tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75632447711130529702024-03-04T21:37:57.500-08:00Jeff WynnMusings on Science, Religion, and PhilosophyAskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-9977223658862783562022-01-06T17:39:00.000-08:002022-01-06T17:46:35.724-08:00...And You Will Have Knowledge – From FOUR Sources. ALL of them must be verifiable.<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">ABSTRACT</span></b>: Eyeballs.
Science. News. Revelation/Inspiration, in no particular order. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>However, note
that we all must question and verify <i>every</i> source of knowledge. For instance,
if you hear someone emphasize the word “unbiased” regarding a public-domain
news source, you should become deeply suspicious: why would the purveyors feel
they even need to say that? If you hear someone making a distinction between
science <i><u>vs.</u></i> religion, it is usually prima facie evidence that the
speaker doesn’t understand either. Our modern social electronic world is as
full of nontruth as our world was a thousand years ago – <i>Surprise!</i> Well,
what can we do about this? The short answer is that <i>we should start with
what we are reasonably certain of</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are really
just four distinct sources of knowledge available to all human beings. By
knowledge, in this case I mean information that is true. Just like a thousand
years ago, all of them, including our own eyes, <i>must be verified</i> – all
of them must be “truthed.” That sometimes requires looking for an underlying
motivation behind something that seems… off. Seems wrong. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">DIRECT OBSERVATION</span><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first
source of information for all of us starting with infancy is our own eyes and
our own ears: direct observation. This seems simple, but it is very important for
two reasons: First, because we compare or scale all other sources of
information against what we are certain we <i>know</i>. And second, because witness
rules and procedures in courts of law make it clear that we cannot always rely
on eyewitnesses. Or even our eyes. As Richard Pryor said, “Do you believe <i>me</i>
– or your stinkin’ <i>eyes</i>?!??” We should at least think about what we saw
with our eyes; quite a few innocent men have been executed because of faulty or
biased eye-witness reporting. There is a compelling reason why any good
scientist takes copious notes of her/his observations – our memories are the
weak link here, not our eyes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Let’s begin
by considering in detail the first source of knowledge: our own personal
observation. It is very rare in science to be able to conduct direct
observation, believe it or not. If it were easy, the Greeks, Maya, Chinese, and
others without instrumentation would have already answered all our scientific
questions. Examples include the fact that the Earth is not flat; Greeks by the
5<sup>th</sup> century BC noticed a curved shadow on the Moon during Lunar
eclipses, and even reported an observation of sunlight penetrating to the
bottom of a well in Southern Egypt – and noting that it didn’t do this in
Greece. Eratosthenes is believed to be the first person to determine the <i>size</i>
of the Earth – through measurement – in the 2<sup>nd</sup> century BC. A
century later, Posidonius, a Greek astronomer and mathematician, calculated the
<i>circumference</i> of the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. Greek observational
science was not perfect, however: even Aristotle, revered for millennia as a brilliant
scientist, thought hummingbirds did not have feet. Really. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">SCIENCE</span><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now let’s
consider a second source: science. In order to “do” science, we must depend in
almost all cases on <i>indirect observation</i> through carefully controlled
experiments, and then <i>the use of inductive and deductive reasoning</i>. A
rare exception from my personal life: I was in Northern Saudi Arabia after one
of the terrible seasonal sandstorms called a <i>Shamaal</i>. There was so much
dust in the air that initially we could not even land at the town of ‘Ar-‘Ar –
the pilot could not see the ground! Many hours later, after waiting at a Saudi military
airbase to the west in Tobuk, we returned and started our borehole logging
experiments. I was leading this effort to determine if we could <i>indirectly</i>
map the huge phosphate deposits in the region using caliper and gamma-ray
logging. Late that first afternoon, I realized that with my unprotected eyes I
could see a huge sunspot cluster on the upper left quadrant of the setting Sun.
I diagrammed it in my field notebook. I did this again the second day, missed the
third day for some reason, but got it again the fourth day. I realized that
with direct personal observation – with my own eyes – I could determine the <i><u>axis</u></i>
of the Sun with respect to where I was standing, and its approximate <i><u>rotation
rate</u></i> at the equator (I roughly calculated at least 20 days – it’s
actually 27 at the Sun’s equator). In my internet research, I do not see any
evidence that the ancient Greeks, Chinese, or Maya were able to do this. <i>I
saw this with my own eyes <u>and recorded it</u>. I know it absolutely to be
true. <o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For the
purposes of the following discussion, you do not need a science degree or even
use the word “science” if you are talking about sources of verifiable information
guiding you. You could say “knowledge” or “data” or “understanding” when it
comes to explaining what you are reasonably certain is correct based on the
reliability of the source. I carefully added that qualifier “reasonably” to
that sentence – because much “information” available in the public domain is not
fact-based. Someone just pulled it out of their ear and yelled loudly about it
to get advertising credits. It’s a sleazy business model: to monetize anger. It
has also led to the unnecessary deaths of <i>many</i> mentally susceptible
people during the Covid-19 pandemic. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Elsewhere I
have made a separate distinction between <i>truth</i>, and <i>Truth</i> – the
latter with a capital “T” – to distinguish between information that is ephemeral,
and information that will not be revised in the future but is always that same
information. The Sun will rise tomorrow, for instance, though you may not see
it. Also, the nature or existence of God is something that <i>should</i> be
unchanging, essentially by definition. It really should <i>not</i> be something
that changes with temporary human fashion or culture or group opinion-swings.
Fundamentally, if there <i>is</i> a Creator God, and He isn’t just a Transcendent
God but an <i>Imminent God</i> who cares about His creations, then He should, by
definition, be far beyond our comprehension. Similarly, the detailed evolution
of the universe around us is permanently beyond our comprehension, though as
scientists we get tiny, enthralling glimpses of it. We just do not have the
wherewithal in the way of synapses to encompass a full understanding of either.
To suppose otherwise is an incredibly arrogant assumption that implies that we
are equivalent to God or the Universe. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I will here
also make a distinction here between short-term correct information (for
instance, a weather report) and long-term correct information. The latter I
will call Important Information. By this I mean long-term things, things that
you would consider or think about if you or a loved one are/is approaching the
end of life, for instance. Weather reports are an important source of useful information
that we often consider as we go about our daily lives. My wife and I drove
through a Sky River on November 12, 2021 – we had not checked the weather
reports – and it was terrifying. The time scale is important here, however. On
November 9, 2021, there were gale warnings for Port Townsend, WA, which we were
visiting. The next day it was calm and sunny in Port Townsend. However, a
weather report is well below the threshold of Important Information in terms of
what is meaningful ten years from now – or 100 years from now. Is something
important to you – or even relevant – 100 years from now? If so, then it fits
in the category of Important Information. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Let’s continue
to consider <i>science</i> as a source of information to help guide our
decisions, and improve our lives. In science we acquire data, but we must also process
and interpret it – data generally don’t explain themselves to the
non-specialist – and then report our findings. As scientists, we think through
our research results carefully, and then decide what it means. I’ve published
over 300 books, maps, and scientific papers while working as a scientist with
the U.S. Geological Survey – and they all must go through technical review.
This means that at least two other people – <i>whom I do not choose</i> – must read
through my draft papers and vet them for consistency and correct logic. A
science manager then reads through all the reviews and the revised draft <i>to
make sure that the final result is <u>true</u></i><u>.</u> Do cigarettes
improve your digestion after a big meal? That was the public consensus until
1965. By then however, enough data had been gathered to make a reliable
interpretation that no, the cigarette company ads were incorrect at best. By
1965 science knew that any benefits beyond addiction-management were outweighed
by the irreparable damage that cigarettes did to your lungs, your heart, your
face, and your brain. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But for
scientific data to be reliable, you must first ascertain <i>that you have
enough of it to even make a judgement or interpretation in the first place</i>.
In science, this is called the sampling number, or “n” in an experimental
investigation. A single experiment with a binary outcome (for instance just a
yes or no) on a single parameter is not science. One of my uncles chain-smoked
for 85 years and lived to the age of 97. That’s just a single data-point in a
nicotine-benefits study. The second-hand smoke gave his mother-in-law, my
grandmother, terminal lung cancer by age 88, however. These are just <i>TWO</i>
data-points, and there are a <i>lot</i> of additional unseen variables. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You need a
large enough “n” to even carry out a reasonable statistical analysis of the
data you acquire. A state-level cancer dataset would qualify. Which state has
the lowest numbers of cancer deaths overall, for instance? Would you be
surprised to learn that it is Utah (<b><i><u><span style="color: #3d85c6;">https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/cancer_mortality/cancer.htm</span></u></i></b>)?
Then can you suggest why? This raises an even more fundamental issue, however:
is something even <i>testable</i> or “experimentable” in the first place? The
philosopher Carl Popper (1902-1994) gave to the world the concept of
“falsifiability”: can something <i>even be tested in the first place</i>? The
existence of a God, the existence of a multiverse, what preceded the Big Bang,
why <i>is</i> the Anthropic Principle… these are not things that can be tested
in the ordinary meaning of a scientific investigation. These belong in another
domain sometimes called meta philosophy: <i>sort</i> <i>of thinking about</i> philosophy.
They are just big ideas that make us feel warmly smug that we can think about
them, but otherwise (unless there is an application) they are useless to humans
and their well-being. These things constitute Important Information, but
science cannot help us here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The concepts
of a large enough sample (that “n” number), along with falsifiability, are
profoundly important. But there is another almost hidden issue: any large
number of data points will <i>always</i> <i>include</i> <i>noise</i>: systemic
noise, random noise, instrumental noise, as well as experimental design biases.
There is no such thing as a perfect experimental approach, no matter what some NSF
grant proposal might assert. In a simplest case example, let’s consider a
single variable set, for instance adult height vs. weight. In simplest form, this
can be represented as y = a + b*x. The variable “a” is how much one weighs when
X (one’s height) is zero – and is just included for general completeness here. One
would think that the result would be a straight (upward-tilting) line, but
we’ve all seen skinny and obese individuals, so it’s more complicated than
that. Data points collected can easily be scattered all over an X-Y graph. If
you have sufficient data, there will be data points that are “outliers” – well
off the beaten path of what we <i>think</i> might be reasonable results. This
could be a morbidly obese individual or someone suffering from anorexia. If
there are enough sample points, we can do a quick statistical analysis and
determine if a suspicious point is more than, say, two standard deviations away
from the average trend of the rest of the data. Some immature scientists might
even just discard a data point that they don’t “like” – but this becomes “cherry
picking” and is no longer science. That scientist has introduced a new variable
– personal sampling bias – into the data analysis. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We can
arbitrarily decide to throw out data points on a graph that lie more than two
standard deviations away from the rest of the data… but this is an arbitrary
decision also. Why not one standard deviation? Or three? Depending on how we carry
out one of these arbitrary data-discard exercises, a “regression” – drawing a
line (generally but not necessarily straight) through the data-points on that
simplest X-Y graph – could tilt the function curve upwards (increasing weight
with increasing height) or downwards (decreasing weight with increasing height).
In this example (see figure 1) I am only talking about a very simple,
two-variable system. You can represent it on a 2D graph, on a single piece of
paper. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another simple
example from our recent trip to the Hoh Rainforest: How many seagulls show up
if I throw crackers out into a parking lot in Forks, WA? This seems like an
example of a simple scientific experiment. Or is it? Perhaps the final greatest
problem with any scientific experiment is to <i>isolate variables</i>. <i>Dependent</i>
variables are the nightmare of any scientific study. Toss out too many crackers
and all sorts of birds (and perhaps squirrels) will show up, for instance. Throwing
out just saltine crackers only, where a Western Gull only is likely to see it,
is a personal experimental design bias in the form of several assumptions that
may not be justified. Are there crows or scrub jays around? How would I even
know that since they generally don’t want to be seen? These are examples of
hidden, or missed, or dependent variables. When there is a lot of “scatter” in
experimental data it almost always means that there are additional variables or
biases affecting our data – complicating things that we may not even realize
are there. Gravity, or wind, perhaps in this case. Different bird types that we
do not see, perhaps. Some weirdness or blind spot in our data-collection
system, or our electronic recording devices, or the species of surrounding
trees, even. A more accurate solution could be a 4-D (or 19-D) graph (figure 1).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Related to
this is the issue of accuracy vs. precision. If I keep shooting arrows at a
target and they consistently land around a single point on the ground, well, I
have precision here. If they end up consistently in the center of the target,
then this is accuracy. Precision or repeatability in measurements or
data-gathering does <i>not</i> lead to Important Information, because the
results <i>may not be</i> <i>correct</i>. The trick, then, is to assess <i>accuracy</i>.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcbP-SRbIU7Bv1MJS-FrKJVJ9OQ-daG6VS_LYB5dAyb_e2UrECMX63F9kJEw7GTWZqAOtAyxympTyUQflH8HJ8x_Rl4q9QPhT1jU-vrVqmlnoJPG_EYBv6x1jI1XZdhQmEwCbRodj8CRw-iZr2V3njmc6MtqxGHgrEvGesCl6xPNbjEcbdnI92Smnq=s608" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="608" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcbP-SRbIU7Bv1MJS-FrKJVJ9OQ-daG6VS_LYB5dAyb_e2UrECMX63F9kJEw7GTWZqAOtAyxympTyUQflH8HJ8x_Rl4q9QPhT1jU-vrVqmlnoJPG_EYBv6x1jI1XZdhQmEwCbRodj8CRw-iZr2V3njmc6MtqxGHgrEvGesCl6xPNbjEcbdnI92Smnq=s320" width="320" /></a><br />
<p class="MsoCaption">Figure 1. Regression analysis involves fitting a straight
line (or sometimes a simple curved function) to a scatterplot of data. One or
two noisy data-points can dramatically shift the result. <i>Image from Gonick & Smith (1993), "The cartoon guide to Statistics" Collins Reference.</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All of this
is a long way around saying that science is <i>always imperfect, just like news
(see figure 2)</i>. Science is a growing, organic thing, very dependent on
human or data-gathering limitations, and biases. Science must be constantly
tested, self-checked, and compared against older data – and technically
reviewed. Those who worship science as the be-all, end-all of creation, <i>do
so at great personal risk</i>. This actually has a name: it’s called Scientism.
Another way of putting this: you think you’re smarter than the universe.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As an
example of how this imperfect scientific process might affect our very lives
and health, consider the science we all saw unfolding in how to deal with the
SARS-COV-19 virus in 2020-2021. The virus in its many manifestations, social contexts
and variables including different spike proteins, social isolation, age, health,
and the <i>wealth</i> of human victims is an experimental scientific nightmare.
Stopping the Pandemic so far still seems so… incomplete... after nearly two
years of evolving and expensive medical and governmental responses to it. Grotesquely
amateur political interference made things worse, of course, but the nature of
science is that there are <i>always</i> too many variables and internal biases to
realistically take them all into account. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a way,
the progression of data-gathering, and the evolving analyses we’ve seen during
the Covid-19 Pandemic are characteristic of the very nature of good science: it
is a growing, evolving thing. It is being conducted by very fallible human beings
<i>but keeps getting better</i>. Science is <i>approaching</i> the Correct
Answer(s), and every month the recommendations are more reliable, more useful.
Masks? Different vaccines? Boosters? Lockdowns? Confronting self-serving,
deliberate misinformation? These changing issues are just science happening in
public view, self-correcting (ideally) and advancing in the right direction
(hopefully). To make the assumption that <i>an early interpretation of that
data must never change </i>is unrealistic – and profoundly uninformed. Science <i>approaches</i>
truth as a final product. Except in very limited and simple systems, it never
actually quite gets there. It’s far better than rabid, uninformed opinion,
however. It’s like the famous Winston Churchill quote:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>“Many forms of Government have been tried and will be
tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect
or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time.…”</i></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– Winston S Churchill,
11 November 1947<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">NEWS/INTERNET</span><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Let’s next
consider <i>sources</i> of <i>publicly available knowledge – </i>the hope here
is that all the research has already been done for us<i>. </i>Let’s start with,
ahem, “news.” Many consider the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the
Wall Street Journal to be reliable sources of information. There are some
people who prefer Fox or InfoWars or MSNBC or the Daily Kos as their source of
information because it complements something that they already believe to be
true or correct (usually of a political nature). In logic, this is called a
“confirmation bias.” In some cases, it is the akin to pouring gasoline on a
dangerous fire.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Pew
Charitable Trust finances studies on polling and biases. It has had an unbiased
reputation itself for decades because it is <i>in their mission statement</i>
to avoid bias. Ad Fontes (“to the source”) is related and does the same. They
are both careful in their assessments, and deliberately apolitical. Pew ranks
the NYTimes and the Associated Press as sources of reliable facts and
information. It considers Fox News, and especially InfoWars and the Daily Kos,
to be well outside of a green box (below) surrounding what Pew considers
reliable sources of data, and far to the right or left politically. In other
words, Fox, InfoWars, and the Daily Kos are not sources of reliable information
according to Pew, but sources of wildly skewed opinion that is generally not
fact-based. Fox TV personalities, for instance, rail against vaccines on air. <i>Yet
it is established fact that every one of them is vaccinated</i>. There are
sources on both ends of the political spectrum that Pew and Ad Fontes consider
to be unreliable (figure 2).<o:p></o:p></p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgowuyMOp_andzeEgB7med6F47rNzQZibUmH_H4-VyiimVr-oI0eYjo80ERWdYk0hab2CPU6t9Ku3AeEbSTRm-EX-sakQID6Hjc9dg80TztNK-ML32QTfmuLmQg-b_rMvrKtehE0Xuklg5G4Vqx5pDfXN7JPuIIPt82nj9ldsQJR3didlnprUyLdqI_=s1430" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1104" data-original-width="1430" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgowuyMOp_andzeEgB7med6F47rNzQZibUmH_H4-VyiimVr-oI0eYjo80ERWdYk0hab2CPU6t9Ku3AeEbSTRm-EX-sakQID6Hjc9dg80TztNK-ML32QTfmuLmQg-b_rMvrKtehE0Xuklg5G4Vqx5pDfXN7JPuIIPt82nj9ldsQJR3didlnprUyLdqI_=s320" width="320" /></a><br />
<p class="MsoCaption">Figure 2. Ranking of news sources according to political
bias and reliability. The green box is the place to trust. The orange, and
especially the red boxes, include sources to avoid if truth is important to
you. <i>Image from Ad Fontes Media, Inc. (2018).</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In general,
we should carefully avoid basing major life decisions (like vaccination) on
anything political and/or not fact-based – on sources outside the Green Box in
the figure above. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">REVELATION</span><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now let’s
take a significant jump and consider a <i>fourth source</i> of information:
revelation. Another way to say this: otherwise-unexplainable information from a
completely outside source, <i>a Source we may already realize is committed to
not violating our personal agency so usually doesn’t explain itself</i>. We all
know examples of people who somehow “know” something important without an
obvious reason why. In one type of example, we even have a name for this: a
mother’s intuition. My own mother once put my baby sister in a highchair out in
the backyard of our house. She wanted Barb to get fresh air and sunlight
(before UVA/UVB was understood to contribute to skin cancers). Suddenly (I
remember this) she rushed out of the house. She said later that she had a “bad
feeling” about the baby being out there but didn’t understand why. As she
picked up the baby and started to dismantle the highchair to bring it back
inside, she saw something move on the underside of the table part: a huge black
widow spider. It had been within centimeters of my little sister’s legs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Unexplainable,
outside source, un-asked-for information. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #0070c0;">Two Different <i>Depths</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>An analysis
of revelation as a source of Important Information must be done at two separate
depths or scales: personal revelation, and revelation at a much larger scale: from
someone we implicitly or explicitly trust. This could be a parent, a teacher, a
prophet (ancient or modern). If you are paying tithing, it strongly implies a
belief and acceptance in a prophet or leader of a church as a reliable source
of truthful information and guidance. I personally know people who fiercely
object to vaccines and masks, though they claim to be members of the Church of
Jesus Christ and say that they follow its prophet. If you don’t agree with that
leader on, say, vaccination or masks, and you still pay tithing and attend that
Church, then you are suffering a serious rational disconnect in your life. This
is the equivalent of gross hypocrisy in conversation – or even schizophrenia. What
else don’t you agree with him on? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #0070c0;">Reading Scriptures &
Prayer<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #0070c0;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b>Perhaps the most consistent way to receive
personal revelation is by reading the scriptures, and in personal prayer. It’s unsurprising
that prophets for millennia have encourage the human family to study the
scriptures available to it. There is a downside to this approach, however: the
revelation you <i>want</i> may not be the revelation you <i>get</i>. If you do
as modern prophets have suggested – “<i>search</i> the scriptures” – instead of
just reading them from start to finish, you may be able to improve the
efficiency of the want/get convergence here. Of course, if you have not read
the Standard Works through a few times already, you won’t really have any idea
what to even search for, Topical Guide notwithstanding. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #0070c0;">Worthiness<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #0070c0;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span>There
is another issue here that is perhaps the most important of all: being in tune.
In short, <i>worthiness is critical</i>. Years ago, I worked with Venezuelan
geology teams in the deep jungle of the Amazonas Territory (now Amazonas State).
It was incredibly dangerous, where things like Bushmaster snakes were the least
of our worries. One Venezuelan friend fell on his machete and sliced open his
right radial artery. The USGS geologist that I had assigned to work with Henry
said he saw a 2-meter spurt of arterial blood shooting out. He managed to stop
the bleeding and together they called for an emergency medevac on their HF camp
radio. There was someone listening on the frequency we used, and that someone
called for a rescue helicopter. Henry Sanchez lost perhaps a third of his blood
(he went into shock if he wasn’t upside down in the aircraft) but he lives in
Tucson today. Another American scientist working in a different jungle camp
came back to our base a week later and told me that they could <i>listen</i> to
the rescue, but that their radio <i>could not transmit</i>. Gary had no idea
that Henry had even survived. This is a long way of saying that you need a <i>means
to communicate</i> that <i>works in both directions</i>, you need to have
someone <i>listening</i>, <u>both ways</u>, and you need to be using the <i>right
frequency</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the
radio world there is a <i>lot</i> of information floating out there. You must
tune into the transmission you seek. If you are not in tune with the Holy
Ghost, because you are living a lifestyle dissonant with Him, then you can’t
really expect that He will be terribly encouraged to even deal with you. <i>You
are not working on the same frequency</i>. You cannot just yell “SAVE ME!” Or
perhaps say, “I really like that flashy car – I <i>need</i> it. What? Well, no,
I don’t have money – I don’t even have a job! You, God (somehow) <i>owe</i> it
to me.” This sort of discordant thinking almost never works, the Prodigal Son
being a notable (and for many of us, encouraging) exception.<span style="color: #0070c0;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #0070c0;">Testing<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You must also
consider the data reliability issue for personal revelation, just like in
science, news, and even personal observation. Revelation must be testable, and
this part can be frustrating because the process takes a long time to verify.
Here there is yet another advantage to arriving at an advanced age. If you have
received “understandings” (or whatever you wish to call them), and they are self-consistent
and pan out over time, then you will have steadily increasing confidence in
those understandings – revelations – if they arrive the same way. You have a
growing database, so to speak. This often means in my personal experience that you
are not thinking about the subject when the understanding arrives. With age,
you will begin to note that the understanding or revelation does not even come
into your mind in English or whatever language you tend to think in… but
arrives as an <i>instantaneous understanding</i>. More commonly, the understanding
is just a peaceful feeling in the midst of a personal disaster or general
chaos. This even has a specific name: “<i>The peace that surpasseth understanding.</i>”
I first experienced this after I had passed the written physics qualification
exam at the University of Illinois, an exam to decide if you could go on to
work on a PhD. That year, however (1970) there were over 1,500 graduating
physics PhDs – and available jobs for just 236 of them in the United States.
It’s amazing how I can still remember those specific numbers, many years later.
The University of Illinois had decided to drastically cut back on their physics
graduate student population: the post-atomic-bomb era was officially over: the
country no longer needed hundreds of thousands of physics PhD’s. So, the
Physics department that year added an <i>oral</i> component to the Quals, as we
called them. This I failed miserably, meaning that I could not stay at the
university beyond that semester. I faced a real personal disaster that also
affected my wife, who had a year to go to finish her BA degree. As we stared into
the sunset through the window of our little apartment, however, I had an
incredible feeling of peace, of <i>not-to-worry</i>. This, I now realize, comes
from the Atonement. Peace that mitigates suffering. That sense of peace is always
remarkably devoid of details – it “…<i>surpasseth understanding</i>.” In other
words, it usually makes no logical sense. Only four years later did I finally
understood that sense of peace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It works.
It’s very real. I’ve experienced it many times. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Less
commonly, a revelatory understanding arrives with <i>very specific information</i>.
In another personal example, which happened on June 7, 1995, the message to me arrived
at the most comically illogical time. It came in the middle of a contentious
meeting between the Saudi Deputy Ministry for Mineral Resources, the US
Geological Survey, and the French counterpart of the USGS in Jeddah called the Bureau
de Recherches Géologiques et Minières. Angry words were being exchanged and I
was just keeping my head low to avoid being drawn into what I had earlier
realized was just another example of Saudi paranoia… but which my French
colleagues had yet to realize was not even a rational discussion. Suddenly, a
diamond-hard, instantaneous understanding hit me. The message: “<i>The time to
leave Saudi Arabia is in October – Do not worry about this. This is in answer
to your prayers for the past 18 months concerning your wife’s declining health</i>.”
When this bright and very sharp understanding arrived, I nearly fell out of my tilted-back
chair. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I walked
home and unpacked that understanding, converting it to English to share with my
wife. To us it made no sense initially… because our children would normally
start school in August. This particular revelation arrived four months before
our departure from the Magic Kingdom, as we called it. Months later we realized
that the specific timing saved me from a Reduction in Force in the US
Geological Survey… that took place with almost no warning in August 1995. It
also meant that one son could finish his senior year in his Swiss boarding
school, and not in a Virginia high school where he knew no one. He ended up
totally fluent in French as a result. Five hours after that revelation arrived,
I learned that the Saudi Deputy Minister had sent an order down through the
chain of command: “Order Jeff Wynn to stop practicing his religion.” From the
context, I realized that the Mutawa, the Saudi religious police, had been
following us to our at-that-time-illegal Church house-meetings on Fridays. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This was actually
part of a larger Kabuki Theater exercise where an <i>Assistant</i> Deputy Minister
was trying to mess with the mind of the <i>Deputy Minister –</i> whose job he
wanted. However, that Deputy Minister was not stupid, and had already
anticipated that his deputy would trigger a mass arrest of the LDS people in
Jeddah at that time. This would have meant that half our Jeddah Ward population
– Filipino brothers and sisters – would have been beaten and then deported with
a massive loss of an annual income. However, with five hours of warning, I was
prepared. When I got the Stop Practicing Your Religion message, I immediately
offered my resignation from the USGS mission to Saudi Arabia… and requested reassignment
to my former job in the United States. About 40% of the USGS Geologic Division
was RIF’d in August 1995, and I returned in October.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To recap
the revelatory patterns: revelation usually but not always arrives unbidden,
though you may have been thinking and praying about the subject off and on for
months or even years beforehand. It arrives sometimes as a profoundly peaceful
feeling that makes absolutely no sense considering the circumstances. Sometimes
it arrives as a sharp, clear, instantaneous Understanding that must be unpacked
and converted to English in order to share it with others. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When you
find yourself suffering through one of the many Bad Times in your life, be
prepared: sometimes it takes 2 – 4 years to even see the Light at the End of
the Tunnel. Pain and sadness don’t turn off like a faucet with a magical
prayer. I got my PhD in Geosciences with an Electrical Engineer as a thesis
advisor <i>four</i> years after failing the physics oral qualifying exam in
Illinois. It was in a different field (I became a geologist, geophysicist, hydrologist
and oceanographer, with publications in astrophysics and archaeology). It
opened up huge opportunities for my family – they have all lived in multiple
countries on diplomatic passports and are all multi-lingual. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sometimes revelation
arrives in response to prayers about how to fulfill an aspect of a Church
calling – it usually arrives as a quiet, clear idea about what to do. When this
fourth and most common revelation happens, it almost always arrives for me, at
least, as a clear understanding before I can even kneel down to pray for help…
and I generally smile, get down on my knees anyway, and just say thanks.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Thus,
knowledge comes to us, imperfect human beings, in at least four different ways,
with many variants and complexities in each of the ways or sources. I think it’s
reasonable to say that there are probably as many variants as we are each
different people. Note, however, that if we don’t make a sincere effort to
verify – truth out – our sources of knowledge, we run the risk of making
life-changing decisions based on incorrect information, decisions that we may regret.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If not done
carefully, we could regret those decisions forever. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">~~~~~</span></b></div></b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-66815285563998218792021-12-09T15:33:00.000-08:002022-01-06T17:47:08.167-08:00 There is Always Someone Smarter – Some Lessons on Self-Comparison<p><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">The IQ Test</span></b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As a 12-year-old living in Bakersfield California, my Catholic Mom sent me to Garces Junior High. Unbeknownst to my parents, the administrators gave all incoming young men an IQ test. There was not room for all 80+ of us in one classroom, so it was made very clear to us that the “dummies” were sent to the “other” classroom. Those of us not included in that group were initially organized in seating according to the IQ results. There were six rows with 7 desk-chairs in each. I was initially ranked #2. I didn’t understand but thought this was sort of cool. The one guy with a higher score was named Kenny Larkin, and we became friends. Like me, he hated sports. Unlike him, however, I could outrun everyone else among all 80 young men – except one. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We were strictly segregated at Garces from the young women, who were taught by another monastic group, this one comprised of black-veiled nuns. We rarely saw any of the girls, and only at a distance. My Mom and stepfather were shocked to learn from me about several horrifically savage beatings<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">*</span> that Brother Gerald and Brother Remy inflicted on us boys; the Christian Brothers were a non-priestly monastic organization running the boys’ side of the school. Mindful of this, and of that IQ test, my new stepfather cajoled my Mom over a year and a half into letting me attend a public high school, Bakersfield High. He knew this school also had a nascent version of AP classes called the “Point 5 Program” in place. Every class was numbered: English 9.4 for freshman college prep, English 9.3 for kids expected to go into business or auto-mechanics, English 9.1 was for special ed. English 9.5 was the much harder class intended for the smarties in the school. I learned it was designed to encourage talent. It is the reason I ended up attending the University of California at Berkeley, and ultimately, earning a PhD. </p><p><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">The Rope</span></b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Another side effect of testing: at the beginning of each school year, the boys were always tested in P.E. This had nothing to do with sports, but involved running a 440-yard loop, racing to the stop of the stadium… and climbing a rope. Yes: a 22-ft/7-meter rope. As a 14-yr-old I was terrified of that rope – I had never climbed one before. We had to start from a sitting-in-the-dirt position, then climb and touch a bell at the top while being timed with a stopwatch. Full of adrenaline, I figured out how to use my legs to help about a third of the way up. When I came back down (not knowing how not to burn my hands) the coach stared at his stopwatch and ordered me to do it again. When I came down the second time, he gave me an odd look and said that this was the fastest time he had ever recorded any kid doing on that rope. Ever. After all the testing was done, we were separated into three groups: the Jocks, The Fatties (they were actually called that), and the In-Betweens. The Fatties did things like throw medicine balls back and forth to each other. I was assigned to The Jocks and this was all about sports – which was all they did. I had never played football, never played baseball (I didn’t even own a mitt), and never, ever, dribbled a basketball. This was the beginning of a terrible year for me; I consistently got C’s in P.E. The first day we started the basketball cycle, the coach had each of us dribble from mid-court and go in against five guys in the Key to take a shot. I had to be instructed (with transparent irritation) how to dribble the ball, and then how to shoot the ball. One kid just stood there at the mid-court circle and hesitated, then did a half-court “swisher” – right in the basket the first time. The coach never looked directly at me again. I was in misery every day for P.E., made worse by my fear of being seen nude in the showers (that stepfather turned out to be a pedophile when I was 11 years old and my Mom remarried). The next three years were the same: test, get thrust into The Jocks class, get lousy grades, cringe with my acne cysts showering in the nude every day, five days a week. The one semester we had “Health” in my Junior year was an incredible relief to me... and I learned most of the other guys also.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Through much of the rest of my life, however, I wondered about what that IQ partitioning did mentally to all those boys graded as “dummies” at Garces? The dyslexic kids? What was the life-long impact for those at BHS left in “The Fatties” class… for the rest of their lives?</p><p><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">“Old 160”</span></b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Fast forward a decade and a half. I had a PhD and was traveling for work with the US Geological Survey. I just finished a training course in science management in Monterey, CA, and on my way home to my family in Virginia I stopped in Long Beach to see my sister. Barb had arranged for a float plane to pick me up and take me to Santa Catalina Island off the coast. She was on a 32-ft sailboat with her boyfriend at the time, surnamed Rogers. My mother had warned me that “Rog” was a successful attorney and very proud of the fact that his IQ was tested at 160. He boasted of this frequently enough that Mom actually referred to him as “Old 160.” The amphibious plane landed in Catalina Harbor and Barb met me at the dock. She took me and my suitcase to an inflatable Zodiac and motored me out to the sailboat. For the next two days we motored around the island while Barb and Rog dived for “bugs” – illegally-harvested lobsters. My job was to stand at the side of the boat to receive the grab-bag as they would bring one up every so often. We only raised sails for the traverse back to Santa Barbara at the end of the trip. Rog seemed to be probing me – and watching me closely – the entire time; I sensed a weird vibe but didn’t know what to do about it except answer his questions. I later gathered two things from Barb: (1) She and Rog had already decided to part company as a couple, and (2) Rog had somehow gotten the impression that I was super smart. A PhD does seem to fool some people. He also understood that I was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ – and he had difficulty reconciling those things. Finally, as we were docking back in Santa Barbara, Rog looked over to me and said this: “Jeff, I admire you. In 30 years, I will be a lonely alcoholic, surviving until I die on this very boat – if I’m lucky. You, on the other hand, will be happy and surrounded by grandchildren.” </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The lesson here seems obvious to me, as it was to Rog.</p><p><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">3-D Chess</span></b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My first three years in the US Geological Survey were spent in the Denver field office. I was part of three geophysics branches of the USGS, all centered in rented office space on Colfax Avenue. I was the last young PhD hired in a huge hiring spurt that lasted from 1971 to 1975. One of those other newly minted PhDs I will call Gary. Gary was super smart and made sure that everyone knew it. Then after three years I was invited to move to the USGS National Center in northern Virginia and became a deputy science office chief. This led several of my former colleagues to feel some apparent jealousy (I learned this later; I’m often very naïve). Once while back in Denver for a technical meeting, Gary invited me over to his house for dinner, and I accepted. As soon as dinner was over, he pulled out a very interesting game – a 3-D form of chess. Gary’s wife immediately started to complain to him about mistreating his guest (apparently this had happened before). The game had multiple vertical levels and different pieces than traditional chess, with different movement rules – which he quickly explained to me, the novice. One could move a piece horizontally, vertically, and on diagonals. “Let’s play,” said Gary. His wife again told him that this was inappropriate, but Gary insisted. After about 30 minutes, I said “I think that’s checkmate.” Gary stared at the boards for almost 20 seconds. Then he stared at me, without saying a word. I felt increasingly uncomfortable and suggested that I should leave because I had an early technical meeting the next morning. Gary, wordlessly but still staring at me, just walked me to the door. I was never invited to dinner there again. I learned later that he and his wife divorced soon after. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But here’s the thing: I’m not smart enough to beat anyone at chess. However, this time I had help in the form of inspiration, guidance that I listened to and followed. After no contact for ~20 years I learned that Gary had retired because he had developed Parkinson’s Disease. I called to express my concern and sympathy, and we talked for a long while. Our earlier friendship was renewed with just that call. Gary was a humbler person, and I hope I was also. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, what’s important?</p><p><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">“This Man is <i>GUILELESS!</i>”</span></b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 2002 I received two phone calls at my office in the USGS National Center. By this time, I had returned from two mission chief assignments in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Both calls were from colleagues to notify me that the position for chief scientist for volcano hazards had opened up. “You should apply for this,” both told me. I talked with Louise, who was working on Capitol Hill at the time, and whose work-week-with-commute was 63 hours (we counted them). “By all means,” she said. It would require relocating to the Pacific Northwest, but we had visited Washington State during our obligatory, State-Department-required Home Leave from Saudi Arabia years earlier – and we both loved it. I applied… and then forgot about it. Two months later the selecting official suddenly called, said he was in Reston, and wanted to interview me. What I thought would be a 15-minute conversation lasted more than two hours. He said that quite a few people had applied, and the list had been whittled down to just three short-list applicants. A week later I got a call telling me that I was selected. I called Louise. “By all means,” she answered. There followed a horrific six weeks, where I had to wind down four separate research projects, pack up an office and a laboratory, prepare and sell our house, find a house, and move with one of our sons and several birds across the continent… while the DC Shooter was still at large (he was caught, just 7 miles from our daughter’s house, when we were passing through Indiana). </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There were two other applicants for that job, however. One was selected later for another management position in Denver. The other had been the chief of a science team in the National Center but had left that position under mysterious circumstances. He was later selected to be the volcano program coordinator. One of my senior scientists, who knew him well, remarked that this new program coordinator was the smartest man he (Carl) had ever encountered. At the time the USGS was experimenting with misbegotten thing called “matrix management.” In this system I had line authority over about 120 scientists and support staff – but the program coordinator held the purse-strings and had a say in how the financial allocations were spent. The Golden Rule is Him what got the gold, rules. Initially we worked together equably enough, but he apparently decided that I didn’t have the jets to swing a chief scientist job. He decided that I wasn’t as smart as him because I would not follow Machiavelli’s “The Prince” as my guiding management philosophy. I’m not joking here – that really was the issue. So… why had I been selected over him for the chief scientist position? He began to try to manage behind my back, confusing the heck out of everyone in my office. I confronted him several times, and he would back off with some excuse like “I’m just trying to help you!” I tried hard to think the best of him and went out of my way to be open with all my information. At one program council meeting I passed something to him privately. He stared at me, then turning to the rest of the people present said in a loud voice and a nasty smile “this man is guileless!” He did not mean it as a compliment. As I thought about this, however, I concluded that I would not want to be any other kind of man. Machiavellian game-playing at other peoples’ expense is not something I would ever want for my legacy. To do nasty things – force people into Directed Reassignments to drive them out of the USGS just to make a point – was something he recommended. “If they don’t fear you, they won’t obey you,” he told me several times. I’m not making this up. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Eventually I talked with my own senior executive supervisor, as this was causing increasingly serious confusion among my staff. They were getting orders from the program coordinator to stop whatever they were doing and do a task for him… without bothering to notify either me or my subordinate scientists-in-charge. I was surprised to learn that my senior executive manager knew all sorts of interesting things about this program coordinator – like, why he had been forced out of a chief scientist job earlier. Eventually, with the intervention of several senior executive managers, rules governing and limiting the program coordinator’s behavior were written and signed – to his transparent chagrin. Interestingly, a few years later the USGS abandoned matrix management as “unworkable.” </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The program coordinator by this time found himself “glass-ceilinged” – he had been forced out as a chief scientist by misbehavior once before, and now was being spanked again. He was fearful of rotating back to a scientist position, certain that people he had abused before would want to get even with him (he was right – I got quite an earful after he left). The guy left the USGS for a dean position at a small distant university. On the last day we were together, he sat across from me at the conference table in my office to discuss some funding issue. As he was preparing to leave, I mentioned to him that I was resigning my chief scientist position and returning to research; I didn’t say why. We both knew that my job was a 5-year rotational management position, and that I had done my five years of 55-84-hour weeks; Louise had repeatedly suggested to me that I might want to consider getting a life for a change. The program coordinator stared at me for a full 20 seconds, trying to fathom what I meant by this – what was the strategic move I was pulling here? Finally, as someone who had coveted my position for five years, he ground out “why are you telling me this?” I responded, “Professional courtesy, I suppose.” He stared at me icily for another very long time, then without another word put his notepad in his briefcase and just walked out. I never saw him again. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This man was very, very intelligent. But he based his personal management style, the way he dealt with other human beings, on all the wrong principles. I won the years-long fight with him, but not because I was smarter than he was. Many people had ferocious opinions of him as a manager and as a human being. I just happened to be the last one in a long line of people he had tried (and often succeeded) to hurt. </p><p><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">Where is this Going?</span></b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Several times during my initial years with the USGS, Louise would ask me if I worked for the CIA? “No – why,” I would ask? Her brother, a pilot, had told her that a job requiring me to travel all over Saudi Arabia, Europe, the Far East, Australia, and South America – was the perfect cover for a spy. When other people have asked me if I’m a spy, I’ve just said no. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is some reasonable basis for this thought, however. Once in Saudi Arabia a non-descript man walked into my office, flashed his US Consulate badge at me, and asked if he could ask me some questions. “Sure,” I said. “We have heard rumors that there was a gun-battle in Hail, in the central Arabian Peninsula. My colleagues and I cannot find meaningful information about this, but we are aware that you travel all over the country for your work. Have you heard anything?” In fact, I had – two of my staff who came from Hail told me that the ‘Amir’s office there was abandoned and covered with bullet holes. He took notes and thanked me – and did not leave a business card. Something like this happened to me when I first got to Venezuela. The Ambassador at the time told me that a person on his staff wanted to talk to me. Again, a very non-descript individual came into the Ambassador’s office. He said that he understood that I would be traveling all over Venezuela in my job as USGS mission chief, leading the mapping project for the jungle-covered, roadless southern half of the country. He reminded me that there are Alcabalas – Guardia Nacional checkpoints – on all roads between major cities in Venezuela. As diplomats, they did not have paperwork that would get them through those checkpoints. One had to have a reason to pass through them, especially a non-Venezuelan. “Yes, this is correct,” I replied. “Would you please take photos of roads and bridges and checkpoints in your travels, and share them with us,” he asked? I stared at him. Sure, I thought – poison the trust that our host agency, the C.V.G., had for the US Geological Survey? Right. </p><p><span> </span>BTW, I never saw that man again. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A year later, after we had seen several deaths in both Puerto Ordaz and the jungle, and had had a number of close calls, a USGS colleague in the USGS National Center sent down several programable, “Fly-Away” HF radio transceivers. I had no idea how to use them (Louise and I are licensed HAM operators now). I asked around in the Embassy in Caracas and was told to go to the offices of the “Political Section” – but the Political Section offices on the 6th floor, not the 5th floor, which is behind a gold-leaf-lettered, fancy glass door. The Economics Section that I was vetted to (I was a formal State Department employee with Ambassador-grade of FS-12 during the three years I was there), was on the 4th floor and the Commerce Section was in the 3rd. I took the elevator to the 6th floor, and when it opened, I found myself facing a blank wall with a steel door in it. The doorhandle had a cipher lock. A man came out, said he understood I needed some help with a radio, and took me downstairs to the secluded little park on the embassy grounds. After looking around carefully, he showed me how to set up an HF antenna, and how to program a frequency into the 25-kg radio. He then gave me a small, torn piece of paper, with a 10-meter-band frequency penciled in on it and told me to call him at that frequency when I got home. I flew home to Puerto Ordaz, 700 km away, and set up the radio on my apartment terrace. I called the frequency he had given me, and he answered. “OK, it works. Please lose that piece of paper now. Good luck in the jungle,” he concluded, and hung up. </p><p> I never learned his name. He took a personal risk to help another human being who was at serious risk working in the jungle. He didn’t have to do that – but was just being a good guy to help another human being.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>OK, I’m not CIA, and I’ll tell anyone. However, I do not tell anyone (except Louise) what my IQ is. I got that number from a high school councilor’s folder with my name on it as she discussed potential scholarships with me. I’ve given invited lectures at annual MENSA meetings, but no, I am not a member of MENSA. And here’s the thing: that IQ number is not important. Your speed to the top of the rope is not important. Comparing yourself to another person – read those stories above – leads to nothing good. There is <i><u>always</u></i> someone smarter than you, wealthier than you. </p><p> Just try to do good; compete with yourself if that floats your boat. If you live your life right, help other people when you can, you will do just fine when you are forced to go go toe-to-toe against the guys who think they are smarter, or better, or tougher. <i>It’s really just their problem with their own self-worth. </i></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="color: #fcff01;">You don’t need to buy someone else’s problem.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;">~~~~~</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">*</span> <span style="color: #04ff00;">My best friend in elementary and junior high was Marcus Espitia, whose father was Mexican and whose mother was African American. We had defended each other against bullies in Saint Joseph elementary school for years and started Garces together. One day in 7th grade Brother Gerald was pacing back and forth in front of the class, declining Latin nouns out loud from a book he held. Brother Gerald was a huge man – 240 lbs/110 kg. My friend Marcus had lifted the lid of his desk above where his books were kept, blocking Brother Gerald’s view. From there he was shooting spitballs at the guy sitting across the aisle from him. I watched as Brother Gerald slipped down into that aisle without changing his monotonous repetition. Suddenly he leaned hard on the top of Marcus’ desk, trapping his head inside the desk, cutting off his air. I can still vividly recall Marcus’ arms and legs thrashing around, his head locked in the desk as he tried to free it. Then – still intoning the Latin – Brother Gerald lifted the lid with the hand holding the book, and with his open right hand hit Marcus in the side of the face so hard it physically lifted him out of his seat. Marcus actually hit the adjacent wall first, then slid to the ground, stunned. Still droning on, Brother Gerald proceeded to pick up each book in the desk and throw it – as hard as he could – at Marcus’ face. One. Two. Three. Four. Marcus finally got up off the floor and ran to the door to escape… with books bouncing off him several times before he reached it and exited. Brother Gerald then strolled back to the front of the class and continued reading out the Latin declinations to us – without any vocal interruption through this entire process. </span></p><p><span style="color: #04ff00;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We all just sat there, frozen in our seats. </span></p><div><br /></div>AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-4228299418737358892017-12-13T13:33:00.002-08:002017-12-13T13:33:24.099-08:00Is Water Wet?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 18pt;">In the
response below I had to throttle back my Inner Scientist from wanting to
strangle certain abusers of social media. Facts are NOT the same as
Alternative Facts. Internet Foo-Foo is NOT truth. Much of it represents
all the bad consequences of the 1st Amendment to the American
Constitution - without any redeeming good. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 18pt;">Q: So on social media there’s been a huge debate on whether
water is wet or not. I believe water is not either wet or dry. So is water wet? - Kacie M</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">A:
This is akin to Medieval arguments about how many angels
could dance on the head of a pin. In other words, it's a pointless
issue. Water is water. Wet means something has water
on or in it in all versions of the English language that I am familiar
with. I did a cursory look and did not see a "huge debate" on
social media about water being wet or not. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Social
media should NEVER be considered a source of meaningful
information, as there is no vetting, no peer review of the content you
see
there. People make up "Alternative Facts" and post them to social
media, and if it's done with flashy visuals, some weak-minded and poorly
educated people might take this stuff as fact. Don't YOU fall into that
old make-up-a-fact trap. That's
what humanity fought its way out of the Middle Ages to get away from.
Your smart phone doesn't work because of some made-up fact about
electricity. </span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-61610043163145233712016-12-01T19:26:00.001-08:002016-12-25T16:45:54.509-08:00Well, how big WAS it?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
is human nature to want to measure things, or at least calibrate big things
against other big things. The big and destructive fairly beg quantifying, in
fact, so we have for instance the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale (with a
top level of 5 for winds above 156 mph/250 kph). This depends only on wind
velocities, and doesn’t take into account rain or storm surges (Allaby, 2008).
We also have the Fujita tornado intensity scale (Fujita, 1971), which for winds
above 261 mph/420 kph can reach a level of F5. The following question asks
about measuring earthquakes and volcanoes, which are much harder to quantify
than wind-speed velocities. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #385623; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Q: Hi I am an 8th grade student and I was wondering what
determines the magnitude of an earthquake or what determines the power of a
volcano... </span></div>
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<span style="color: #385623; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">- Caleb Le M.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A: Your question has two parts, which I will answer in order:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1. Earthquake magnitudes are calculated many different ways, but
ultimately it comes down to measuring the amplitude of the actual ground motion
(up-down, side-to-side, front-back) on multiple seismometers, and correcting for the varying
seismic velocities and the distance separating these seismometers from the
earthquake epicenter. Of course you have to calculate the distance to the
epicenter first by triangulation from three or more seismometers (and also
correct THOSE results by different velocities of sound in the different rocks
between the hypocenter [the actual source] and the different measuring seismometers).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Asking a seismologist how big an earthquake was is like asking a
friend to describe how big someone is? Do you mean tall? Wide? Heavy? Some
combination of all of these? Does this dress make me look fat? Seismologists do
NOT like being asked how they calculate a magnitude, because it will generally require
a 30-minute explanation. Therefore, their first reply is often <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">which</i> magnitude are we talking about
here? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The original earthquake magnitude scale (Richter, 1935)
was the first coherent attempt to define something that is ultimately
very three-dimensional and complex. The
original Richter scale measured only the energy in the low
frequency end of the seismic energy spectrum, standardized to the
particular
type of Wood-Anderson seismometer available at the time. Today a
modified Richter
magnitude is called the “local magnitude” or M</span><span style="color: #990000; font-size: 8.0pt;">L</span><span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, and is tuned
for the rocks and sediments of a local region. For southern California, the equation
to calculate this magnitude (Spence et al., 1989; Bormann and Dewey, 2014) is:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">M</span><span style="color: #990000; font-size: 8.0pt;">L</span><span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> = Log (A) + 0.00189*r - 2.09, </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">…where A = amplitude of maximum ground movement in nanometers
measured at the seismometer, r = distance from the seismometer to the epicenter
in kilometers, and – 2.09 is a correction factor. This equation works only for
southern California, and doesn’t work for Cascadia, Japan, the Mediterranean, or
Indonesia, which are each served better by different numerical factors. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another way to calculate an earthquake local magnitude is to
work off of an analog log-scale diagram such as in this link:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.ntschools.org/cms/lib/NY19000908/Centricity/Domain/112/Richter%20worksheet.pdf">http://www.ntschools.org/cms/lib/NY19000908/Centricity/Domain/112/Richter%20worksheet.pdf</a>
</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Though relatively easy to understand and use, the Richter Scale
is no longer commonly used. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are also M</span><span style="color: #990000; font-size: 8.0pt;">b</span><span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (the body-wave magnitude), M</span><span style="color: #990000; font-size: 8.0pt;">S</span><span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (the
surface-wave magnitude), and Mw (the moment magnitude). Most of these track
closely together for magnitudes of M = 2 to M = 5, but diverge for larger and
smaller earthquakes. In part this is because some wave-types strongly influence
a short-period or broadband seismometer (which are sensitive to higher
frequencies) while other wave-types (for example, surface waves) more
strongly affect a seismometer designed to optimally measure low-frequency energy
in the 1 – 2 Hz range. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For large earthquakes, M</span><span style="color: #990000; font-size: 8.0pt;">W</span><span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (Moment
Magnitude) is the preferred magnitude, because it more fully represents
everything emanating from the earthquake hypocenter. The “moment” M</span><span style="color: #990000; font-size: 8.0pt;">O</span><span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is calculated
as a product of µ (the shear strength of the rocks) times S (the surface area of
the fault tear), and d (the displacement – how far did one side of the fault
move with respect to the other side). The largest ever recorded earthquake was
the Great Chilean event of May 1960, which had a moment magnitude Mw = 9.5</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Confused yet? There is also Me (the energy magnitude – a measure
of the potential damage to man-made structures), and Intensity (the measure of
surface-shaking damage observed). They are related. Energy release is generally
proportional to the shaking amplitude raised to the 3/2 power, so an increase
of 1 magnitude corresponds to a release of energy 31.6 times greater than that
released by the next lower earthquake magnitude. In other words, </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Magnitude 3 = 2 gigajoules</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Magnitude 4 = 63 gigajoules</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Magnitude 5 = 2,000 gigajoules</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Magnitude 6 = 63,000 gigajoules</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Magnitude 7 = 2,000,000 gigajoules</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These numbers dwarf the puny power of hydrogen bombs, by the way, </span><br />
<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Both Intensity and Magnitude depend on many local variables,
including surface geometry and velocities of various underlying rock and sediment
units. For example, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake had a surface-wave
magnitude M</span><span style="color: #990000; font-size: 8.0pt;">S</span><span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> of 8.1 However, because of resonant focusing of seismic waves as
the partially-dried-up Lake Texcoco basin lapped onto bedrock, some buildings
on one side of a city boulevard had ground motions 75 times greater than the other
side (Moreno-Murillo, 1985; see also <a href="http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/measure.php">http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/measure.php</a>
). A friend (Mauricio de la Fuente, a Mexican geophysicist) who lived through this event told me that
it was amazing to stand in that street and see everything on one side standing,
and everything on the other side flattened. Over 8,000 people died, many in
buildings on that (Texcoco ancient lake) side. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Intensity is based on the Mercalli scale (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercalli_intensity_scale">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercalli_intensity_scale</a>). It
is a twelve-level scale designed to fit to differences in observed damage. The name Mercalli is
attached to a scale that Giuseppe Mercalli revised from an earlier Rossi-Forel
scale, and which has been further modified multiple times since then (<a href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq4/severitygip.html">http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq4/severitygip.html</a>
). On the Modified Mercalli scale, the 1985 Mexico City event scored an
intensity level of IX (“Violent”). There are higher levels (and scarier words) than that, by the way.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One more thing to think about: seismologists estimate that only
1% to 10% of the energy of any given earthquake is released as seismic waves. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Almost all the rest of the energy is
released as heat </u></i>(<a href="http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/measure.php">http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/measure.php</a>
). This figures indirectly into models designed to emulate the complex breaking
process of a fault tear, because at some points, wall-rocks are literally welded
together by the intense heat, forcing complex movements around these focal
points (Dieterich, 1978; James Dieterich, personal communication 2016). </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moment magnitudes are calculated by complex equations that take
into account a number of factors including different velocities and different attenuation of seismic energy in different rocks.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An earthquake on the San Andreas fault system will almost certainly be smaller than an earthquake where I live in the Pacific Northwest. This is because the San Andreas fault plane (at least the earthquake shears visible from the surface) can only go down vertically 10 to 15 kilometers before the crust turns plastic. A subduction earthquake, however (think of the Great Tohoku Earthquake of Japan in 2011) occurs on a SHALLOWLY DIPPING fault plane. The depth-direction part (dipping in the direction of the Japanese Archipelago) of the fault-tear actually extended over 200 kilometers! It has been estimated that the surface rip was at least 200 km x 300 km! By comparison, a major earthquake on a part of the San Andreas fault system might be "just" 100 km x 15 km. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2. The "power of a volcano" is generally characterized by scientists as Volcano Explosivity Index or VEI. This is a relative measure of
explosiveness of volcanic eruptions, and is open-ended with the largest supervolcano
eruptions in pre-history (Yellowstone, Toba, Taupo) given a magnitude of 8 in
this classification system. The 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius and the 1980 eruption
of Mount St Helens in Washington State are both rated a VEI 5 on this scale. The
VEI number attached to a volcanic eruption depends on (a) how much volcanic
material (dense rock equivalent) is thrown out, (b) to what height is it
thrown, and (c) how long the eruption lasts. There is no equation to calculate
this scale (it is like the Mercalli scale based on visual observations), but it is considered logarithmic from VEI 2 upwards. In other words
a VEI = 5 event represents approximately 10 times more energy than a VEI = 4
event. Follow this link for more information on how to assess the VEI magnitude
(from Newhall and Self, 1982):</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index</span></a> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: purple;"><b><u>References</u></b></span><span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Allaby, Michael, 2008, Saffir-Simpson scale, <u>in</u>: A
dictionary of earth sciences (3<sup>rd</sup> ed.): Oxford University Press, 1672
pp. ISBN 978-0-1992-11944</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bormann, Peter; and James W. Dewey, 2014, The new IASPEI
standards for determining magnitudes from digital data and their relation to
classical magnitudes: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escidoc:816929:1/component/escidoc:816928/IS_3.3_rev1.pdf">http://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escidoc:816929:1/component/escidoc:816928/IS_3.3_rev1.pdf</a>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">doi: 10.2312/GFZ.NMSOP-2_IS_3.3 </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dieterich, James H., 1978, Time-dependent friction and the
mechanics of stick-slip: Pure and Applied Geophysics 116, issue 4, p. 790–806.
doi: 10.1007/BF00876539</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fujita, Tetsuya Theodore, 1971, Proposed Characterization of
Tornadoes and Hurricanes by Area and Intensity: Satellite and Mesometeorology
Research Paper 91. Chicago, IL: Department of Geophysical Sciences, University
of Chicago. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moreno-Murillo, Juan Manuel, 1995, The 1985 Mexico Earthquake:
Geofisica Colombiana. Universidad Nacional de Colombia 3, p. 5–19. ISSN
0121-2974.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Newhall, Christopher G.; and Self, Stephen, 1982, The Volcanic
Explosivity Index (VEI): An Estimate of Explosive Magnitude for Historical
Volcanism (PDF): Journal of Geophysical Research 87 (C2), p. 1231–1238. doi: 10.1029/JC087iC02p01231.
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Richter, C.F., 1935, An instrumental earthquake magnitude scale
(PDF): Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. Seismological Society
of America 25 (1-2), p. 1–32.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Spence, William; Stuart A. Sipkin; and George L. Choy, 1989,
Measuring the size of an earthquake, in: Earthquakes and Volcanoes 21, Number
1, 1989.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #c00000; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/measure.php</span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-32876152509469170922016-11-04T17:00:00.000-07:002016-11-04T17:00:13.158-07:00Is Our Atmosphere Dynamic?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
It may surprise readers to learn that the American
Geophysical Union has divisions named Atmospheric and Space Electricity, Global
Environmental Change, and Atmospheric Sciences. In short, the geosciences world
include a very large element of atmospheric science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The following query has several different
elements, all of which suggest an awareness of how dynamic our atmosphere
really is.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #385623;">Q: Hello. I wasn't sure which category to inquire within
but this seemed appropriate. Since Earth is not a perfectly spherical object,
nor any other planetary bodies we know of, how does that affect the gaseous
layers of atmosphere surrounding us? My question stems from an uneducated
assumption that our atmosphere is not a perfect bubble around us but must be
dynamic given the amount of energy factors associated with it, the terrain
beneath it and which locations have the greatest gravitational pull. Can the
sphere of air around us ever dissipate into space? Are there higher or lower
points that exist because of geography that make our categories of layers more
ambiguous? </span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #385623;">-Joe A</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c00000;">A: As you suggest, the atmosphere is indeed a very
dynamic thing, and yes all rotating solar system bodies are oblate spheroids
because of centrifugal force at the equators (and none at the poles). Jupiter
rotates at a phenomenal rate (it has 9.8 hour days!) and is thus is the most
oblate planet of all. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c00000;">If you think about oceans, however (the ocean surface is
at the same elevation above the spheroid datum over the Marianas Trench as it
is in Pamlico Sound), then mountain ranges will similarly have little to do
with atmospheric height over the globe (there IS a small amount of isostacy).
The most common exception to this are called storm surges - the low-pressure
cores of hurricanes and typhoons will literally lift up the (warmed and
expanded) ocean water. With Hurricane Katrina, the storm surge reached an
astonishing 8.5 meters (27.8 feet!) at Pass Christian, Mississippi. That's
above the normal tides!</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c00000;">There is atmospheric thinning with altitude, however, and
the upper reaches can still be detected at 100+ kilometers, which is why
satellites must fly at 250+ kilometers. Even at those altitudes there is
measurable drag that over time will bring down low-flying satellites and launch
vehicle debris. Most of the upper atmospheric variation has to do with solar wind
and solar heating activity, however. Because of Earth’s gravity, most of our
original atmosphere remains - unlike Mars, where the original atmosphere and
water were stripped over time by solar winds. When you see clouds over mountain
tops (pretty common over our volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest), it is because
winds trying to get around the mountain send some of their components up and
OVER the mountain. This leads to a drop in temperature with increasing
altitude, which contributes to dissolved moisture precipitating out into what
we call orographic clouds - cloud caps. As the air moves past and back down to
lower elevations the water re-dissolves back into the atmosphere and the clouds
disappear... but the same AMOUNT of water remains. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #538135;">Q: I had to do a little research to understand a few of
the terms you used but I definitely feel like I came away with a better
understanding. Thank you for your insightful response. I shouldnt be surprised
I guess that avenues of inquiry like this are out there given the ubiquity of
websites, but I never tried something like this before. I had a thought, did
some googling and found you. It's awesome to get answers from professionals as
if I was back in school and could pick the brains of my professors after hours.
So thanks again, despite my questions being kind of convoluted!</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #538135;">- Joe</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c00000;">A: I'm glad I could help. I suppose I am technically a
professional, in that I get paid to do research in geophysics, but I'm just a
very ordinary person with the same level of curiosity that you have. I
personally don't divide the world into professional vs. non-professional, but
instead into interested vs. non-interested. I plumber who asked some really
deep questions about the lithosphere and upper mantle told me he spends a lot
of "windshield time" thinking about the physical world as he drives
from job to job. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c00000;">THAT meets my definition of a scientist. You and I fit in
there also. That goes for anyone reading this chapter, too.</span></b></div>
</div>
AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-57978820541680130122016-10-03T17:02:00.000-07:002016-10-03T17:02:10.324-07:00When Was North Carolina Last Under Water?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
We often get queries that ask about local geology that we do
not have easy access to. However, it’s fairly easy to sleuth things in the
broad brush by locating state geologic maps. I can’t say much about a rock found
in someone’s backyard, because glaciers and rivers could have moved that rock
hundreds of kilometers from its original source. The following is a
local-geology question that I CAN reasonably respond to. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #538135;">Q: Can you tell me when was the last time North Carolina
was under water? I'm finding fossil seashells yet I live nowhere near any
ocean. I live in Jacksonville, NC (Onslow County)</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #538135;">- Brandon F</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A: You live on the Outer Coastal Plain of North Carolina;
Onslow County runs all the way to the ocean. The Outer Coastal Plain, or
Tidewater is extremely flat, averaging less than 20 feet above sea level. It
contains large swamps and lakes indicative of poor drainage conditions, which
have hosted both freshwater and marine mollusks at different times. The coastal margin north of Cape
Lookout is a “drowned coast,” in which sea level rise associated with the end
of the last Ice Age, and continual melting of the ice caps, has caused the
ocean to invade the lower reaches of river valleys including where you live.
This drowning has produced large embayments such as Albemarle and Pamlico
Sounds. New River (where you live) lies between this region and the Cape Fear uplift.</b></span></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">You might wish to look at the North Carolina geologic map
for more detail:</b></span></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: cyan;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">(https://ncdenr.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Energy%20Mineral%20and%20Land%20Resources/Geological%20Survey/1985_state_geologic_map_500000_scale_600dpi_rs.pdf)</b></span></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">To your east you have the Belgrade Formation, with oyster
shells embedded in sand. To your north and west you have the River Bend
Formation, also fossiliferous with limestone among other rocks. Both formations
are listed as Tertiary in age (66 million to 2.6 million years ago). However,
the shells you are seeing could conceivably be from the last several tens of
millennia if I read your elevations and location correctly. </b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b>I hope this helps. You have some excellent geologists in
your state, both at the state and university levels. It should be fairly easy
to contact one - perhaps visit the closest university and ask to talk with a
geologist there. </b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">~~~~~ </span></div>
</div>
AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-1783001706061484992016-08-22T18:07:00.003-07:002016-08-22T18:07:44.373-07:00Hunting Asbestos<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: cyan;">This question opens the door to several issues: indirect
detection when direct detection is not possible, and unanticipated down-sides
(such as death) to some mineral exploration projects.</span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #538135;"></span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #538135; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><span style="color: #93c47d;">Q: Hello Sir, <span style="background-color: white;"><span></span></span></span></b></div>
<span style="color: #93c47d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #93c47d;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Could you please tell which is the best method for
locating asbestos, pyrrhotite and manganese? Whether airborne magnetic survey
or ground magnetic survey?</b></span></div>
<span style="color: #93c47d;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #93c47d;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Regards, Ahtisham ul-H.</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A:</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="color: #e06666;">Asbestos (an aggregate of six
different but related silicate minerals) and manganese are not magnetic.
Pyrrhotite (FeS) is sometimes weakly ferromagnetic if there are iron deficits
in the ideal FeS lattice. However, these minerals are all usually associated
with serpentinization, a hydration and metamorphic transformation of ultramafic
(dark, iron and magnesium-rich) rock. Serpentinization usually has significant
magnetite associated with it, and THIS is strongly magnetic. I've worked in
ultramafic rocks where I have personally encountered 3-cm-thick veins of pure
magnetite. It doesn’t take much more than a percent or two of this to make a
rock really magnetic. </span></b></div>
<span style="color: #e06666;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #e06666;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #e06666;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The usual method for mapping these sorts of deposits is
ground magnetics and geochemistry, but keep in mind that you are only
indirectly imaging the minerals you are interested in. Airborne magnetics are
often used for regional surveying, to outline target areas for later follow-up
with ground magnetics.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: #e06666;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #e06666;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #e06666;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">As an aside, please keep in mind that mining asbestos, or
fabrication of asbestos products, is dangerous. My father died of mesothelioma-related
lung cancer. In his 80's he was an avid bicyclist in San Francisco. The pipes
in the basement ceiling of his apartment building, where he stored his bike,
were insulated with blown-in asbestos. When he developed a persistent cough, a
biopsy showed his lungs to be poisoned with asbestosis.</b></span></div>
</div>
AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-78104010059886810352016-07-16T07:32:00.001-07:002016-07-16T07:32:58.835-07:00Immediacy or Temporal Myopia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Immediacy or Temporal Myopia</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: cyan;">Much of how we view our world is
filtered – by time, by previous experiences, by others’ reactions. This is one
reason why scientists keep careful records of their observations and
experiments. Otherwise, we would be subjected to the most strongly held,
no-basis-in-scientific-fact opinions of those around us. Sort of like the
Internet. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Q: There seems to be alot of Earthquake and Volcano
activity going on lately within the pacific ring of fire. Is there more
earthquakes and active volcanos this year then there has been in a while? Seems
rather worrying :(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank you!</b></span></div>
<span style="color: lime;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">- Jessica M</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #e06666;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A: Not to worry - it has always been this way - there is
nothing particularly unusual going on. Please understand that earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions do NOT occur in a steady rhythm*. If you average over a
10-year cycle it evens out and looks similar from cycle to cycle. From a much
larger window of time - something research seismologists can see because they
have decades-long databases to work with - you can see the synoptic view. The
larger picture shows these apparent surges in events are just the Earth system
puttering along as usual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></span></div>
<span style="color: #e06666;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #e06666;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #e06666;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">* There is a tendency among human beings that for lack of
a better expression I call temporal myopia. We tend to remember only the most
recent attention-grabbing events, and focus on them. We also tend NOT to
remember as well older similar events, nor the periods of quiescence between
them. Immediacy might be another word for this tendency. </b></span></div>
</div>
AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-44129801080972931512016-04-17T17:03:00.000-07:002016-04-17T17:03:15.736-07:00Please sir answer this question in 24 hours or... ASK YOUR OWN SOUL! <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
This
is a question that I actually answered in some detail three months ago,
so when it came in I thought I would just point the individual at my
earlier response. However, I was struck by HOW I was asked this time. To
give readers a sense of what we sometimes encounter in our email
in-boxes, I share this, but I'm disguising the name and identity of the
questioner. You can't make this stuff up, to paraphrase Dave Barry. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b>Q: Hello sir</b></span></div>
<span style="color: lime;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: lime;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b>In the defination of earthquake</b></span></div>
<span style="color: lime;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: lime;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b>Eathquake is the sudden terror or shaking of earths crust which lasts for the short time. But<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in
2015 the earthquake in nepal not lasted for a short time . So why we
use that sentance , " which last for the short time".But Generaly in
most cases it not lasted for shot time. Sir please answer this question
in 24 hrs please sir i sent this question you not answered please answer
. Please tel me if you want to hep ,me<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or not. I f you want to help, if you want to make a bright student please help me . aSK YOUR OWN SOUL AND HELP.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: #134f5c;"><b> </b></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #134f5c;"><b> </b></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b>tHANKYOU</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><b>A: </b></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><b> </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><b>I cannot answer questions about your soul, nor about mine. This is not something you would ever address to a scientist.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><b>Volunteer
geoscientists in the US Geological Survey do not see questions that
arrive during western hemisphere weekends. Please do not blame us for
not instantly replying to your questions from <Asia>.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><b> </b></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><b>I
have no idea what definition you are referencing, since you did not
provide that information. The simple answer is the larger the moment
magnitude (Mm) of an earthquake, the longer the coda. In other words,
the greater the energy released, the longer the apparent shaking will
last. In fact, you can get a rough idea of how big a regional earthquake
is by timing the shaking.</b></span></div>
</div>
AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-71693391497001623582015-12-11T17:44:00.005-08:002015-12-11T17:44:49.045-08:00Terraforming Mars<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 19.9733px;">Here's a Q&A that has nothing to do with earthly geology, but may have some instructive content for future geologists. There is usually at least SOME science in SciFi novels!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 19.9733px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 19.9733px;">Q: </span>What would happen to the Martian atmosphere, over the course of the next 100 years, if we could build a machine on Mars that could output the equivalent quantity and composition of greenhouse gasses as are released on earth (approximately) every year? Thanks for your time, hopefully this has not already been answered! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;">- Kyle R</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 19.9733px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #f9cb9c;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 19.9733px;">A: </span>That's a rather unique question, but it begs several critical assumptions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #f9cb9c;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #f9cb9c;">According to a recent Science article, Mars lost its original atmosphere billions of years ago because the planet lost (if it ever had) its magnetic field. As a result the solar wind (high energy charged particles blasted out from the Sun) stripped most of Mars' atmosphere away. So one assumption is that the planetary magnetic field is somehow restored.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #f9cb9c;">Another assumption is a bit more obvious: where would the carbon and oxygen come from? Certainly not the planet's crust, as it has been degassing for billions of years and is a depleted desert now. Hundreds of trillions of tons of material would have to be brought to Mars' surface. This is actually not as unreasonable as it may sound: comets can do (and have done) this in the past... but it would require a number of pretty large comets. A colliding planetary body from the Oort Cloud on the scale of Sedna could bring the mass as well as restart the magnetic dynamo, however. A collision like that is thought to be the reason why we still have a magnetic field here on Earth... and a Moon as big as the one we have.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #f9cb9c;">A final assumption is also necessary: a weaker planetary gravity field would make it easier for gases to escape the planet. So another assumption would be that somehow the planet became much more dense. A comet impact couldn't solve this one. A collision with something like Sedna would only marginally increase the gravity field of the planet. Weak gravity -> easier for atmospheric gases to escape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #f9cb9c;">I'm not a specialist in atmospheric dynamics, so I don't want to speculate what would happen if all three of these conditions were somehow met. I suspect that Mars' currently pink sky might end up a different color, however.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;">Q: Thanks for the thoughtful reply Jeff, I appreciate you taking the time. The thrust behind my question was basically to get an understanding of the scale of the terraforming humans have engineered on Earth and what the impact would be if that same process was applied to another planet of similar size. I guess looking back I should have simply asked what the impact might be of 'magically' pumping 7,000 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the Martian atmosphere every year (7000 million metric tons being an approximate average volume created by human factors on Earth). Thanks again and enjoy your weekend!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><o:p> -</o:p>Kyle</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 19.9733px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #f9cb9c;">A: Yes, I was fascinated by the book Dune and the movie Total Recall, but the physicist in me kept slapping me on the back of the head: There's no evidence of sequestered carbon on Mars except frozen CO2 at the poles. There is only rare (indirect) evidence of water - it's a desert world. Water being low density, it would be hard to hide it on a planet like Mars or Arrakis. THAT said, I participated in several expeditions across the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia. Ambient humidity there is about 2% (in an Arizona summer it is around 20%). It is so dry that you have to "snuff" a handful of water every hour all night long because your mucous membranes are on fire - and cracking from the desiccation. However, I did some geo-electrical soundings along our two routes to the Wabar Impact site and found evidence of conductors - probably above-bedrock water - in several locations at about 60 - 100 meter depths.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-60885613757453630752015-10-23T22:10:00.000-07:002015-10-23T22:10:04.356-07:00Why do I Need a Geologist in Order to Build my Deck?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of what the geoscience community does is profoundly practical. As you cross any bridge, enter any building, you have a professional geologist or engineering geologist to thank for the fact that you are safe there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Q: I would like to extend (cantilever) my deck over my back slope. I am told by construction contractor that I will need a geologist to determine type of bedrock and/or soil and determine the depth required for installment of support piers (caissons) to support deck structure.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Do I need to hire only a geologist for determining whether hillside slope will support a deck?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">- Walter H</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;">A: Laws and codes are different for different cities and in different states, and are different for flat or hilly ground, hurricane-, tornado-, or earthquake-prone terrains, so I cannot directly answer this question. Some states require assessments by someone who has passed qualifying tests, and can designate "PG" (for professional geologist) after their name. Some states require an engineering geologist to do this sort of job. These people basically provide crucial experience and data to ensure conformance with local building codes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"> I can indirectly answer your question by sharing my own experience, which may or may not be relevant. I chose a home with a great territorial view. The price I must pay for this view is that the home is built on a slope, of course. Any slope - especially something graded within the past 20-50 years and not already covered with semi-mature trees, is inherently unstable. For instance, after just ten years I had to pay for a rock retaining wall to be built at the bottom of my back yard/slope - because the soil was slowly creeping downward and had already buried my neighbor's fence 20 cm deep. In this area there are known/mapped slow or creeping landslides, also. On one public trail that I often walk, you can see hundreds of trees that are bent almost horizontal at the base, and then curve to vertical as they go up - a sure sign of a slow or creeping landslide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"> As part of the negotiation for my new house, the company selling it agreed to build a deck in the back. The distance from my bedroom door to the ground at that time was about 15 meters. That's a long first step if you are sleep-walking, so local building code had required the outside of the door to be boarded. I had no idea what the real costs of the final deck were, but an engineer came twice to my door and apologized. First, that he would have to make it wider than my realtor had suggested - to meet code. Second, he would have to connect each of three decks by stairs - to meet code. It had to serve as a fire escape suitable for children. Then an excavator came in and dug a 2-meter-deep trench, a meter wide and the width of my house, behind the house. They set up molds and brought in a monster machine that looked like a Snuffelupagus, and poured 5 concrete cylinders a meter wide and 2 meters tall each. These were even more deeper anchored with some kind of rebar to about 3 meters below ground surface. They brought in a small grader that covered/filled in the trench. To the imposing concrete pylons they bolt-anchored five pressure-treated beams (several of them 15 meters long!). THEN they began building the deck. When I asked the builder why so much precaution (it seemed like massive over-kill to me), he said that building ANY deck on ANY slope was fraught with problems, and from experience this was the MINIMUM precautions they must take. These precautions were built right into the building code.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"> “Precautions against what?" I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"> "Against your deck joining your neighbor's party," was the reply.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"> In the 12 years since the deck was built (it remains stable) I have seen several things including the bent trees and my own sliding lower backyard slope that convince me he was correct. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="color: red;"> So much for my theory that I could get away with a couple of cinder blocks with some posts standing on them and do it myself. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-77877017271856160662015-03-29T10:01:00.002-07:002015-03-29T10:01:59.345-07:00Is Your Job Dangerous?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b>Q: For a school assignment, I was told to ask a geologist some questions that I have about volcanoes. Is your job dangerous?</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b>- Malayah M</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: orange;">A: It CAN be dangerous. I've walked out the toe of an evolving lava flow from Kilauea volcano, and accidentally stepped directly on the magma several times. It damaged my boots. Surprisingly, it sounds like Rice Crispies when you pour milk over a bowl of this cereal. This is because the outer millimeter or so of the lava "freezes" in the colder air and flakes off - it's the sound of ultra-thin glass breaking continuously. </span><br />
<span style="color: orange;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: orange;">Most volcanologists I know are or were personally acquainted with people who are now dead - killed by a volcanic eruption. These deaths usually involved a silica-rich volcano that exploded violently. They were visiting during a time of volcanic unrest, and the explosion happened so fast that it didn't give them time to get far enough away. This type of high-silica volcano tends to form stratocones, so you have an idea of its potential to cause great destruction just by looking at it. Think: Mount Fuji in Japan. Avachinskiy in Kamchatka. Mount St Helens in the United States (it was a nice cone before 1980).</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span><span style="color: orange;">As a result, the volcanolgists still living, whom I personally work with, have become very careful and cautious. They don't take unnecessary risks - but being a volcanologist almost by definition means you must take SOME risks. </span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Q: What do you do when a volcano is showing restless activity, and you have predicted that it will erupt soon?</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: orange;">A: We notify public safety authorities at the first reliable hint that something might happen. We make it a practice to drill with them and review the possible things that can happen, ahead of time. When Mount St Helens erupted in 2004-2008 the interaction between the USGS volcanologists and the federal, state, and county safety authorities was almost seamless.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Q: Have you ever witnessed a volcano eruption??</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: orange;">A: Several times I've witnessed a volcanic eruption:</span><br />
<span style="color: orange;">- Mutnovskiy volcano in Kamchatka erupted as I was inside the main caldera in 2004. Fortunately it was a mild eruption, but the Russians with us gave us no warning (I don't think they had realized what was happening before we did). </span><br />
<span style="color: orange;">- Kilauea has been erupting continuously since 1983, and I have visited the flow-front a number of times. There is an interesting photo here: https://profile.usgs.gov/jwynn - look in the upper right-hand corner. When you're near a lava-tube like that, the ground moans and quivers. It's truly eery, even unnerving.</span><br />
<span style="color: orange;">- I was the first person to see and photograph the new dacite dome coming up from under the glacier at Mount St Helens on October 12, 2004. I was orbiting in a helicopter inside the crater at the time. There was steam everywhere, and the glacier was fissured almost to the point of crumbling. Then I saw something grayish-pink that was NOT ice. </span><br />
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<span style="color: orange;">- In addition, I've been on several restless volcanoes that were showing activity like fumeroles and weak earthquakes (Mount Lassen, in California; Akutan in the Aleutian Chain, etc.).</span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-26169179630211746712015-03-27T17:00:00.000-07:002015-03-27T17:00:05.184-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: cyan;">The question was typical. The follow-up question was definitely NOT.</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">Q: Hey I'm wondering how many earthquakes occur every week ? And how powerful they are......<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">--Rossy K</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">A: The answer to your question depends on how BIG the earthquakes are that you are talking about. The smaller the earthquake, the more common they are. This means that there are probably many undetected (very small) earthquakes happening around the world every second. This also means that the really big ones - the ones that get in the news - are not very common at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;"> The US Geological Survey estimates that several million detectable earthquakes occur in the world each year. Many go undetected because they originate in remote areas or they have very small magnitudes. The National Earthquake Information Center now locates about 50 earthquakes each day, or about 20,000 a year, worldwide. They have to be above a certain minimum threshold before an effort is made to even try to locate them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;"> There are far fewer large events than small earthquakes, and this table will show you how these are parsed out according to magnitude:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">Frequency of Occurrence of Earthquakes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">8 and higher 1 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">7 - 7.9 15 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">6 - 6.9 134 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">5 - 5.9 1319 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">4 - 4.9 13,000 (estimated) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">3 - 3.9 130,000 (estimated) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;"> I would recommend that you visit this web-page:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;"> http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;"> There are lots of interesting statistics here.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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*************<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">Q: What’s the meaning of life?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">A: Ask your parents, and they will give you a start on answering that question. I just answer questions about geology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">On average you have upwards of 70 more years to figure this out yourself. That's pretty much the whole point of your being on this planet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-86292611451977123882015-02-07T14:21:00.000-08:002015-02-07T14:21:11.041-08:00Do Small Earthquakes Prevent Large Earthquakes?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: cyan;">Here's another question about earthquakes. It doesn't really address "slow-slip" earthquakes or induced seismicity, but clearly the questioner has been reading...</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">Q: Do small earthquakes prevent larger earthquakes from occurring? </span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: lime;">- Laurie F</span></b><br />
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<span style="color: #e06666;">A: There is an argument to that effect within the earthquake research community. Theoretically, a series of small events might accommodate (re-equilibrate, redistribute) at least some of the strain being built up by tectonic forces. In the practical world this works only imperfectly. For instance, we know: </span><br />
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<span style="color: #e06666;">2....that waste water injection into oil wells north of Denver, CO, led to a significant cluster of micro-earthquakes. Apparently the fluid lubricated fault surfaces that were collecting strain. There wasn't a lot of energy released by this process, but it caused earthquake scientists to sit up and listen.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #e06666;">2....that there are "slow slip" earthquakes on subduction faults that cannot normally be felt, but are only "seen" by noting slow displacement changes in continually-recording GPS instruments. An example of this has been measured in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, and another example has been observed on the south coast of the Big Island of Hawai'i. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #e06666;">This small-event re-equilibration process works for parts of a subduction fault surface - for instance the shallow and deep parts of the down-going Juan de Fuca oceanic crustal slab currently being subducted beneath the Pacific Northwest Cascades. However, there is a section of this (and other) subduction fault(s) that does NOT release strain in small increments like this. This part remains "locked."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #e06666;">When these locked sections "rip" (fail) there can be many meters of abrupt displacement. THIS process is the source of the greatest earthquakes ever recorded, including the last great Cascadia earthquake of January 1700 AD, which caused an "orphan tsunami" that devastated the Sendai coast of Japan many hours later without any warning.</span><br />
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-7115856228662211502015-01-16T17:35:00.001-08:002015-01-16T17:35:43.120-08:00What kind of house base absorbs the most shock<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: cyan;">There are real, practical consequences from geology that affect every single one of us. Here's another, though you have to think like an engineer to understand all the issues involved.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: black; color: lime;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">Q: </span><span style="font-size: 24.0240230560303px;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">What kind of house base absorbs the most shock during an earthquake? - Maddie D-N</span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: orange;">A: There are two different aspects of the same issue here: a "walking" building, vs a shock-absorbing building.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: orange;">1. A building foundation that is anchored in bedrock will SHIFT the least. The foundations of my house in Washington State are built (excavated) down into bedrock. In addition, all parts of the foundation are tied together with reinforced concrete. This will keep my house from "doing the splits" when the next Cascadia earthquake hits. Being anchored in bedrock means I have a better chance that my house won't take a ride - walk - over to my neighbor's property, either. During the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 in northern California, some houses that "walked" and some that "did the splits." They were build on landfill in North Beach, landfill made up largely of debris from the 1906 Earthquake dumped there nearly a century earlier. Their foundations failed - sagged, did the splits - because they were not tied together, nor were they anchored in bedrock. That landfill turned partially liquid with the shock waves passing through it. In geology-ese, this is "liquifaction."<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: orange;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">2. There are some (generally rare) structures designed with shock-absorbing materials between the bedrock-grounded base and the structure itself. Some examples include</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 24.0240230560303px;"> the Trans-Alaska pipeline, and the underground facilities hosting NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) in Colorado Springs, CO. </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">Designing a structure to ABSORB the most shock is a very expensive thing to do, however, and when NORAD was built during the early Cold War, cost was not an issue. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: orange;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"> However, no matter what the structure is, engineers must decide on how BIG an event to design for.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 24.0240230560303px;">(i.e., how much displacement can they anticipate).</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 24.0240230560303px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">There is not enough money to design everything in the country to survive a magnitude 8 or 9 earthquake, as we sadly learned with the Great Tohoku earthquake of 2011. The Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant had been built to survive a Magnitude 7+ event. It was unable to withstand the consequences of a magnitude 9 event (</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 24.0240230560303px;">the initial shaking and the 15-meter tsunami that followed)</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">. To build it for this, the facility would have cost one or two orders of magnitude more than it did, and no one had ever experienced a M = 9 event in Japan before. </span></span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-89204529482831550632015-01-02T17:00:00.000-08:002015-01-02T17:00:00.609-08:00Landscape Change - The Consequences<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Landscapes change – sometimes gradually, but also sometimes in fits and spurts. There are real-life consequences to this change.</div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">Q: When the area drifting from Africa eventually fully separates will any animals become extinct? How many new animals would be expected to evolve? How long would it take for the scenery to greatly differ from how it once was?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">- Veronica V</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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A: Your question is ambiguous, so I will take it upon myself to infer that you mean the ~6,000-kilometer-long Great Rift Valley of Africa.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That name itself is somewhat ambiguous, since it combines features from a number of separate although related rift and fault systems stretching from Jordan to Mozambique. This continental split has been forming since at least the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago, and is currently pulling apart at a rate of about 7 mm per year. At that rate of extension, a complete rupture will occur within 10 million years, and the Somalian plate will break off, forming a new sea between it and Africa not unlike the Red Sea.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As to the animals, well, if history is any predictor of the future you can expect several things:<o:p></o:p></div>
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1. VAST numbers of animal species will go extinct this century. This is due to habitat elimination, over-hunting, and climate change. You are watching this “Sixth Extinction” happen right now, as poachers decimate African Rhinos and Elephants for their horns and tusks, and Tigers in Asia for their internal organs and bones, just to satiate a bottomless appetite in Yemen and China.<o:p></o:p></div>
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2. Those that survive on the “New Madagascar” that will be the eventual Somali Island will evolve to fit their altered ecosystem. Often this means they will grow smaller – evolve to better use the limited resources of a now-limited landscape. <o:p></o:p></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-84518243607002989042014-12-23T20:32:00.000-08:002014-12-23T20:32:09.212-08:00Landscape Change - How Fast?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A major question from the beginning of geology as a science has been <i>how fast does change take place?</i> From the Literalist read of the Bible, it would seem 6,000 years is far too short a time to permit the development of tens of thousands of meters of sediment, with remains of primitive life-forms at the bottom and advanced life-forms preserved at the top. The first rough estimates of the rate of sedimentation were made in England, by thoughtful natural scientists measuring how fast mud accumulated in a pond. These early geologists had already mapped thick stacks – thousands of meters of distinctive layers - of sediment in cliffs, road-cuts, and quarries. They had seen the same sequences long distances away, implying the same sedimentary process was happening over a very wide area. Finally, they had realized that for mud and sand to accumulate to thousands of meters of thickness, would take at minimum many millions of years. This was really the first baby step of geoscience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">Q: Hello, my name is Jurgen and I am currently enrolled in an AP Environmental Science class and have a question about river formation. I hope you can answer my question.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">How long does it take for a gully or rill to be formed into a river if there is a constant stream or supply of water running through the land? Thank you.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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A: Time for a gully to become a river can vary wildly from less than a hundred to many millions of years. Generally, most terrains are in some sort of equilibrium and don't change much over time – unless disturbed by something, like a tectonic event. This is sometimes called "punctuated equilibrium." The change of a feature from one form to another (like a gully to a river) implies a permanent shift in the rainfall regime - some form of climate change – or tectonic uplift.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Change from a gully to a river could also have a lot to do with human intervention. I've walked down 10-meter-deep, steep-walled gullies that were really mini-canyons (Arroyos) in SE Arizona. These apparently didn't begin to form until man introduced cattle in the late 19th Century. Early journals from some of the first visitors describe “grass that was belly-high to a horse.” These cattle quickly wiped out the native prairie grasses by over-grazing the landscape. When Arizona earned its statehood in 1912, it had a human population of about 12,000 people, but an estimated cattle population of perhaps 10,000,000. Soils started disappearing rapidly with no roots to hold them, and small rivulets began to rip through the landscape and form small canyons in less than a century. Events like this, and the 1930's Dust Bowl, lead to the formation of the US Bureau of Land Management and the US Soil Conservation Service during the 20th Century.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tectonic uplift can also weigh in powerfully, but tectonic shifts are generally relatively slow - slow at least in typical human time-frames. The Grand Canyon only began to form (cut down through pre-existing Precambrian to Mesozoic rocks) about 70 million years ago. The actual timing of the initial incision and the final down-cutting is still being argued today by geologists as more evidence accumulates, but it appears to have been quite rapid at the beginning.</div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-70358151781841455202014-12-09T19:49:00.001-08:002014-12-09T19:49:41.717-08:00Unconformity? Disconformity?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">Here's a purely geologic question by someone who has already taken at least one course in </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">geology. The question opens up and highlignts the three-dimensional aspect of geology - and why mathematics (especially geometry) is such a fundamental prerequisite for studying geology. Some people persist in saying that a geologist is just someone who didn't do well in physics or math. The hard reality is that physics, math, chemistry, and English composition are the building blocks - the basic tools - of a modern geologist. Some of the most sophisticated geology being carried out these days is done with computers. Drill-hole information is fundamentally three-dimensional, and the ability to construct three dimensional landscapes from surface mapping and drill-hole intercepts is just so very cool. To rotate this 3D landscape on one or several computer screens, showing how individual components evolved in time in a single giant cubic space... is absolutely essential to numerically assessing any resources the land under the geologic map may host.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: lime;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><span style="font-size: 24.0240230560303px;"><b>Q: </b></span></span><b><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">I have a question regarding identifying unconformity on geological map. I have attached a map as an example. How do we identify unconformity on such 2D geological maps if each colour represents a different rock? Please advice.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: lime;"><b><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">Thank you and hope to hear from you soon. </span></b><b><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 25.6800003051758px;">Regards</span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 25.6800003051758px;"><span style="color: lime;">- Hazel A</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: #e06666;">A: I have not downloaded your map and looked at it in detail, but just looked at it via the attached thumbnail. We are discouraged pretty strongly from downloading and opening any files from unknown individuals that might potentially be vectors for malware. For the purposes of this Q/A, a map is not really necessary, however. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: #e06666;">I'd like, instead, to address your question on a somewhat broader level: The inherent problem with a geological map is that it represents the <b><u>surface</u></b> of the land. It's a view looking downwards from space, which is not always the same as looking downwards in time. Sometimes, with tectonic and erosional events, older in time doesn't necessarily mean deeper in the Earth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">An unconformity is a gap in sedimentary deposition for one of several fairly specific reasons: </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;">non-deposition, subsequent erosion, etc. It is not easily represented in a geologic map, which only shows just one sub-horizontal surface - the part exposed to the sky. An unconformity means that there has been a time break in the geologic record. This is quite different from a juxtaposition of different geologic units due to, say, a thrust fault (though they could both be involved at the same time). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: #e06666;">In practicality, this means that the geologist who produces the map must somehow indicate or convey any unconformity (or disconformity, or nonconformity, or paraconformity, etc.: see </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconformity" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconformity</span></b></span></a><span style="color: #e06666;"> ) in her/his *Correlation of Map Units* columns on the side of the geologic map.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: #e06666;">For most people not intimately familiar with a particular local or regional geology, it would be very difficult if not impossible to determine if some break between units is an unconformity or a fault juxtaposition just from looking at a geologic map alone. A change in rock-type could mean any of several much more common things: a change in sedimentary regime (like an ocean transgression), an intrusive event (like a big granite body punching up from the Mantle), a volcanic eruption, any of several different kinds of fault, etc., exposed at the earth's surface. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: #e06666;">It comes down to the fundamental difference between a <b><u>map view</u></b> (looking down at the ground from space), and a <b><u>cross-section view</u></b> (looking at the ground side-ways, as if a giant trench had been cut in the landscape). However, even in an exposed cross-section, considerable sleuthing is required to determine if a break is an unconformity or not.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-46309106807260389972014-11-09T17:00:00.000-08:002014-11-09T17:00:00.710-08:00Volcano Questions from the 5th Grade<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Some questions are just fun to get. Perhaps it’s the teacher in me that likes to see young eyes light up with intellectual excitement. I infer from the following that volcanoes first get talked about seriously in the 5th Grade. It's beyond the soda, vinegar, and food coloring lesson.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Q: Question for my 5th grade class!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">My students have some questions,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><span style="color: lime;">- Megan A</span><span style="color: #274e13;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><span style="color: lime;">1. Why do volcanoes erupt?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">A: Pressure builds up from rising low-density magma below the earth. The low density is caused by the heat from the Mantle and Core of the Earth convecting upwards, sorta like a pot of Cream of Wheat cooking, or a lava lamp. The path of least resistance is to break out through the Earth's Crust at its weakest point. Where are those weakest points? Well, where you now see volcanoes is a pretty good hint. Some geologists have speculated that when tectonic events leave faults, and two faults happen to cross, that may make the intersection a “target of opportunity” for rising magma. However, there are a number of other factors involved, including where is the magma rising, and from what source, is there some under-plating of the crust happening, are there some gross compositional differences in the crust, etc. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><span style="color: lime;">2. What are volcanoes like?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Some volcanoes look like cones (Mount Hood in Oregon, Mount Fuji in Japan). Some look like giant bulges (Mauna Loa in Hawai'i). Some volcanoes don't look like much of anything. You just see black-gray lava that has broken out of fissures, then poured out and run across the land in all directions – but generally the "pouring" goes downhill. There are vast, nearly impassable volcanic fields in western Saudi Arabia. There are huge obsidian flows (volcanic glass, caused by lava emerging in water and cooling too rapidly to form mineral grains) at Medicine Lake volcano in California. These look like a giant painted the ground with swirling green-black glass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><span style="color: lime;">3. What is lava like?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Lava is very hot initially when it first reaches the air - it glows yellow-red from incandescence in cracks and at the flow-fronts. You can walk on it, because it is denser than a human body, but it is pretty rough on your boots. It melts boot-soles while hot, and cuts them up when cold because lava (e.g., in Hawai'i) is really just black glass. As lava cools, it sounds like a bowl of Rice Crispies crackling. As the flow-front reaches trees and houses, it engulfs them and the very high heat sets them on fire. This often forms tree molds - molds of where trees once were before being engulfed by the lava, for instance in HAwai'i and at Newberry Volcano in central Oregon. On Mauna Loa, a fast moving flow-front in the 1950's burst out of a fissure high on the volcano's west flank. I talked with a man who watched the flow run down the volcano's flank and onto a forest. It clipped off the trees at the base, then stack them vertically like bunched toothpicks at the front of the flow as the whole thing raced downhill at 60 kilometers per hour into the Pacific Ocean. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><span style="color: lime;">4. Have you seen a volcano erupt?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">I was inside Mutnovskiy volcano in Kamchatka when it started venting. I watched Mount St Helens erupt several times in 2004-2005. I've walked over active (evolving, moving) lava fields from Kilauea volcano, tracking the growing flow-front using a GPS device.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">5. Is your job dangerous?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Not any more dangerous than driving a car on a Friday night when there are drunks on the road. Most volcanologists know someone, a friend or a colleague, who has died while working on a volcano, so yes, volcanoes ARE dangerous, and must be treated with respect. Because volcanoes are so dangerous, we take extra precautions when working on one that is restive, and generally stay well away of they are erupting. It's sort of like wearing seatbelts when you drive in a car. If you don't you are being deliberately careless - and statistically you have a much higher chance of dying. </span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-13975286808681063242014-11-02T17:00:00.000-08:002014-11-02T17:00:00.130-08:00How Can You Have NEGATIVE Earthquake Magnitudes?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Some questions require an explanation of a different kind of number that some students haven't yet seen before. These different ways of expressing numbers were developed to help explain very <i><u>large</u></i> things, very <i><u>many</u></i> things, very <i><u>small</u></i> things, or very <i><u>complex</u></i> things, among others.<br />
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<span style="color: lime;">Q: Hi, My name is Anthony. I was wondering how negative magnitudes can be recorded for earthquakes, and what is the smallest earthquake ever measured? Thanks</span><br />
<span style="color: lime;">- Anthony N</span><br />
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A: Earthquake magnitudes are actually exponentials, so a negative exponential doesn't mean a "negative" value in the usual sense of the word. I'm hoping you've already had exponentials in school - or at least you can go ask a teacher what they are.<br />
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For instance,<br />
<b>10(exp)+2</b> = 10^+2 = <b><span style="color: orange;">100.0</span></b> <br />
The exponent here is +2 and it means one hundred. This is 10 to the second power.<br />
<b>10(exp)+1</b> = 10^+1 = <b><span style="color: orange;">10.0</span></b> <br />
The exponent here is +1 and it gives ten - ten to the first power.<br />
<b>10(exp) 0</b> = 10^0 = <b><span style="color: orange;"> 1.0</span></b> <br />
The exponent here is 0 and it means one - ten to the zeroth power.<br />
<b>10(exp)-1 </b> = 10^-1 = <b><span style="color: orange;"> 0.1</span></b> <br />
The exponent here is a negative number, but it refers just to a SMALLER value than a non-negative exponent would. Here ten to the minus first power means one tenth.<br />
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The smallest earthquake ever recorded is a bit more difficult to answer. There are three parts to the answer:<br />
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1. It depends on the sensitivity of the instrument, and how close the hypocenter of the earthquake (the actual rupture point) is to the instrument. There are a lot of sensitive seismometers set up around the world as part of the global seismic network - they are designed to look for earthquakes in the magnitude 2 range or higher. There are also some really, really sensitive seismometers positioned on and around volcanoes. These are set up to look for earthquakes so tiny that earthquake people wouldn't really be interested in them - events so small that only one or two of the nearby instruments may even detect them, and no human would likely feel them.<br />
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2. I believe that the smallest recorded events are probably in the M= -2 range (negative two magnitude) for a very clean, noise-free station. That's also what two seismologists in my office tell me (independently!).<br />
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3. When you are looking at magnitudes this small, you are also dealing with a lot of noise: cars driving by on a nearby highway, people or animals walking nearby, wind vibrating trees and buildings, etc. In a sense, the smallest earthquake ever recorded is sort of meaningless, because it becomes harder and harder to even know if it's real - or just noise. Also, the smaller the seismic events, the more common they are. As an example, the US Geological Survey estimates that there were about 1,300,000 earthquakes worldwide in the 2.0 - 2.9 magnitude range. There are MANY more as you get to ever smaller magnitudes. See an earlier chapter on how many earthquakes are detected each year in each magnitude range (<a href="http://askageologist.blogspot.com/2012/11/earthquakes-how-often.html"><span style="color: cyan;">http://askageologist.blogspot.com/2012/11/earthquakes-how-often.html</span></a>).<br />
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No one is really interested in most of the wiggles you see in these two examples:<br />
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<a href="http://www.avo.alaska.edu/webicorders/Veniaminof/"><span style="color: cyan;">http://www.avo.alaska.edu/webicorders/Veniaminof/</span></a> <br />
This is an instrument set up on Veniaminof volcano in the Aleutians. At 8:30am PDT on 22 October, I can see a few distant teleseismic events (distant earthquakes) and a lot of tiny events that may or may not be small volcanic earthquakes, or in some cases just small rock-falls from the crater walls. I can also see some large swings of the recorder that are instrument noise - probably electrical noise, either human-caused or natural, like distant lightning.<br />
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Whereas, if you look at Augustine volcano's webicorder for that same day, you see only a huge amount of wind noise:<br />
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<a href="http://www.avo.alaska.edu/webicorders/Augustine/"><span style="color: cyan;">http://www.avo.alaska.edu/webicorders/Augustine/</span></a> <br />
This is an instrument set up on Augustine volcano in Cook Inlet in Alaska. At 8:30am PDT on 22 October I could only see masses of blue "ink" on the plot that indicate a lot of wind noise on this station. There is so much noise on this seismometer record at this point in time that any "real" earthquake would be impossible to see.<br />
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-17587622018306449122014-10-26T16:57:00.001-07:002014-10-26T16:57:52.300-07:00How Many Volcanoes Are There In The World?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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How many of X are there in the world? This is a common question that often provides a surprising answer. You might be surprised at how many drill rigs exist or once existed in the Gulf of Mexico, for instance (over 4,200!).</div>
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<span style="color: lime;">Q: how many volcanoes are there in the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: lime;">- Josh S</span></div>
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A: The Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution lists 1559 volcanoes with eruptions happening during the Holocene period (the last 10,000 years). This means they are listing active or potentially active volcanoes. There are MANY more volcanoes in the world than that, of course. Some of them are just older and long inactive, like parts of Craters of the Moon national monument in Idaho (however some features there are as recent as 2,000 years ago), or volcanoes that erupted in Venezuela over a billion years ago. Some volcanic features that are not on the Smithsonian volcano database are just too small to easily list. While serving as the chief scientist for volcano hazards in the US Geological Survey, I assigned one of my senior scientists to do a full assessment and summary of the Cascades volcanoes of Washington, Oregon, and California. I thought there might be 15 volcanoes there. He ended up with a list of over 3,500 - because he counted every focal point of volcanic activity including small scoria cones and maars. </div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-29412915797532274582014-08-26T20:04:00.000-07:002014-08-26T20:04:36.279-07:00Is the Big One Coming?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">The following query arrived just a day before the M=6.0 Napa, California earthquake of 24 August 2014. Unfortunately, I could not respond to the obviously nervous individual until after that event took place. The bottom line is that non-human risks change little over time – they are just there, but they<i> can</i> be dealt with. However, people tend to obsess over what scientists call “high-impact-low-probability” events – like a shark attack or an earthquake along the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Q: Hello I live in California and currently I'm getting very scared with all the current activity around the ring of fire. My question is whether this is normal activity or warning signs for bigger earthquakes to come, or even the "big one"?<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">-<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Dolores L</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">A: The activity you are noticing is normal - it has been going on for millions of years. Sometimes it seems more exciting in some locations than normal, but this is still normal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">When you write of a "big one", this is also normal: we are expecting a subduction mega-quake in the Pacific Northwest anytime in the next one day to 300 years. Some older schools are being earthquake-retrofitted in Oregon as I write this. The Earth's crust is an active place, and the truth of the matter is that no matter where you live there is some degree of local (potential) hazard everywhere, whether hurricanes, volcanoes, domestic violence, earthquakes, drought, floods, car-accidents, or tornadoes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">The rational way to deal with these is to evaluate each hazard carefully – and there are public agencies like the USGS that do this all the time, very conscientiously. Once you know what the risks are – and most of the "big ones" are high-impact-low-probability – then you can plan accordingly. I bought my home on a slope for the view, but I checked the foundations carefully before I paid for it. I also paid an extra 15% earthquake premium on my homeowners insurance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">To put things in perspective: people react strongly to learning that a swimmer was killed by a shark, but 10's of thousands of sharks die brutally at the hands of humans each year rather than the other way around. Compare the 1 - 3 human shark-bite deaths to over 35,000 highway deaths in the United States last year. While seat belts, speed limits, and no-texting are theoretically enforced, no one seems to get particularly excited about this huge killer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Another perspective: My father, before he died of lung-cancer, lived in a high-rise apartment in San Francisco less than 10 miles from the San Andreas Fault. I once asked him if he worried about it much? His response opened my eyes. “Listen,” he said, “I could enjoy the view of the Bay from here, or I could hunker down in a basement somewhere and worry constantly. Long ago I chose the former.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"><span style="color: orange;"><b><i><u>Bottom line</u></i></b>:</span> the world is NOT about to end. Study your own personal risks, and then take rational precautions to mitigate them as much as possible without going overboard. Just taking <i>any</i> steps will lessen your worries, because you will be actively doing something about them. This could include putting up a supply of drinking water and food to last you during a local or regional disaster. Or better yet, a years supply so you can also help your neighbors. </span></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-35265331146410369702014-07-31T17:00:00.000-07:002014-07-31T17:00:03.353-07:00RUBIES!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The US Geological Survey does not employ gemologists – while there have been several within our ranks historically, they have been amateur gemologists who have pursued their interest on their own time. Nevertheless, gems DO come from the ground, and could reasonably be construed to be an ultimate product of geology. The following question is typical of the kind we receive about gems.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">Q: Is there somewhere in California near Modesto that I can have a rock collection looked at? We are almost positive that we may have found some raw rubies! They have passed the scratch test and are very heavy and hexagonal shaped. 209-xxx-xxxx<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: lime;">- James</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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A: We can't do gemology for you - the US Geological Survey is tightly constrained to work on only particular national objectives that Congress sets, including mineral resource assessments, volcano hazards, etc. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My recommendation to you is that you contact a local gemological society and ask for guidance. I would NOT recommend going to any jewelry store, as they only focus and specialize on the end products. </div>
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You might try:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: cyan;"><a href="http://www.americangemsociety.org/"><span style="color: cyan;">http://www.americangemsociety.org/</span> .</a></span></b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">.. but keep in mind that this is a trade association of retail jewelers, independent appraisers, suppliers, and selective industry members, and only incidentally will they have any component that might be of help to you. </span></div>
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You would probably do better with:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.gemsociety.org/"><b><span style="color: cyan;">http://www.gemsociety.org/ </span></b></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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...or even better with a local society of educated amateurs, like the San Diego Mineral and Gem Society:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.gemsociety.org/" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: cyan;">http://www.gemsociety.org/</span></b></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, please keep in mind that there are beryls and other igneous minerals like garnet and eudialyte that can easily be mistaken for rubies by inexperienced people. A true ruby is a pink to blood-red (so-called “pigeon blood”) colored gemstone, a form of the mineral corundum (aluminum oxide). Ruby has a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale, and is considered one of the four precious stones, along with sapphire, emerald, and diamonds. The red color in a ruby is caused mainly by the presence of the element chromium in the crystal lattice.<o:p></o:p></div>
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-51758175741428567532014-07-24T17:09:00.000-07:002014-08-06T15:34:57.218-07:00The Dust Bowl, King Solomon, and Country Western Music<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sometimes – even after all these years – I am amazed to learn of yet another series of cultural connections all tied together by geology. The following Q&A is just one of many examples of this. Another example is how modern Venezuelan politics and its history are underlain both literally and figuratively by its ancient Archaean geology. This Venezuelan example would take too long to share here, but it can be found in a book my wife and I have written titled “2 Worlds, The Real Venezuela: Living on the Edge of the Jungle and the Rise of Hugo Chavez” (<a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/2-worlds-the-real-venezuela-jeff-wynn/1112567534?ean=9780615428444"><b><span style="color: cyan;">http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/2-worlds-the-real-venezuela-jeff-wynn/1112567534?ean=9780615428444</span></b></a>). By the way, the girl holding the monkey in the cover photo is our youngest daughter.<br />
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<span style="color: lime;">Q: I just watched a show on the history channel. Part of the show covered the "Dirty 30's" and how the "Dust Bowl" helped shape human kind today. My question is, of the possible millions of tons of top soil blown away. Where did it go? Did the eastern sea board states get a foot taller during those years or what? Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. Sincerely,</span><br />
<span style="color: lime;">- Bart A</span><br />
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A: The Dust Bowl was caused by improper farming practices that destroyed the native prairie vegetation and their root systems - and didn't replace them. The US Soil Conservation Service (Now the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS) was created to first understand, then mitigate the consequences of plowing fields in prairies. In 1933, its original incarnation the Soil Erosion Service was created within the Department of the Interior, with Hugh Bennett as chief. Bennett was a visionary soil expert who had been publishing scientific papers on the subject since the beginning of the 20th Century. He practically invented soil science.<br />
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To answer your specific question, yes: the soil goes elsewhere, and other places grow “taller”, though you might not be able to easily recognize this. Winds tend to scour certain localized areas, and then distribute the soil and dust outside these areas - but much more widely. Thus it may not seem like parts of the rest of the country developed deeper soils, but they did - though very marginally. The airborne distribution process drops out the heavier particles at shorter distances, while the finest dust can theoretically blow around the world. You might speculate where some of the dust that always seems to find its way into your house originally came from.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Two anecdotes may help you understand this better.<br />
1. Satellites can see dust from the western Sahara blow thousands of kilometers out into the central Atlantic Ocean. Ultimately it collects in the abyssal ocean depths, where coring has actually measured it and its growth rate. It may even have a part in the Atlantic Hurricane development process.<br />
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2. While I was working in central Saudi Arabia two decades ago, I was asked to provide geophysical assistance to a geologist trying to evaluate a small ancient mine (SAM) named an-Najadi. This mine was one of at least 852 small artisanal gold mines found in Saudi Arabia today, and apparently formed the major source of gold reported in King Solomon's treasury.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>While visiting the site I saw that the geologist had used a backhoe to dig trenches. His objective was to get down through the soil to the bedrock, to figure out what the bedrock structure was - so he would know which direction to point or orient his evaluation drilling program. At the bottom of one trench I saw two round stones - they turned out to be grindstones used by the ancient miners to crush the quartz grains holding the tiny fragments of gold that the miners were after. I am looking at those two stones in my office as I write this.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On the sides of the trench I saw three white lines, and asked the geologist about them. They turned out to be slaked-lime floors of ancient dwellings. I could see the oldest one, then one a meter higher stratigraphically above it - that therefore had to be at least a thousand years younger - and then one above that. The trench was 14 feet (4+ meters) deep. The lowest level was occupied by miners in Solomon's time - 3,500 years ago. The 14 feet of soil above the lowest dwelling level arrived since that time and is called "loess", a German word for blown-in soil. Most of this soil had been blown in from the west. It had come from the eastern Sahara, and crossed the Red Sea to get there. I have personally experienced sand storms in that area that kept aircraft from landing - because pilots could not see the ground for up to three days at a time. Operation Desert Storm in 1990-91 was rushed forward in time to beat these seasonal wind storms called the Shamal. These storms happen during the period of monsoon storms that lash the Arabian Sea for several months in the Spring every year.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This all tells us that over-grazing in the proto-Sahara, starting thousands of years ago, had already stripped most of North Africa of its protective vegetation, leading to the ever-expanding "desertification" process we see that continues today... and which Oklahoma experienced for a short period in the 1930's.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Soil conservation is an important lesson we learned from the Dust Bowl of the 1930's. Some of the Oklahoma economic refugees migrated to California, and a country western band leader named Cousin Herb Henson brought his musical tradition from there - and lived across the street from me when I was a child in Bakersfield, California. I still remember Bakersfield being one of two major Country Western music centers in the country after Memphis... and I can still remember the disparaging name of "Okies" being used for these poor migrants decades after they arrived.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I hope this answers your question, and perhaps puts it in a wider context.<br />
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7563244771113052970.post-74843447318998545742014-07-03T17:06:00.000-07:002014-07-03T17:12:40.613-07:00Jeff Wynn's Special Crash Diets<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I plan to patent these things. Consider this the Public Notice in the Federal Register - I have 12 months to initiate contact with the US Patent and Trademark Office. These Jeff Wynn's Special Crash Diets (patents pending) will be useful for anyone desiring to lose 5-24 pounds VERY quickly. That summer bikini bod? Just 7 - 10 days away, thanks to Dr. Wynn. The oldest of the three Drs. Wynn.<br />
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You will <b><i>not</i></b> find these diets in O magazine. Oprah Winfrey is a sissy and won't try them.<br />
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1. <span style="color: orange;"><b>The Duodenal Ulcer Diet</b> </span>- good for 24 lbs in 3 weeks. You will need to chew aspirin without water when feeling a lot of pain for this one. If you have a German grandmother, she will teach you how to do this. The taste is bitter, but it can become an acquired taste that is not unpleasant if you work at it. The consequences manifest as a feeling of light-headedness, a rapid loss of your tan, and soon you will also notice black, tarry stools. Don't let this go on too long, however, or you will literally bleed out. Stay hydrated with Kool-Aid or you will face congestive heart failure.<br />
<b><i><u>Ancillary:</u></i></b> You won't feel like eating at all, but you should probably force yourself to start on soft stuff (like white bread and bananas) and stop eating the aspirin after 10 days.<br />
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2. <b><span style="color: orange;">The Shigella Diet</span></b> - good for 14 lbs in 10 days. You may have to travel to the deep southern Venezuelan jungle for this one. It requires a cook who never washes his hands, or anything else, and who butchers chickens - and leaves the offal - on the edge of your jungle encampment. They do this because everyone is fearful of El Tigre, also known as a Jaguar, and of course no self respecting Jaguar would THINK to follow its nose to the scent of rotten chicken guts and thus into your hammock. I WILL note that in three years in the deep jungle I MAY have seen just one pug mark from a small cat, but the psychological fear runs rampant among Venezuelans. Everyone carries a machete with them, even to venture 10 meters into the forest to relieve themselves. The microbe donated by the filthy cook first manifests as light-headedness with a ringing in the ears. It probably also involves a high fever, but you won't likely have a thermometer with you to prove it. Within a day it turns to nausea and diarrhea, and within a day after that the diarrhea begins to show significant blood. LOTS of blood. Most people living in southern Venezuela are immune to this microbe, or else they are dead (Natural Selection - Darwin was right). Delicious additional details can be found at <b><a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Jeff-Wynn?store=ebook&keyword=Jeff+Wynn"><span style="color: cyan;">http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Jeff-Wynn?store=ebook&keyword=Jeff+Wynn</span></a></b><br />
Believe me, you WILL run out of available un-besmirched jungle, and be sure to have at least 10 extra batteries for your flashlight. You never know what you will step in otherwise.<br />
<b><i><u>Ancillary</u></i></b>: You can stop the weight-loss at your leisure by drinking an entire bottle of Kaopectate with Neomycin. You don't want to fritter around with any teaspoons here.<br />
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3. <b><span style="color: orange;">The Ruptured Colon Diet</span></b> - good for about 10 lbs in 7 days. This one requires taking some very hard falls to initiate. You must try to strangle at least 10 people up against a wall. They will then hold on to your shirt, ears, or chest hair, lift their legs, and drop straight down. If you are not quick with your hands, your face will then hit the wall VERY hard (that's the intent, anyway). Next, the "victim" will cup hands behind your heel and shove a shoulder hard against your knee, forcing you to fall backwards in what is technically called an Ura Nage or simply just a "Tree Fall". You can't roll out of this one because your leg is locked out. This little exercise works better if you are older, as diverticula increase with age (40% at 40 years, 60% at 60 years, etc.).<br />
<i><b><u>Ancillary</u>:</b></i> The doctors don't want to carve on you, despite what you may hear about fees-for-service (I suspect they don't like the smell), so they will put you on a Dextrose-and-Morphine diet. I didn't name it this, because the diet also requires taking a highly toxic antibiotic, such as Flagyl. In fact, the Flagyl itself will probably do the job, because (a) the doctors INSIST that you take a cycle of antibiotic to the Bitter End, and (b) the metallic taste in your mouth makes any food taste like a carburetor.<br />
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4. <b><span style="color: orange;">The Extracted Tooth/Teeth Diet</span></b> - good for 7 lbs in 7 days. You simply need to have a tooth extracted for this one. Two teeth, if the dentist accidentally fractures a neighboring one, will serve even better. Ignore the instructions to avoid spitting and eating any solid foods after two days and the clots will come out, exposing your jaw or your skull in what is euphemistically called a "dry socket". It's not at all dry, because food and saliva quickly pack the openings and the pain rapidly ramps up to a 5 - 6 level. However, this provides an excellent incentive to stop doing anything with your mouth, including talking, eating, etc.<br />
<b><i><u>Ancillary</u></i></b>: The sockets will heal (close) in about a month. You can temper this diet with liquid protein drinks, but you will need to eat a sheet of newspaper a day to provide adequate fiber. Legal liability issues prevent me from explaining what happens otherwise.<br />
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5. <b><span style="color: orange;">The Vitamin "O" Diet</span></b> - good for about 5 pounds in 7 days. I can't take credit for the name - my kids came up with that. To do this right you will need to work in an environment - say a ship - where you are nauseous from 5-meter seas for several days. It works best if your work window is always at night when everyone else wants to sleep (there are some people who actually insist on sleeping at night). You can keep your brain fueled by eating a three-column sack of Oreos every 12 hours. Don't worry, your system throws it off quickly, and any sugar that doesn't just run straight through you will keep EVERYTHING humming. This particular diet involves virtually no pain, by the way.<br />
<b><i><u>Ancillary</u></i></b>: This one is easy to turn on or off. The boat driver can simply turn into the wind, which will reduce the pitch, roll, and yaw to just cyclic forward-back pitches. You can also go to bed and kiss off about half of your data.<br />
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Several other possibilities come to mind, but they generally require surgery. I will keep them to myself until time for Public Notice in the Federal Register. You're welcome.<br />
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AskTheGeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06354833219992420022noreply@blogger.com1