GeoLog

Earth Science Week 2020: Earth Materials in Our Lives – an A-Z!

Hazel Gibson and Terri Cook October 2, 2020

Large similar folds in a salt mine in the Carpathians. Credit: Janos Urai (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Since 1998 the American Geosciences Institute has been running an annual celebration of all things geoscience – Earth Science Week. From its inception, Earth Science Week has grown in popularity and is now celebrated across the planet. This year Earth Science Week will run from 11 to 17 October and the theme of the week is “Earth Materials in Our Lives.” As the American Geoscien ...[Read More]

GeoRoundup: the highlights of EGU Journals published during September!

Hazel Gibson September 29, 2020

Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we will be putting the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights roundup. For September, the Divisions we are featuring are: Energy, Resources and Environment (ERE) and Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology and Volcanology (GMPV). They are served by the journals: Geoscientific Mode ...[Read More]

Imaggeo On Monday: Blue Olivine in an unusual basalt

Bernardo Cesare September 28, 2020

Blue Olivine in an unusual basalt. Credit: Bernardo Cesare (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Blue Olivine set in a matrix of pyroxene, magnetite and plagioclase in a basalt collected by the photographer, Bernardo Cesare, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel. Polarized light photomicrograph. Crossed polarizers and red tint plate. Width c. 2.7 mm. Who may have been throwing this stone a couple millennia ago? Description by Bernardo Cesare, after the description on imaggeo.egu.e ...[Read More]

Friedrich Mohs and the mineral scale of hardness

Hazel Gibson September 25, 2020

Image credit: Hazel Gibson

One of the most famous identification methods in the study of mineralogy is the Mohs Scale of Hardness. A comparative scale, based on the hardness of each mineral, it is a way geoscientists can compare minerals to each other and organise them based upon an easily testable physical characteristic. Each level of hardness has a value, from 1 (the softest) to 10 (the hardest) and each number is associ ...[Read More]