Forget Rent... I'm Moving to the Smithsonian

Note: For the next couple of weeks, I am going to be fairly busy. This weekend I started (finally) finishing up the book in which I compile all the interviews I carried out with my dad about the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster. I've been listening to all the interviews again, cleaning up the transcripts, and writing a couple of background chapters. The task is taking me longer than I expected because, frankly, it is somewhat depressing to listen to all of the Fukushima interviews again. I can only handle one or two before I need to take a break. I am persevering, though. I am also busy working on a couple of super secret (for now) guest blog pieces. I'm also doing my regular graduate school work for ~8-9 hours a day. As I work on these other projects, I am going to limit my regular blogging to the geology word of the week and the occasional picture of my summer digs in Laramie, Wyoming. So, to keep my blog readers entertained over the next few weeks, I am going to re-post some geology posts that I wrote on Skepchick before I started a geology blog. The first post is below. This post originally appeared on Skepchick in 2006 here. Enjoy!

Elephant in the Rotunda, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Picture taken from wikipedia here.

There is nothing better than having an empty museum all to yourself. If I ever become wealthy, I think that I’ll rent out the great museums of the world at odd hours so that I can quietly appreciate them. Or maybe I’ll just hone my burglary skills and sneak it at night. I’m not interested in stealing anything, just enjoying the richness of the exhibits without all the lines, tourists, and misbehaving toddlers. 

One of my favorite books from childhood is From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a book about a little girl and her brother who run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a week or so. After all of the tourists go home for the day, the two children have the run of the museum, bathing in the public fountain, sleeping in an antique bed in one of the exhibits, and generally having a good time with all of the artwork and artifacts. After reading this book, I nearly packed a bag and ran away to the nearest big museum, which fortunately was several hours away. Running away from home is not easily accomplished by an eight-year-old stuck in rural New Hampshire with no public transportation.

I Want a Meteorite to Hit My House

I like meteorites. I think it would be very cool if one struck my house, as long as I, my fiance, and my two adorable kitties made it through the impact okay. Alas, while many, many meteorites hit our planet every year, they rarely fall on houses. However, just a few weeks ago a meteorite hit a house in Poland. Thanks to Phil Plait and Ryan Brown for the tip-off on this story. I wonder... if  a meteorite hits your house or car, do you think insurance covers the damage?

A few years back on Skepchick, I jokingly asked for my house in Boston to be hit be a meteorite.. Unfortunately, God had poor aim and hit Bloomington, Illinois instead (though there's a chance this wasn't a real meteorite at all-- anyone know the result of the scientific investigation?).

Note: I am a happy atheist, though I harbor no ill will against most religious people, including many members of my family. I hope no one who is religious takes offense at my tongue-in-cheek joking about asking God to hit my house with a meteorite. At least, I hope my jesting doesn't keep you from reading this blog, which I try to keep geology-focused. I'll only rant here about religion if you tell me the Earth is only 6,000 years old or if you tell me some nonsense such as that the rapture (raptor?) is coming this weekend.

The Origin of the Earth

Note: This blog post is taken from a series of posts that I originally posted on the Skepchick blog back in 2007. These posts came from a paper that I wrote for a Marine Geology & Geophysics class back in 2007, so the information here may be slightly out-of-date since the early Earth and Cosmos is a hot research topic. If you spot any errors (this is just a classroom paper, and I am not an early Earth expert) or want to add anything, please do so in the comments. Finally, I apologize that some of the figures do not have proper references. In my early blogging days, I stole figures and images from the interwebs with wild abandon. These days, I am more careful and try to reference sources. I eventually hope to go through this post and reference or replace the ambiguous figures. Most of the figures are hosted on image shack (I'll move them once I have fast, non-African internet again), so you may need an image shack account to view them properly. For now, I'll have to leave the post as is.  This post is long, but I've broken it up into 5 parts if you wish to digest it in pieces. Enjoy!

For the past couple of weeks [note: back in Spring 2007], I have been busy with final projects at school. For one of my geology classes I did a research project about the early Earth and Cosmos and wrote a paper on the subject, which I find fascinating. I thought some of the readers here might enjoy reading my early Earth paper, so I’m going to post it in installments along with appropriate images stolen from various websites and research articles. This paper is just a class research paper and is by no means comprehensive or perfectly polished, but I think many of you may enjoy it nonetheless.

The Origin of the Earth

Part I: Introduction, the Scientific Toolbox, and Cosmic Starstuff

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us; there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries; in the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it; they remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.
-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Introduction:
The study of the origin and development of the early Earth is one of the most intriguing and important research topics in science today. Understanding Earth's history in the context of the larger Cosmos is both awe-inspiring and humbling. Earth is but a tiny speck in the solar system and is dwarfed by the greater Cosmos. Yet, Earth is our home and harbors the only life of which we know. So, to us, study of the Earth-- both past and present-– is fascinating and also essential for our survival as a species. Psychologically, there is also something especially powerful about studying the early Earth. Just as we value learning about our ancestors and family histories, we value learning about the history of our planet. More practically, a better understanding of early Earth may provide information on how our planet will respond to stresses such as pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and magnetic field reversal. Furthermore, if humans ever colonize planets in other solar systems, knowing what conditions and processes lead to an Earth-like planet may help scientists locate habitable planets. Study of early Earth is also relevant because today, at least in America, religious creationism has a strong hold in many places. Better understanding Earth's long history will aid those who confront the creationists and fight to teach valid science in our school systems.

The goal of this paper is to summarize the processes that scientists believe, to the best of their current understanding, led to the formation and development of the Earth. Because Earth formed from stardust, this paper will begin with an overview of nucleosynthesis, which occurs primarily in stars. The processes leading to the formation of various elements in the Cosmos will be described and trends in elemental abundances explained. Much information about Earth's history can be gleaned from a comparison of the abundances of elements in the Cosmos and solar system with the abundances of elements on Earth. Therefore, differences in the composition of the Cosmos, the sun, and the Earth will be noted and comments made about how elements are fractionated and concentrated in the solar system. Similarly, a general discussion of the solar nebula and the early development of the sun and solar system will be provided in order to put the Earth in a larger context.

Next, a brief overview of meteorites will be provided as Earth is believed to have accreted from planetesimals with compositions similar to meteorites, in particular carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Understanding why and how geologists use meteorites to estimate the intial composition of the Earth is crucial to understanding the assumptions inherent in any geophysical or geochemical model using chondrite values for the composition of the early Earth. Following this discussion of meteorites, the accretion of the Earth from planetesimals will be discussed. The importance of late-stage collisions between large planetesimals will be emphasized. At the same time, the origin of the Moon from Earth via a Mars-sized impactor will be examined. Theories about a magma ocean that may have formed as a result of this giant impact will be presented as this magma ocean may have played a significant role in the differentiation of Earth's iron core.

Finally, the formation of Earth's core and the subsequent differentiation of the upper Earth into an enriched continental crust and a depleted mantle (which now melts and forms oceanic crust) will be described. Possible evidence for an early protocrust, supposedly subducted deep in Earth's mantle, will also be analyzed. Clearly, discussing all these topics related to the origin and development of the Earth is a large task for a small paper. However, this paper will hopefully at least provide a sense of how scientists are able to decipher the early history of our home planet and a general overview of Earth's origin and history.

Mass Spectrometric Musings

Before I started a geology blog, I used to sporadically blog about geology over at Skepchick. These days, I blog here at Georneys about geology, and I blog over at Skepchick about other skeptical and scientific things, such as the premise of the movie "Idiocracy." Occasionally, I will re-post some of my old geology posts from Skepchick. I will also sometimes cross-post on both blogs. The post below originally appeared on Skepchick in 2006 here. Since I just blogged about my most recent mass spectrometry experience, I think it is timely to revisit this Skepchick post. Note that I have made minor corrections to the original Skepchick post. Revisiting this post, I sadly observe that my reading has degraded seriously since my first year of graduate school. As an enthusiastic first year, I would read isotope books for fun! Now I read mystery novels by the mass spectrometer. Oh, well. To be fair, though, I was really reading the isotope book for a homework assignment.

J.J. Thompson, the inventor of the mass spectrometer. Image taken from here.

Last Saturday [Note: in December 2006], I met up with my favorite skepchick Rebecca, and we took the train north of Boston to meet up with some friends for a Newtonmas Party hosted by a skeptic friend of ours. On the way out the door, I grabbed some light reading for the way as I wasn’t sure Rebecca and I would end up on the same train. Fortunately, Rebecca and I did meet up and ended up gossiping on the way. Rebecca also made fun of my “light reading for the train.” The book I selected was Geochemistry of Non-traditional Stable Isotopes, a fascinating little volume that I imagine I’ll read cover-to-cover before the year’s end. Really, though, Rebecca, it is light reading… I mean, it’s far better than other books I could have grabbed, such as, Reaction Mechanisms of Inorganic and Organometallic Systems or Thermodynamics of Minerals and Melts, for instance.