Category Archives: Engineering

Earth-shaking Selfies

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Ron Miksha

MyShake is a phone app that can sense earthquakes. This is a cool idea, one that others have tried and failed to perfect, but now it seems to be living the promise. Folks at UCLA Berkeley 0ffer a free bit … Continue reading →

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Drilling into Hell . . . enjoy your visit!

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Ron Miksha

Yesterday, I wrote at length about the many disastrous expensive attempts scientists and engineers made in their quest to collect material from the mantle. So far, they’ve all ended far short of their target. Drilling through crust material (granite on … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Engineering, Exploration, Geology, Religion | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Drilling into Hell . . . almost there

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Ron Miksha

Chasing gold, humans have dug tunnels almost four kilometres into the Earth. Oil men have drilled down ten kilometres, but with occasionally disastrous results. Money is a strong motivator, but scientific curiosity is even stronger when measured in meters of … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Engineering, Exploration, Geology, Oceans | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Drilling into Hell

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Ron Miksha

They’re going to drill into the Earth’s mantle. This has been an unachieved goal of Earth scientists for decades. This time they really mean it. No stopping before they get the job done. Over the next three days, I’ll look … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Engineering, Exploration, Geology, History, Oceans, Religion | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Hiding Rising Seas in Sunken Deserts

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Ron Miksha

This weekend, a friend asked me if the rise in the oceans could be drained off into the world’s below-sea-level depressions. Could rising ocean waters be diverted to fill the Dead Sea and Death Valley Depressions, for example? It seems … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Engineering, Environment, Oceans | Tagged , , , | 27 Comments

The Eternal Fires of Coal

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Ron Miksha

Long after America’s rust belt buildings have eroded to grass-lands, it’s possible that a sign of her once great industrial power will linger. Coal bed fires, it seems, are nearly impossible to extinguish – and there are many underground fires … Continue reading →

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World’s Biggest Fracking Quake?

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Ron Miksha

“Did Alberta Just Break a Fracking Earthquake World Record?” This is the headline in The Tyee, an online independent magazine focused on western Canada, and it seems the paper thinks so. The Tyee’s coverage of a big fracking earthquake in … Continue reading →

Posted in Engineering, Geology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Audacity of Exploration

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Originally posted on Write Science:
by Shane L. Larson We are perhaps the most audacious species to ever inhabit the Earth. Our audacity is not defined by our weird physical features (as perhaps defines our cousin the duck-billed platypus), nor…

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We Love Comets… but it wasn’t always that way

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Ron Miksha

So, today we kissed a comet. Many of us shared the excitement of the European Space Agency’s successful landing. Something built on the Earth is now sitting on a comet, traveling at 135,000 kilometres an hour, heading towards an even … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Engineering, Exploration, History, Religion, Science Education, Space | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Dry Rising Crust

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Dry, rising crust? No, not the morning toast coming up.  A paper released today by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows that the American southwest, in the grips of a “once-in-a-century” drought, is rising because groundwater which normally keeps … Continue reading →

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