Upcoming post series: Alex's Dinnertime Geology

[kaberett]

This is something I've been meaning to do for a few weeks, and I think I will shortly have brain for it. It arises because I often joke that, actually, as a geologist it's remarkably easy to get away with talking about work at parties - because while what I actually do is quite dull, every igneous geologist has their Top Five Volcanoes, and what's not to like about that. So! The idea is a series of posts on Cool Geological Shite, in (approximately) lay terms.

Stuff already on the list:

• how we know how many days there were in a year three billion years ago
  
• top five volcanoes
  
• ENORMOUS MILLIPEDES (with gammy legs)
  
• how we could tell meteorites were from Mars before we'd ever been to Mars
  
• trilobites with eyes on stalks
  
• unravelling continental motion over geological history
  
• magnetic stripes IN THE OCEAN
  
• plate tectonics
  
• core polarity reversals

... and so on, and so forth. Is there anything you'd like me to add? I am very willing to take requests for this series!

Comments

[forthwritten]

I am looking forward to your top five volcanoes. When I was four I somehow heard about Parícutin and desperately wanted a volcano in my back garden for my birthday. My parents were, understandably, reluctant.

[kaberett]

I spent ludicrous amounts of my youth suspicious of a molehill that was definitely going to turn into a volcano. In the back garden of a church that, at a still younger age, I'd decided was the house of a giant. MY CHILDHOOD LET ME SHOW YOU IT.

[surexit]

I am excited by ENORMOUS MILLIPEDES. :D:D:D

[kaberett]

:D :D :D

[inoru_no_hoshi]

I am looking forward to this whole series. :D Maybe especially volcanoes because I've been enamored of them since I was wee, but all the series. :DD

[worlds_of_smoke]

If you do millipedes, please lj-cut and warn? They're not super freaky to us, like centipedes, but we still need a moment before clickyclickying.

[kaberett]

Will do, and thank you for flagging up again (I was probably going to anyway, but it's good to be sure!).

[kaberett]

Oral history and mythology as historical record of volcanic activity.

Friends and Lavas

[hairyears]

Top 5 volcanoes: does this include all volcanoes -including long-term hazards like the Yellowstone 'supervolcano' - or is it only recently-active volcanoes?

Re: Friends and Lavas

[kaberett]

Depends on the geologist ;)

Most of my favourites are currently active, but I am yet young. :-)

[swaldman]

Is the crust solid, or fluid, or something inbetween? I seem to remember reading that the pattern of the rise and fall of... er, I forget the term, mountains that result from plate collisions rather than intrusions... anyway, ISTR reading that the rise and fall of the Himalayas and Alps and so forth look very much like a really viscous fluid when viewed on geological timescales.

Or was the thing that told me that wrong?

(Something tells me that the actual answer to this may be more materials science / physics than geology, but hey, any insight welcome :-))



ETA: Incidentally, I'm guessing that the answer to your first question is relevant to my field... :-)

[kaberett]

Re your ETA - how do you feel about stromatolites? ;)

The answer to your question requires distinction to be made between chemical division of the Earth (into crust, mantle and core) and rheological/mechanical division (lithosphere vs asthenosphere, i.e. brittle deformation vs ductile deformation/solid-state convection). Will happily natter about it but may have to do a technical version and a less technical version :-)

[naath]

Extraterrestrial geology

[kaberett]

Within or without the solar system? Selenology? :-)

[naath]

oooh, well, we (in physics) did some stuff on things in our solar system; so a more... geologist... point of view on that would be interesting. But extra-solar-system would be cool too.

[kaberett]

Earthquake prediction.