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]
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]
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]
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]
I’m getting back in the bog saddle. After a brief hiatus as I was adjusting to the life of a real, productive member of the PGS (post grad school) world I am good to go for blogging again. Enjoy the photo of the week! The text that follows is a technical description of the photo by the photographer, Dmitry Tonkacheev. Presented intergrowths of the infinite number of dark-brown sphaleriteR ...[Read More]
A recently published paper (by myself and colleagues from uOttawa and Environment Canada) investigates the environmental fate of the long lived radioisotope of iodine, 129I, which was released by the Fukushima-Daichii Nuclear Accident (FDNA). Within 6 days of the FDNA 129I concentrations in Vancouver precipitation increased 5-15 times above pre-Fukushima concentrations and then rapidly returned to ...[Read More]
This week’s photo is brought to you from outer space! Indeed, this a beautiful cut section of a meteorite that fell in northwest Australia and was found in 1892 (ignore the label behind it). It is an iron-nickel meteorite and is composed entirely of metal. This crazy cross-hatching, which is most commonly found in such iron-nickel meteorites, is called a Widmanstätten pattern. Widmanstätten ...[Read More]
This week’s photo is from my personal research and shows a precipitate that I generated in the lab one day of AgI (silver iodide) for analysis of 129I by accelerator mass spectrometry. I felt though that I wanted to verify the purity of the AgI so I quickly threw in on our scanning electron microscope to a) check the chemistry and b) take a picture. The image below shows an amalgam of AgI cr ...[Read More]
Ok, so I took some license with the title. This isn’t really a curious case and neither Krypton-81 nor ATTA are actually people. In fact, Krypton-81 (81Kr) is a radioisotope of the noble gas krypton and ATTA, which stands for atom trap trace analysis, is the revolutionary technique that has made its analysis possible. I recently heard about developments with ATTA at the IAEA Isotope Hydrolog ...[Read More]
This week’s photo brings us back to the world of geochemistry. I don’t have much information on this photo beyond that it was taken in Italy. However, if I may speculate a little it looks like these crystals may possibly be volcanic in origin and the fact that it was taken in Italy, which is famous for its volcanic sulphur deposits. I say this because such crystals are often found nea ...[Read More]