May 24 2018

Guest Videos: Lutetium, the Neglected Atom

This headline caught my eye:

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No atom should feel neglected…and if you read the article, there’s some intense competition Lu must overcome if it is to earn enough recognition to be given the privilege of telling us how long a second should be.

I had no idea what lutetium is, either, but I looked it up and found videos, one with a fuzzy-haired mad scientist and his ubercool British assistant, and the other–well, you’ll see.

Continue reading →

May 22 2018

Guest Videos: Vermilion Cliffs National Monument

Sometimes geology pulls out all the stops. You might have seen pictures of this place calling it “The Wave,” for obvious reasons.

This amazing place, sculpted by water and wind in an arid region, is just one step in a geological “grand staircase” of sedimentary rocks that stretches from Bryce Canyon down into the Grand Canyon.

Here is a drone’s view, followed by a Bureau of Land Management video that makes you wonder how native people, European explorers, and other vistors ever made it through alive!

May 21 2018

A Very Addictive Online Dinosaur Site

Between working on the ebook and keeping up with Kilauea (see “live” blog link in upper right corner of the page), I can only put up some guest videos to thank people for coming here.

However, I found this site, first with the interactive globe that shows what position the continents were in down through geologic time.

For example, you have heard that a big asteroid hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago and caused a mass extinction, right? And you picture an impact on modern-day Mexico.

But the continents were arranged somewhat differently back in the day:

Continue reading →

May 20 2018

Guest Videos: Nyiragongo’s Lava Lake

Molten rock at Kilauea’s summit has disappeared from view, but the world’s largest lava lake is still bubbling away in the crater of Africa’s Nyiragongo Volcano.

The tricky part is getting down there to check it out.

It isn’t easy for tourists to approach Nyiragongo’s summit, either.

But the fascination of that incandescent glow is intense.

More information:

Smithsonian Global Volcanism page

Wikipedia

OSU article on “The Most Dangerous Volcano in the World” (videos of Hawaiian lava flows aren’t from 2018)

Photovolcanica: Nyiragongo

May 18 2018

Guest Video: “Hell on Earth…”

h/t to Dr. Brad Pitcher’s tweet for this. Also, remember this video if you are ever exposed to volcanic ash- try not to breathe it in.

Mount St. Helens is much more peaceful these days:

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Featured image: Srosenow 98, CC BY 2.0

May 17 2018

Guest Videos: Landslides (and the Lituya Bay Megatsunami)

There have been lethal landslides lately in the Caribbean and Rwanda.

Fortunately no one was injured in a Chinese landslide that was caught on video.

A geologist blogs about that here.

Here in Corvallis there are plenty of homes on steep slopes, just as there are in Portland, north of us, where the first part of this video was filmed:

Over 4,000 people died in landslides last year.

Probably the worst landslides recently were those in China, in 2017 —

— and in the US state of Washington in 2014:

Lituya Bay

Landslides that happen in or around water, of course, cause a big splash. People often perish as a result, because there is no warning before it happens.

This occurred near Newfoundland in 1929, and it also happened in Alaska’s Lituya Bay one night, causing a 1,720-foot-high tsunami–that these two people rode.

That holds the record for the biggest wave ever.

Here is more information about landslides from US Geological Survery.

Featured image: USGS