Check out my new guest post. See it here at Water Underground!
Groundwater Speed Dating at Water Underground
Emerging Contaminants: The Rough Teenagers
In geochemistry I see the term “bad actors” used more often than it should be to describe well-known environmental contaminants. “Bad actors” refers to contaminants we see frequently in the environment and know have significant environmental or human health effects. Think mercury, nitrates, lead, arsenic, sulphur dioxide, etc. However, this article is on the up and coming c ...[Read More]
Photo of the Week
Keepin’ then comin’! This weeks photo is brought to you by Immageo as per usual. It can be found: here The image was taken by Dmitry Tonkacheev, IGEM RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation. Dmitry writes, “This is Co-bearing sphalerite, synthesised using gas transport method at 850C looks like the Christmas Tree. Although presented intergrowth of crystals was made in the laboratory, the ...[Read More]
Photo of the Week
This amazing picture above was taken by Mikhail Varentsov, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. It can be found here. Mikhail writes “Melting summer sea ice is separated to pieces by the net of cracks, and their edges have amazing light-blue color, which is in contrast with white ice surface and deep blue sea water. Photo made during NABOS-2015 expedition.” What this phot ...[Read More]
Photo of the Week – Salt Coral
The photo posted below is a really cool one. Interestingly, enough I have been getting into podcasts lately. They are great during my bus ride to and from work every day. One of the podcasts that I like is Neil de Grasse Tyson’s Star Talk Radio. Anyway, the other week Star Talk had a pretty good discussion about salt and the role it has played in developing human history. Check out the episo ...[Read More]
Photo of the Week (Approximately)
The truly insane photo above shows “Different generations of calcite cements in Late Miocene seep carbonates (Piedmont, Italy; cathodoluminescence microphotograph)”. It was taken by Marcello Natalicchio, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germania – Source. This photo was taken using a cathodoluminescence microscope which is both a standalone tool or can be an adaptation to a scann ...[Read More]
Welcome to Water Underground
A big welcome to the new EGU blog network blog Water Underground! Water Underground is the first geoscience blog that I am aware to be cross-hosted on both the EGU and AGU blog networks allowing it to reach people across the world. Water Underground, founded by Dr. Tom Gleeson, a prof at the University of Victoria, Canada, is a welcome addition to the EGU as it will cover groundwater, climate, and ...[Read More]
Pilgrimage to Pompeii
One of the highlights of my honeymoon in Italy was our trip to Pompeii. Both my wife and I are big classics nerds so for us a visit to Pompeii had something of a pilgrimage aspect to it. For me, as a geologist, it was doubly impactful to see the effect of Vesuvius on the town. For the record, we got in a huge discussion about what actually constitutes a pilgrimage. As a bit of background, Mount Ve ...[Read More]
It’s Been a While
It’s been a long time since my last post. This is mainly due to the ridiculously busy summer I have had. The biggest thing was getting married, but the honeymoon, work trips and deadlines as well as working on a few papers kept me pretty occupied. I’m sad to say that blog updates dropped lower on my priority list then I would’ve liked. In any case, I am going to try to get back a ...[Read More]
Cruisin’ for Deep Sea Vents
My friend John Jamieson, who is now a prof in the geology department at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Canada Research Chair in marine geology and is also a former GeoSphere guest poster is currently on a research cruise near Fiji. John researches deep sea vents, aka. black smokers/seafloor massive sulphide deposits that are exhaling super heated water at tectonic plate boundaries around ...[Read More]