Bearded Geology

The MOOOOOOOOON!!! (image: Wikimedia ) 50 years ago today, Apollo 11 accomplished the bold feat of landing on the Moon and not only did they walk on the Moon, they brought back some of it with them on their return for study. Some bits of lunar rock found their way to becoming thin sections, which you can view here , and occasionally get loaned out to researchers outside of NASA. I was lucky enough to handle and view some of these thin sections in my undergrad Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology class, as well as a thin section of a Martian meteorite (the closest I'll ever get to being on Mars). The lunar rocks have been well-studied by geologists over the years and Mindat.org has curated a list of minerals found on the moon, almost all of which are also found on Earth. The Moon can, in a broad sense, been generalized into two types of igneous rocks: basalt and anorthosite. The bright, white-grey parts of the Moon are the anorthosite dominated areas. These are feldspar-rich ro...

Measuring section and bagging samples in Marion County, Arkansas looking for clues from the Ordovician in some cherty dolostones. When you can't find a Jacob's staff in the office, you grab a broom stick and make your own...with black, semi-goth duck tape! Now to figure out how to cut slabs, make thin sections, and make sense of these weird tan lines.

Of all of the many types of maps that have been made for one purpose or another, I find one of the most enjoyable kind to look at are the old USGS topographic maps. These types have been made since 1879  (which also was the year that USGS was established) and thus, depict the human world that once was. This is particularly interesting since many localities have been mapped three or more times and we can see the evolution of human geography. For this reason and because I grew up within two miles of two towns that were abandoned during the 1960s as a dam was constructed and flooded the town sites, I'm easily fascinated by old maps that show towns and other old settlements and structures that have been abandoned. Old topo maps from across the country can be viewed and downloaded for free (in JPEG, TIFF, or PDF formats) from the USGS ( click here for more ). Admittedly, this USGS site is a huge rabbit hole for me to fall into and I've downloaded several topo maps from it, inc...

On a rare occasion when I visit Facebook, I'll run across a post on my feed from someone who, for good humor or not, has shared an image, video, or link related to geoscience. Naturally, that makes me very happy and almost willing to comment on social media (I don't usually partake in many social media platforms and I try to keep my opinions on various matters personal). However, I have seen a few posts that are misleading or outright false that I will call out. One such is this image does raise an interesting question: No doubt that this image or variations of this image have been spread around on the Internet, and of course this is all in good humor. But, this is nevertheless poorly worded. Statement #1: "Those [countries] who use the Metric System" Firstly, "Metric System" doesn't need to be capitalized. Yeah, sure it's nitpicking, but I had to say it. Secondly, the US adopted the British system of measurements and altered them a bit to...