The world’s oldest, deepest freshwater lake lies in southeast Siberia: Lake Baikal. Stretching some 600 kilometres across the Russian landscape, Baikal marks what the very early stages of a new ocean – an ancient rift that cleaved the centre of Asia apart throughout the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Today, there are still signs of tectonic activity and the rift continues to diverge 4 mm furth ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Quartz lawns and crystal flowers
Petrologists spend a large part of their time peering down microscopes at wafer thin slices of rock to work out what they’re made of and how they were formed. What lies on the other side of the lens can be an incredibly beautiful pattern, a kaleidoscope of colour, or stark bands of black and white, all of which provide clues to the rock’s history, and the history of the landscape it came from. Ber ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Light fantastic – flashing phenomena in Norway’s night sky
In this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays, Bjørn Gitle Hauge – from Østfold University College – opens our eyes to the astounding aurora borealis, and the unusual phenomena seen in Norway’s night sky… Hessdalen is a former mining district in the middle of Norway with huge ores of copper and mineshafts up to a kilometre deep. The climate here is sub-Arctic, with temperatures reaching as low as -50 de ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Layers of leg-like sandstone
John Clemens, a researcher from Stellenbosch University and one of the winners in the EGU Photo Contest 2014, opens our eyes to erosional processes in the Grand Canyon in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays… The photo below was taken late in the afternoon while doing some geological tourism at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA. The light at this time of day is ideal for such locations as it has a ...[Read More]