olelog

When I was given a grab-bag of rock specimens the other week, this piece of limestone studded with little Devonian corals caught my eye. A few quick tests told me I could try acid digestion on it, so that's what I did. See the process, the results and the trade-offs after I bathed it in hydrochl ...

I spent a fair amount of my late teens visiting wild caves. Then I moved to a place with no caves, moved again, and many years later I'm not sure I could repeat anything I used to do underground. But I still enjoy a tour of a good show cave, especially when they lay on the science instead of the ...

For me, the science news of the week was the Nature paper this week announcing that the genes of Emiliania huxleyi have been sequenced. "Ehux" is an extremely important member of the ocean's plankton that grows almost everywhere in the world and pulls carbon dioxide out of the water—and th ...

Simon Wellings, of the Metageologist blog, has finally addressed a key topic for the future of the geoscientific professions: are we properly fascinating our children with geology? Since kids avoid the outdoors these days and get their stimulation from video screens, his new post on the geology ...

I love it when Forum visitors come by with pictures of things they've found. It's refreshing when ordinary, non-geological people respond to objects as they really are. This piece of waste from some historical glassmaker is a great example. The geologist ignores it because it's so obviously not ...

Isen omkring Nordpolen forsvinder hurtigere, end selv de mest skeptiske...

Det svenske Vattenfall overtog tre danske kulfyrede kraftværker –...

I Sverige har en mineralsamler fundet de første svenske diamanter...

Dig og klimaet Informationscenter for Miljø og Sundhed har i dag (1....

Jordskred, som det der onsdag aften rev 400 meter af motorvej E6 og 300 meter...

Not every kids' dinosaur book of the early 1970s featured lumpen and entirely static mounds of flesh dotted around belching volcanoes. Album of Dinosaurs - from 1972 - is a beautifully illustrated (by Rod Ruth) and sizeable book that's absolutely dedicated to dinosaurs being exciting animals. Ye ...

This is a re-post from the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media: Over the past year, Jennifer Francis, Ph.D., of Rutgers University has produced compelling evidence of links between the rapid reduction in Arctic sea ice and extreme weather events in the Northern Hemisphere. Her hypothesis ...

Data from the Air Force Hurricane Hunters this afternoon indicates that Tropical Storm Barry has formed in the extreme southern Gulf of Mexico. The aircraft measured winds at their flight level of 1000 feet as high as 47 mph, which implies winds of at least 40 mph at the surface, using the usual ...

ESA celebrated the tenth anniversary of Mars Express' launch with a several-day science meeting during which they issued lots of press releases and numerous spectacular photos. My favorite of them all is this enormous image of Kasei Valles on Mars.

We all know of places we love because we can look out on a wonderful view. But what makes a view special? Sometimes views make great photos – they have combinations of colours, textures and composition that really work. Really great views have something that can’t be captured in a flat image – t ...