Geology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/13425339

Sauce: https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_076510_2230

Source: https://xkcd.com/2501/

Alt text: "How could anyone consider themselves a well-rounded adult without a basic understanding of silicate geochemistry? Silicates are everywhere! It's hard to throw a rock without throwing one!"

To the surprise of no environmental geo anywhere

Geologists have long known that around 155 million years ago, a 5,000 km long piece of continent broke off western Australia and drifted away. They can see that by the 'void' it left behind: a basin hidden deep below the ocean known as the Argo Abyssal Plain. The underwater feature also lends its name to the newly formed continent: Argoland. The structure of the seafloor shows that this continent must have drifted off to the northwest, and must have ended up where the islands of Southeast Asia are located today.

How diamonds form still isn't entirely understood, but laboratory experiments show that the gemstones crystallize only under extreme pressures. Most naturally occurring stones have been traced to the upper mantle, at depths between 93 and 186 miles (150 to 300 km), where pressures can reach beyond 20,000 atmospheres.

For a long time, this put diamonds in competition with a gem called peridot for the title of deepest-occurring gemstone. Peridot is the gem form of a mineral called olivine that makes up more than half of the upper mantle, which extends from the base of the crust down to 255 miles (410 km). But in 2016, scientists described a collection of superdeep diamonds sourced from around 410 miles (660 km), and another batch in 2021 was determined to come from a depth of 466 miles (750 km).

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/2703469

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/2703465

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/2702615

One stop shop for for all of your pedology needs and dank soil compass memes.

!soilscience@slrpnk.net /c/soilscience@slrpnk.net

"The Atlantic is expanding at about 10 ppm (points per month)."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1673900

Non-Paywall Article

Impact melt breccia (grey) and upthrust rocks (brown). The breccia is interesting because the melt was a carbonate. So it's sort of like a carbonatite lava.

Does Arizona and Australia share the same rock formation layers? I was watching a TV show and a lot of the Australian landscaped looked very red and similar to Sedona Arizona. Do they share the same layers?

Fallout layer due to first nuclear test as horizon marker, among others

Thompson was one of the first women to achieve distinction in the study of geology

I have been working on cataloging, organizing, and photographing the micromount collection that was made for my grandfather by Don Cooke. This is a nice little (well every specimen in this collection is little) Brochantite from Eureka, Utah. The main crystal is about 2mm long. More images of the specimen can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/QGUqBfM

I will try and share some more images of the collection in the next few days.

Enough rock fell off a Himalayan peak to bury Paris to the height of the Eiffel Tower

https://archive.is/oO0dC

As requested by @zpnrg1979@lemmy.ca -- post pictures of rocks. We will try to identify them.

Note that copy/pasting pictures works in the comment field, assuming you're on the website. How it works in the multitude of apps -- dunno ;)