Georneys Has Moved!

Georneys has a new home on the American Geophysical Union Network of Earth and Space Science Blogs. 

The new url for Georneys is: http://blogs.agu.org/georneys/

Be sure to update your RSS feeds! We're currently working on moving my Google Friend Followers over to the new site. I'll give you an update on that in a day or two.

I hope that you'll continue to read Georneys over at AGU! I will keep the blogger site for Georneys up as an archive.

Geology Word of the Week: F is for Fumarole

Fumarole 1. Yellowstone, Western USA, Fall 2005.

def. Fumarole:
A crustal opening, usually in the vicinity of a volcano, through which steam and other hot gases-- such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide-- are emitted. Fumarole comes from the Latin word "fumus," which means smoke. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was incorporated into English through the French word "fumarolle" [1].

Interesting Search Terms That Found My Blog #2

For the past little while, I have been keeping track of some interesting search terms that found my blog. These are just a sampling of ones that I happened across. I've put some "answers" below the search terms. Enjoy!

Also see:
Interesting Search Terms That Found My Blog #1

A Quick Note: Nuclear Dad Book is Coming!

Really, I swear. The book of interviews with my dad, a nuclear engineer, about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster is coming. I know that I promised the book back in April... and then again in June, but this time it's coming for real. I'm trying to make the formatting pretty and everything.

My plan is to release the book around-- or perhaps shortly after-- the four-month mark of the Fukushima disaster, which is coming up on July 11th. I am currently trying to coax my father into conducting a four-month follow-up interview on the current state of the Fukushima nuclear power plants. My father is very busy, but I think my coaxing is slowly working. If I manage to convince him, I will delay the book a day or two so that I can incorporate this four-month update interview.

If you'd like to hear my dad give a four-month Fukushima update, post a comment below!

And sorry for such a long delay with the book. I'm a busy grad student, and compiling these interviews has been a somewhat depressing task that I have not always been motivated to work on for hours upon hours.

Over the next few days, I am going to modify the original interview posts. I'm going to clean them up and replace the transcripts with polished, more uniform, and corrected (for transcript errors) versions. I'll start this process tonight. Watch my twitter feed (@GeoEvelyn) if you're curious as I'll announce each cleaned-up interview version as I post it. Also, if you happen to be reading the new versions of the transcripts and spot any typos or other errors, I would appreciate you letting me know before the book goes to press. Thanks!

A Swiss Fold

Last week I blogged about the "Chondrite Town" of Chur in Switzerland. As I was going through my pictures from Switzerland to find the Chur picture, I came across some photographs of a spectacular Swiss fold. Of course, I was reminded of my fellow geoblogger Callan Bentley and his Friday Fold posts! If you like folds, Callan provides them a-plenty on Fridays.

Gorgeous Swiss Fold. Switzerland, June 2010.

4th of July Rocks: Red, White, and Blue

Happy 4th of July, everyone! In honor of the 4th, here are some red, white, and blue rocks.
Red sandstone:

Red Standstone. Arches National Park, Utah, Fall 2005.

Newly-deposited white travertine:

Travertine forming in an alkaline pool. Oman, January 2009.

And, last but not least, brilliant bright blue kyanite crystals:

Blue kyanite. Image courtesy of Ian Stimpson's Flickr stream.

Geology Word of the Week: E is for Eclogite

Eclogite from the Mariánské Lázně Complex in the west Czech Republic.
Keele collection. Check out those gorgeous pink garnets!
Photo courtesy of Ian Stimpson.

def. Eclogite:
A high-pressure, high-temperature, coarse-grained metamorphic rock consisting primarily of pink-red garnet (almadine-pyrope variety) and green pyroxene (omphacite, a sodium-rich variety). Eclogites may also contain small amounts of other high-pressure minerals such as kyanite, quartz, hornblende, and zoisite. Eclogites form when mafic rock (basalt or gabbro) descends deep within the Earth, generally at a subduction zone. Mafic rocks consist primarily of pyroxene and plagioclase (along with some amphibole and olivine). At high pressures and temperatures, the original minerals in mafic rock are squished into the more compact (denser) minerals garnet and omphacite, and the mafic rock becomes eclogite. Eclogites form when mafic rock encounters temperatures greater than ~400 degrees Celsius and pressures greater than ~12 kbar (or ~1.2 GPa). These temperatures and pressures mean that eclogites form at a minimum depth of ~40 km; some eclogites may form as deep as ~150 km. As a reference, ocean crust (which is comprised primarily of basalt and gabbro) is generally only 6-10 km thick. Because they are very dense and inclined to descend even deeper into Earth's mantle, eclogites are rarely brought to Earth's surface. Eclogites may be exposed in ophiolite sequences and other places where deep mantle rocks are brought to Earth's surface. Often, eclogites experience partial or full retrograde metamorphism as they are brought to Earth's surface. That is, if eclogites are brought to the surface slowly, their minerals may change back into minerals that are stable at lower temperatures and pressures. Sometimes, higher-pressure minerals will have rims of lower-pressure minerals around them.