Education - it's a wonderful thing!

After finally getting the less than inspiring 'S170: Darwin & Evolution' course out of the way, I'm now already into the next challenge, which is another 10 credit, Science Short Course entitled S186: Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis. And what a cracking course this promises to be!

The leader of this particular module is none other than David Rothery, the volcanologist whose talk I attended last month at the Open University Open Day to mark 40 years of Earth Sciences courses at the OU. (Click here for my post about it)

After witnessing David's talk about his media involvement during the Icelandic volcanic dust storm crisis, it became a 'must do' from that point on. The man is clearly passionate about his subject, but doesn't take himself too seriously. One interview he did for ITV News in particular needs to be seen! Click here to view it. Watch out for the amazing disappearing car! My wife Ruth, doesn't seem to understand quite why I find it so hilarious, but it tickled me, but then, I'm easily amused as Ruth will tell you!

I only received the course materials last weekend, but I'm already hooked in a way that I never was by the Darwin course. It's all down to the style of writing I think. Ruth, who is an English graduate (with FIRST CLASS HONOURS I hasten to add) would be able to explain exactly how and why the writing was so dull and uninspiring on that course and how in just a few opening paragraphs of this new course I am totally hooked! It's not as if I wasn't interested in 'evolution' either. I started off keen enough, but the dullness of the course book killed off the enthusiasm entirely, which was a shame!

Anyway, I mustn't dwell on the negative, but concentrate on the delights of 'volcanoes' and already some long held misconceptions have come to light and been soundly kicked into touch. Firstly, I've always been led to believe that the earth's crust lies above a viscous but generally liquid mantle. Plates move about over considerable lengths of time, moving apart at constructive boundaries and moving together at destructive boundaries but by and large, it's pretty much liquid down there. WRONG! The very first sentence of the opening chaper of the course set text 'Teach Yourself Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis', by the course leader states:

"It is a common misconception that the interior of the Earth is molten".

Er, yes indeed. Oops! But then as I read on it becomes obvious that it simply cannot be. Pressure, obviously, ensures that despite it's heat, most of the rock in the mantle is in fact solid. Hmmm!

Secondly, regarding plate tectonics, Mr Rothery drops this bombshell on page 11:

"it is important to be clear that these tectonic plates are not rafts of crust moving over the mantle. The Earth's crust is firmly joined to the part of the mantle immediately below it".

That was a bit of a revelation too in that the top 100 km or so of the mantle is just as strong as the crust and is joined to the crust to make a single 'mechanical layer'. Interesting stuff!

Third eye opener concerned the next layer down, that of the lower mantle. This layer it turns out while not rigid, is neverhteless solid and yet slowly circulates at a rate of a few centimetres per year. Now this is a difficult concept to grasp but a good analogy is to compare the rock of the lower mantle with say, a slab of Devon toffee! Okay, a bit bizarre, but stay with me okay? Now, put the slab in the fridge for a while and it will be hard enough to shatter if whalloped with a hammer. Go on try it if you've got a spare slab lying around! However, if you leave another slab in the fridge with slightly less than half its length overhanging the fridge shelf and leave it for a few months, it will eventually bend over the shelf. Okay, I've not actually tried this myself - there's little or no chance for a slab of toffee surviving for long enough in my house antway, but I'm told it does work! Anyway, my point is that, yes the toffee is obviously solid, but will still bend if given sufficient time. So it is with the rock that makes up the lower mantle which is subject to what is called 'solid state convection'.

And all this is even before the course (or 'module' as the OU now like to call them) officially starts on Saturday 13th! And I haven't even mentioned 'cowpat bombs' yet!?! Maybe next time dear friends!

Cheers for now!
Alyn.

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Flamborough Head - August 2010

Well, it's taken a while, but I finally persuaded Anna to download the photographs she took on our brief visit to Flamborough Head while on holiday in Lincolnshire back in early August.

So, Flamborough Head is located off the east coast of England, north-east of the coastal town of Bridlington. My family and I started this particular day with a visit to the rather disappointingly sad spectacle of Scarborough, a place which rather reminded me of Blackpool 'up north' - all a bit run down and desperately trying to return to it's former glory days of the fifties and sixties. I kinda felt that these types of seaside holiday resort need to reinvent themselves somehow. The days of donkey rides and 'Kiss me Quick' hats are long gone I think!

Anyway, our detour to Flamborough was the highlight of the day - for me at least! For those wishing to visit, there is plenty of parking space available near the lighthouse and access to the chalk cliffs is possible down some scarily steep and slightly uneven steps, but it's worth the effort, trust me!

'Yours truly' with the stacks and cliffs of Upper Cretaceous chalk at Flamborough Head

The photo of me was taken by this lovely person, my step-daughter Anna-Ruth. The equally lovely Amy, her younger sister, declined the opportunity to descend the steep steps and stayed up top with her mum!

Anna-Ruth by the way, studied for a GCSE in Geography virtually on her own. The teaching for this subject seemed pretty rubbish in truth, so it's to her enormous credit that she passed it so well! On our walk down the steps (see later photo!) she proudly pointed to the stack and told me all about its formation, so there's definitely a potential geologist deep within her! She currently has her heart set on drama, but you never know!

Now here's a thought . . . she could forget drama and do a Geology degree instead! We could even study at the same time on the same course? How cool would that be? Actually, to the average teenager, that would probably be the most embarrassing thing ever! In a classroom with their 'old man'!?! OMG!!!

'Nature' - the worlds greatest sculpter!

Anyway, I digress. The most striking thing about Flamborough is the distinctly layered chalk cliffs and their associated features. The great accumulation of tiny, fossilised sea life that make up this rock took place some 70 - 90 million years ago. The classic stack shown above, formed comparatively quickly over thousands of years. Constant battering of the now exposed rock by the waves, erodes weak areas in the rock eventually creating caves. Where this occurs on an area jutting out into the sea the cave will eventually break through to form an arch. With further erosion the roof can collapse to form an isolated lump of rock - the stack shown above.

Another view of the stack, chalk cliffs and glacial till above.

Above the chalk cliffs lies a layer of glacial till which is a layer of deposits left behind by a glacier during the last ice age.

I have since learnt that there is a fine example of an arch here, I think on the far right  in the above photo, though from our view point we couldn't see through it!

Layered chalk cliff at Flamborough Head.

See what I mean? Scary steps, but solid and safe enough!

Okay, now this is where I need some help. Maybe in 'x' years time after I've actually done my geology degree, the answer to this will be more obvious, but I am currently a bit puzzled by this photo. Throughout the cliffs, the chalk layers are either horizontal or dipping about 10 degrees or so. Here however, at the bottom of the steps there is this section which seems to fold upwards as can be seen at lower right of the photo. At the upper middle of the photo the beds are at about 80 degrees from horizontal! So whats gone on here? Seems a quite localised fold that's quite out of step with the surrounding features!?! Answers on a postcard to . . . .

Me looking for fossils but not finding anything significant - or even insignificant for that matter!

Beautiful! Anna obviously, not the layered chalk and dipping beds! Obviously!

So there you have it. The geological delight that is Flamborough Head - go visit next time you are on the east coast!

Cheers for now,

Alyn.

40 Years of Earth & Planetery Sciences at the OU

This week has seen a significant anniversary at the Open University. It is now forty years since the start of the Department of Earth Sciences at the Uni. The late Professor Ian Gass lead the way with the guiding principle that 'excellent research breeds excellent teaching'.

To celebrate this milestone, the department held a 2 day conference followed by an Open Day on Saturday 9th October, and I managed to make the short journey down to the campus in Milton Keynes on Saturday. There were lots of things going on - some activities to stop the kids getting too bored, such as panning for gold and making plaster casts of fossils and even 'dressing up as a scientist' and having your picture taken! Tempting, I have to say, but I resisted. I was there for the talks. Just to be sure I booked to hear all the listed speakers with one in particular who was simply a 'must see'. More of that later.

First up was Dr Mark Davies, an ex OU PhD student and now working for ARKeX, a geophysical survey company. His talk was an interesting look at geogravity and how gravity changes according to mass. He showed how techniques for measuring these variations are used to locate oil reserves. Interesting stuff, but not my thing really. Exploration geology is not really where my interest lies, though it might have been if I had studied geology back in the '80s as I'd originally planned.

Next up was meant to be Dr Phil Bland, another ex OU student, talking about the oriigin of meteorites in the solar system, but unfortunately he had been taken ill and couldn't attend. Rather than stay for the 'emergency stand-on, I decided to have an early lunch break.

Then we had Professor Monica Grady (pictured left) of the Open University, with a talk entitled 'Life on Mars - if not, why not'. Monica, it turns out was the author of part of Book 8 from the OU Science Foundation course S104, that I successfully completed last year! So this talk was a good recap on what I'd learnt

The next speaker, Professor John Zarnecki (right) proved a wonderfully engaging bloke. He ran through his whole working life in space exploration, having been associated with many of the major planetary exploration missions over the last few decades including the Cassini Huygens mission that studied the surface of Titan. Best of all was his hilarious account of his desperate and sadly for him unsuccessful attempts to get into space himself on the various European Space Agency missions - proudly displaying his rejection letter from ESA! Great stuff!

The next guy was very much the 'Main Event' and needed no introduction. Professor Iain Stewart (pictured below) of Plymouth University and inspiring presenter of 'Earth:The Power of the Planet' and several other superb TV series in recent years proved to be even better in the flesh as it were, than he is on the telly. After some initial 'ribbing' from the compere for his NOT having done any OU courses, he went on to give a superb talk, loosely based on his most recent TV series 'How Earth Made Us'. What shone out like a beacon, was his near encyclopaedic knowledge of geologists of the past such as James Hutton. His delivery was slick, confident and utterly absorbing. His students at Plymouth Uni must have a ball, that's all I can say!

Follow that! Well for some obscure reason, someone thought it a good idea to have 'a word from one the sponsors'. In this case it was a guy from Thermo Fisher Scientific, suppliers of scientific instruments. It wasn't a sales pitch we were told, so that begs the question why? No idea myself! Odd choice!

Anyway, to wrap up the day we had Dr David Rothery (pictured left) of the OU, who related some hilarious anecdotes regarding his work as the media contact at the OU throughout the recent 'ash cloud crisis' during the Eyjafjallojokull eruption earlier this year. This guy was a hoot, and definitely didn't take himself too seriously! Rather than recount his stories, just go to You Tube and enter his name and look at the films of his media interviews with Sky TV and others. I particular, look out for the 'amazing disappearing car' in a Sky TV interview and the regular appearances of his little box of volcanic ash! Brilliant!

So a good day was had by all I think and highlighted the need to restore Open University Open Days which were a regular thing in days past I believe. Can't think why they were stopped.

Cheers for now,

Alyn

Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons

Most people like to take a good book to read on holiday with them and I'm no different. Well, maybe a little. . .

Non-fiction doesn't do much for me these days, though I did get through the Da Vinci Code with moderate pleasure a while ago. This year, before leaving for a week in Lincolnshire, I thought it was about time I got hold of a copy of John Wesley Powell's epic record of his Exploration of the Colorado River and it's Canyons, in 1869.

Good ol' eBay eh? There I found a copy on offer at a 'Buy it Now' price of an almost embarrassing £2.47. And that was with free postage! How do they make it pay, I wonder? Anyway, the book soon arrived and was duly opened, shortly after arrival at our holiday cottage in Lincolnshire.

And what a cracking read it turned out to be. Written several years after the event in 1869, Powell's writing style was surprisingly easy to get into. Written as a daily journal he never intended to publish the details in book form but was eventually persuaded to after numerous requests. A huge number of superb sketches of the myriad of geological wonders they encountered are included throughout the account, though it is not clear who drew many of them.

He starts with a general overview of the area to be explored, looking at the valley of the Colorado; the regions mesas and buttes; its mountains and plateaus; and its cliffs and terraces. As you may know, I'm a great believer in making geology understandable to the interested layman in the way Wayne Ranney writes for example. John Wesley Powell seems of like mind too, as is shown in this explanation of the arrangement of four lines of cliffs that extend from east to west across the region:

Place a book before you on a table with its front edge toward you, rest another book on the back of this, place a third on the back of the second and in like manner a fourth on the third. Now the leaves of the book dip from you and the cut edges stand in tiny escarpments facing you. So the rock-formed leaves of these books of geology have the escarpment edges turned southward while each book itself dips northward and the crest of each plateau book is the summit of a line of cliffs.


Go on, try it! Then turn to page 90 of the book and look at the 'Section and birds eye view" I love the explanation and the simple practical exercise. Brilliant!

Chapter 5 sees the start of the record of the expedition. What follows is a truly absorbing account of the triumphs and disasters as they progressed. What really pours out of the pages of this account is Powell's passion for geology and his love of the entire region. Despite the battering he and his fellow explorers endured at times and the hardships that they experienced, his determination to succeed never wavered. Clearly some of his party did not share his belief that they could succeed in completing the journey and three made the decision to leave and 'take their chances'. An unwise move as it turned out as they were to perish at the hands of hostile Indians. Amazingly, Powell was to meet the killers of his colleagues a year or so later in his follow up expedition to the Uinta region and appears not to condemn them for their actions. 

I would recommend having a good map of the american south-west or better still, Wayne Ranney's book 'Carving Grand Canyon' at your side when reading this book in order to better track Major Powell' progress. Not all of the names that Powell gave to the multitude of features he encountered have been adopted in the long term, but most certainly have.

I will leave you with John Wesley Powell's closing remarks as he reflected on the experience:-

You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. It is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas, but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a years toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained never again to be equaled on the hither side of Paradise.

Cheers,
Alyn.

Welcome to the Anthropocene!

My first copy of the Open University's 'Geological Society Journal' hopped through the letter box a few days ago and one paper stood out from the others mainly because of it's authors. Dr Mark Williams and Dr Jan Zalasiewicz from Leicester University are two people I met at last years open day at the university and Jan is the author of a splendid book called 'Earth after Us' that I featured in a blog last year (click here to read). The title of the paper is "Enter the Anthropocene: an Epoch of time characterised by humans".

I've often speculated about the likely legacy we humans will leave for future occupiers of planet earth and whether there will be anything left worth occupying millions of years from now. I have always, perhaps a tad naively, believed that maybe man isn't quite as stupid as I fear and will drag the planet back 'from the brink' eventually. But will we? It seems that many believe the earth's failsafe feedback mechanisms could, quite soon be pushed beyond the point of no return, ultimately leading to the destruction of all life on planet earth, leaving nowt but a seemingly dead mass like Mars! James Lovelock, in his book 'Revenge of Gaia' I think touches on this very possibility if I remember correctly.

Anyway, Zalsiewicz and Wiliams' paper looks at the degree of environmental change brought about by man's activites, takes the idea first proposed by the Nobel Prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen and suggests ideas for formalising a specific epoch of geological time to cover the period of human influence on earth.

But how does one classify it? When did this epoch start? Is there a specific event that says before this event is the holocene and after it is the anthropocene? Well, there are a number of factors that might just leave a signature for future visiting geologists from afar to read. Firstly, the extinction of the large animals or 'megafauna' seemed to coincide with the rise of the human being, e.g the mammoths. However, it is difficult to be specific about the date as they died out in the americas 13,000 years ago, but died out 50,000 years ago in Australia. Some 'megafauna' survive today, e.g. elephants and rhino, but are unlikely to be around for too much longer. So maybe the Anthropocene requires a better means of classification?

The introduction of agriculture may provide a more specific date in order to gauge the start of this new epoch. WThe onset of agricultural practices brought widespread tree felling and planting of food crops which will have completely changed the composition of pollen grain accumulations in sediments worldwide, leaving a clear signature in the future rock record. This process will also have altered the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and this too will be detectable by the future geologist.

Another potential means of dating the onset of the anthropocene could be in reading the signs of mans activities. No previous lifeform on earth has physically changed the outward structure of earth quite like man. Just how detectable the remains of man's handywork will be is difficult to gauge. Huge ancient cities vacated just a thousand years ago are now merely dust and rubble. But surely the vast quantities of brick, steel and concrete that make up our twenty-first century megacities will leave plenty of clues and a good idea of just when man was at his creative (or destructive, depending on your outlook) peak? As for how long the anthropocene will last is also difficult to estimate, but the pessimistic amongst us might suggest the width of this potential epoch might not occupy too much paper on the future geologist's stratigraphic column! 

The slightly depressing thing that came to my thoughts when reading this piece was that we humans and our relatives have only been around for a few hundred thousand years and are already making a good job of orchestrating our own demise. Yet the good ol' dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate from the Triassic through to the end of the Cretaceous! That's a whopping 160 million years!?! That makes man's tenure seen pretty short term. And we like to think of ourselves as intelligent? Sorry, but making such a 'pig's ear' of everything in such a short (geologically speaking) space of time makes us look pretty dumb! That said, rapid increase followed by sudden extinction is not at all unusual. Let's hope we can turn things around before its too late.

Cheers for now!

Alyn.