friend El Popo. I've been recently reading a book called 'Melting the Earth: The history of ideas on volcanic eruptions' by Haraldur Sigurdsson which apart from being the most compulsively readable geological text I've read since Prof. Gillian Foulger's 'Plates Vs. Plumes: A geological Controversy' recounts the local creation myth of Popocatepetl amongst other things.

So without too much plagiarism I shall now summarise said Aztec myth: 

 

The two mountains Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl (The Woman in White) were worshiped by the Aztec people as gods.

 

The Smoking Mountain (Popocatepetl) was a warrior who fell in love with the daughter of the emperor, Princess Izraccihuatl. The warrior went away to war and upon his victory headed home to claim his beloved sweetheart. However, enemies of the warrior sent word to the Princess that far from coming home victorious he had been killed. Heartbroken, the Princess died soon after of grief.

Upon discovering his deceased love Popocatepetl built two great mountains. He laid his 'sleeping woman' right on the peak of Iztaccihuatl (La Mujer Dormida, which means 'the sleeping woman') and on the other he forever stands guard bearing her funeral torch.

(I get something of a Romeo and Juliet vibe from this story personally...)

 

As far as explanations for the firry wrath of the great mountains near Mexico City (the flaming torch and insatiable wrath of a great immortal warrior) it certainly beats some of the other ideas early people had about volcanoes (if only in style!) For instance, for a great number of years it was thought that earthquakes and volcanoes were caused by great winds in the caverns beneath the earth! Combine that with some thoughts on the winds being caused by the combustion of brimstone (sulphur) and you've a recipe for some humorous wind-related jokes. (Except I'm far to high brow to make such jokes!)

 

Anyway, that's all for now, if you want to keep up with other volcano related activity I highly recommend the Smithsonian weekly report (the webpage has recently had a nice shiny overhaul) at: http://volcano.si.edu/weekly_report.cfm

or for daily updates on volcanoes practically as it happens check out the Volcano Discovery website:

http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/volcanoes.html



In an attempt to get myself doing this during the doldrums of the holidays expect to see more posts soon!

I'm so cool, I'm obsidian...

References:

Help with working out which plate the volcano is on: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061211100617AAirLaW
Figure 1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/9218197/Mexico-City-on-alert-as-Popocatepetl-volcano-spews-rock-and-ash.html
Figure 2: http://www.platetectonics.com/book/images/Subduction2.gif
Volcano monitoring information: http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/popocatepetl/news.html
More information on Popocatepetl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popacatapetl
Further information on the myth of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iztacc%C3%ADhuatl