It’s not always easy visualising the complex processes which operate on planet Earth. Even more difficult, at least for me, is explaining them to others. That’s why I’m always on the look out for tools that might just help me with that and which I can share with others too. Enter the NASA Visualisation Explorer, and the Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS), which I came across r ...[Read More]
This week, my PhD supervisor, Andy Biggin, had a paper out in Nature. The findings of this new research point towards the Earth’s inner core being older than we’d previously thought. Recent estimates, suggest that the Earth’s solid inner core started forming between half a billion and one billion years ago. However, Andy’s (and co-workers) new measurements of ancient rocks as the ...[Read More]
Today I had the great pleasure of interviewing Cindy Mora-Stock. It was a great success as I was finally able to put a face to the twitter handle that I’ve been following almost from my first days on Twitter. What’s even better is that I can safely say I’ve come away from the interview having made a new friend, as Cindy and I hit it off straight away. The final bonus of choosing ...[Read More]
On Wednesday morning I woke up to a flurry of activity on my twitter feed: there had been a large earthquake in northern Chile. I followed up some of the tweets and realised that there had also been some tsunami warnings as a result of the earthquake. After ascertaining that the scale of the disaster wasn’t as large as I’d anticipated, given the size of the quake (I don’t want you to think for one ...[Read More]
Scientists studying earthquakes should be prepared to put themselves forward to reduce the risk of earthquake damage. This was one conclusion from a meeting of scientists and engineers in London last week. Picture yourself here. You are an earthquake scientist. Years of research conclude that a capital city lies close to active fault that has the potential to generate a large earthquake. The local ...[Read More]
I came across this video, which very clearly explains how the Earth’s magnetic field protects us from Solar Storms. It then goes on to explain the link of these phenomena to our planet’s climate. The added bonus is that the images are very cool and I think the voice over is done by Liam Neeson…. Does anyone else think so? Anyway, I digress… For a written account of what i ...[Read More]
The Geological Society of London have just today released a great report highlighting how geology contributes to our society. All too often the impression is that all geologists do is study rocks. Whilst in essence, this is what we do, the implications of geological research are far reaching and not always understood by the wider public. I think this report is a fantastic piece of science communic ...[Read More]
Happy New Year to you all! We’ve had a long Christmas break at Geology Jenga, but we are back! For 2014 we’ve got some really interesting 10 minute interviews lined up, as well as the continuation of the ‘Making the most of your PhD’ series and musings on all the things that interest Dan & I. So without further ado, let’s get started! The past few weeks and months have seen some exciting newsw ...[Read More]
During the summer I took part in a fantastic public engagement activity, I’m a Scientist, Get me Out of Here! It’s an X-factor style competition where school students get to meet and interact with scientists. The students are the judges and vote for their favourite scientist to win a cash prize to communicate their work with the public. Sadly, I didn’t win the cash prize, but d ...[Read More]
