I’ve put up a post outlining a bit of what I’ve got planned for Rosetta Stones this year, and I’ve opened the floor to suggestions. Leave your wants in the comments! The more topics, the merrier. Also, if you have any subjects you’d like me to tackle for ye here at the cantina, let me know. We can do whatever we want here, so don’t feel constrained in subject matter. Suggest away!
Caves from around the world – incl. those filled with crystals, those filled with drawings, and those that are just totally awesome – and more volcanoes (Pompeii, that other giant one and that other other giant one…).
I’m really looking forward to more MSH, and the women geologists.
If I think of anything else, I’ll be sure to post. :)
Ooh, yes, caves sound good. And you can’t go wrong with volcanoes. Perhaps visit some of the others in our state. You can even combine them — how about a visit to Ape Cave, a lava tube south of MSH? With a little bonus sasquatch tie-in.
Another topic of great interest to me would be the lava floods that created the Columbia River basalts, followed by the much more recent water floods that created the Grand Coulee and Channelled Scablands.
It was the volcanoes erupting that formed the first, thus releasing a lot of water into the air to create the second. Happy now? :)
I like the sasquatch tie-in, that might be fun!!
It wouldn’t be “Ape Cave” if it wasn’t for Squatch!
Seriously, the geology of the central part of this state is fascinating. You just wouldn’t want to live there.
Glacial rebound? formation of salt flats in Utah(?) love everything you write about!
Colorado plateau- especially the Utah side
The Missoula Floods.
How about something on the Hawaii Hot Spot?
* Late-Pleistocene giant floods, like the Columbia River basin ones. They were caused by glacial dam breaks — continental glaciers.
* Reconstruction of continental drift — what past supercontinents did we have? How long have continents been playing “bumper cars”?
* How we figured out continental drift and plate tectonics.
* What it was like in the past. Imagine yourself visiting some past time and doing any of these things. Watching Lake Missoula’s glacial dam break, letting that lake’s water rush down the Columbia River Basin. Taking a trip across Pangaea. Or going scuba diving in the Burgess Sea or the Kansas Sea. Or going cross-country skiing in the late Proterozoic. Or venturing out after a rainstorm with an oxygen-tank backpack and noticing how bleak the landscape looks, though some of the puddles have a greenish tinge to them. Or marveling at how runny some lava is as you watch your oxygen supply.
What do you think of this article and theory and your thoughts on the Mayans , Incas, Aztecs etc .. :
http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2015/01/why_did_the_mayans_die_evidence_civilization_declined_because_of_draught.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top
Also astronomy! Always more astronomy! (Please) :-)
About the last item in my previous post, did it go over everybody’s heads? I’m sure not Dana’s, but everybody else’s? I can identify what’s what for anyone who is curious.
Another idea: rock chemistry, or at least igneous-rock chemistry and what that tells us about the history of its source magma. The Earth’s continental crust formed by chemical differentiation of magmas, with the less dense parts rising and the more dense parts sinking.
Most of the Solar System’s rocky materials are basaltic / mafic / sima, judging from what samples we can get and the Sun’s composition. But most of the Earth’s continental crust is granitic / felsic / sial, which is less dense, and that’s from the Earth’s geological activity and magma differentiation.