Breaking New - Geologists No Longer Needed

Well since Dr. Michio Kaku, a physicist, is now taking on the job of interpreting geological events (see earthquakes are geological events), all geologists have decided they are no longer needed and have taken holiday.


Thanks to Dana over at En Tequila es Verdad and Erik Klemetti on Twitter for pointing this out.

News of the Day - Creationists at GSA?

Here is an article from Earth Magazine where the writer went on a field trip and later listened to a talk from a well known Creationist as a GSA meeting. What? A Creationist at a GSA meeting? What the hell?

But I think he makes a valid point and I agree that, should the science warrent it, they should be allowed to say what they think, let the science stand on its own, and let other people judge. It is when the science is crap and they ignore facts that I have a problem.

Creationism creeps into mainstream geology

News of the Day - Diamonds Produced from Booze

This is a rather older article that just came to my attention and it doesn't involve beer (which is of primary interest to geologists) but tequila. It turns out:

"tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."

Awesome.

Scientists Turn Tequila into Diamonds

News of the Day

Palaeontologists Solve Mystery of 500 Million-Year-Old Squid-Like Carnivore
This is interesting. I could see where they got their conclusions from but I am not entirely convinced that this is the earliest cephalopod. It also indicates that early cephalopods were shell-less and later ones evolved the shell, which I think is counter to what one would expect. I'm not sure how the scientific community will see this in the long run.

Ancient fossils hold clues for predicting future climate change, scientists report

This is really interesting in that it shows that the Earth has not stabalized to the CO2 levels we are currently at. Once the climate stabalizes we are going to see significantly higher temperatures even if we were to stop the release of new CO2 into the atmosphere. I have a feeling the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the next 100 years than the majority of people are expecting.


Thanks to Jim Kirkland for notifying me of the articles.

News of the Day - Trace Fossil

Trace fossils make the news today. Looks a bit buggy to me :-)

Leaving an Impression That Has Lasted Forever

News of the Day - 8.9 Earthquake!!!

Just a quick note that there was an 8.9 Earthquake that hit Japan today. Here is a video in which they won't let me embed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLtqrKea1Zg

Video from CNN

They have been hit by a tsunami as well. This is 5th largest earthquake in history and the largest to hit Japan in over a 100 years.

Pacific Coast Tsunami Alert!!!!

Here are some links to more info.

USGS

Mountain Beltway

Paleoseismicity

Geotripper

News of the Day - Color 1906 Earthquake Photos

So I just heard about this this morning but I thought it was really cool, and the pictures are phenomenal. They are the only known color photographs of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake showing all of the destruction that took place. What makes this interesting is that not only are the pictures in color and they look like could have been taken recently, but they were designed to be viewed in 3D!!!!! (Although the photographer never got the 3D visuals to work). Here are a couple of links to some of the news out there.

Color photos of 1906 San Francisco quake aftermath found

Color pics of San Francisco after '06 quake found

And here are the pictures everyone is talking about today.

News of the Day - Awesome

I saw this on the news yesterday and I thought this was just freaking awesome. It is like paleo meets bio meets the medical field all in one.

A Material Based on Sharkskin Stops Bacterial Breakouts

News of the Day

‘Tree octopus’ is latest evidence the internet is making kids dumb, says group

Please help save the endangered tree octopus.

NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six Planet System

Start packing.

Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction by 700,000 Years, Fossil Find Suggests

It is the Jesus dinosaur? (resurrected after death). U-Pb dating used to confirm that a dino last beyond the K-T mass extinction. Although I am a bit skeptical since the start of the clock is the end of fossilization which can happen rapidly or could take some time depending on the depositional environment. They attribute the find to isolated regions of vegetation.

News of the Day

Largest Land-Dwelling "Bug" of All Time

Hans-Dieter Sues examines what was once one freaking big bug (~6 feet long). Ewww.

Earth’s magnetic field: still not reversing

A great blog write-up on the Earth's Magnetic field and the changes that are continually taking place.

Earth's Hot Past Could Be Prologue to Future Climate

How our past was once it could be again. I believe this has something to do with learning from history. It is a shame history was so long ago.

Researchers aim to resurrect mammoth in five years

Haven't you always wanted a Mammoth?

News of the Day

Pint-Sized, Running Dinosaur Gave Rise to Carnivores

Interesting new find that may one of the oldest carnivore. The most interesting part is how it closely resembles other early dinosaurs that are on different lineages.

Your Zodiac Sign May Have Changed

Seems like scientists have reevaluated how the Earth shifts in its orbit causing changes in the Zodiac, but I have heard some disgruntled reactions to these. So we will see if they stick.

A thanks to Thomas Holtz for posting these on his Facebook page.

Red sky at night... Sicily looks on as Mount Etna erupts in spectacular fashion

Really awesome photos of the recent eruption of Mount Etna. Thanks to Matt, my brother-in-law for the heads up.

More than 500 dead in Brazil's worst flood disaster

A months worth of rain in a few hours can have some pretty tragic results. I wouldn't be suprised though if this had something to do with deforestation.

New Way to Calculate Age of Earth's Crust

Not much info in the article but it site's the Science article that it stems from.

34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive!

Interesting find.

News of the Day

Gulf Oil Spill: Methane Gas Concentrations in Gulf of Mexico Quickly Returned to Near-Normal Levels, Surprising Researchers

Apparently methane-eating bacteria exploded to unheard of numbers and completely removed the gas from the water years ahead of the expected timeline. This shows the resiliency of our planet to combat this sort of thing.

Climate Change to Continue to Year 3000 in Best Case Scenarios, Research Predicts

Looks like no matter what we do now we have impacted the climate for at least the next thousand years. Way to go humanity.
 
God was behind Big Bang, universe no accident: Pope

Don't worry, we figured it out. It was God.

Geology News of the Day

A follow up to my pevious news of th day, which states that the NASA scientists discovery of arsenic based lifeforms may not have been entirely accurate

Scientists poke holes in NASA’s arsenic-eating microbe discovery

Global warming (global climate change?) strikes again. And this time it may be fatal.

If an island state vanishes, is it still a nation?

Geology News of the Day

Apparently the sealevel rise following the melting of the ice sheets was not as steady as originally though. Looks like it could have jumped up to 2.5 meters/century.

Global Sea-Level Rise at the End of the Last Ice Age Interrupted by Rapid 'Jumps'

Geology News of the Day

Scientists find that not everything is as simple as we thought. Apparently life can form even in the absence of life forming minerals.

Arsenic-munching germ redefines "life as we know it"

News of the Day

Well since I am taking my PhD qualifying exams in a few months I have made it a point to check out recent scientific news articles and keep up to date. Well many of them I find really interesting and I figured I would pass them on to the blogging world. I can't guarantee this will be a daily thing but I will try to do it as often as possible.

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Squidworm found in the ocean depths. A new organism (a polychaete named Teuthidodrilus samae) has been found floating around the deep sea. It is rather cool looking (like many of the deep sea life) and since I studying deep sea I figured I should check it out. Also check out another story here.