GeoLog

Geoscientific Methods

Geosciences Column: Dating a bivalve

Just as the rings on a tree can be used to determine its age, the bands on a bivalve’s shell can tell us the how long it’s been around for. Warm, food-filled waters lead to greater growth in the summer and low plankton abundance (the principle food source for filter-feeding molluscs) leads to limited growth during the winter months – hence the banding. But pinning down the age of a bivalve m ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Getting a handle on Greenland’s glaciers

The picture below shows several small glaciers surrounding the Greenland ice sheet, in Tassilaq, near Kulusuk, East Greenland. The dark lines are glacial moraines, responsible for the transport of rock material from mountains towards sea. The photographer, Romain Schläppy, highlights that “an important scientific topic consists to place the recent and ongoing Greenland warming in the broader conte ...[Read More]

Muon musings – how penetrating particles could let us peer beneath Mars’ surface

Muons are penetrating particles generated by cosmic rays. Muon radiography – or muography – is the large-scale equivalent of using x-rays to generate images. Except, instead of using x-rays to take a closer look at your broken arm, we can use showers of muons to take a look inside large geological structures – we’re talking several kilometres in size here! When cosmic rays meet the atmospher ...[Read More]

GeoCinema Online: Making Measurements

Making measurements from the space and looking to the skies has hugely enhanced our understanding of the Earth, it’s surface processes and its movement in space. This short episode of GeoCinema Online takes you through some of the  great technological developments in the Earth and planetary sciences! Looking Down a Well: A Brief History of Geodesy Geodesy is a field of study that deals with ...[Read More]