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Category Archives: History
December 20: Light Up Day
What are the odds that three important electricity developments should all occur on December 20th? Probably, statistically, rather good. So I’ll not make much of the coincidence. Impending winter darkness was not a likely motivator – in the case of … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Religion
Tagged Christmas, Edison, electricity, light bulb, nuclear power, uranium
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Naming Schools after Nobel Laureates
The Washington Post recently ran a story about the late Abdus Salam, a physicist who won the Nobel Prize almost 40 years ago. The piece concerns the politics of naming a building at a Pakistani university in honour of a … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Culture, History, People, Religion
Tagged Abdus Salam, Darwin, evolution, Nobel Prize, physics, Thomas Hunt Morgan, University of Kentucky
1 Comment
Going on Four (Billion)
A paper published last week in Nature, claims that life began at 3.7 (billion years ago). This is the latest in a rather faltering progression of our best guesses of the date life started on Earth. Biblical literalists are still … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Geology, History, Religion
Tagged age of Earth, Arthur Holmes, Bishop Ussher, Creation, Darwin, fossils, Greenland, James Hutton, stromatolites
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Into Big Valley
A few days ago, I lamented that the lovely town of Big Valley is blessed with a Creation Science Museum. The museum is a single-room curio shop with a fossilized Teddy Bear and not much more. It’s a disappointing destination … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Exploration, Geology, History
Tagged Big Valley, canola, oil industry, railway
3 Comments
Mantle Plumes May Be Real (or maybe not)
Geophysicist Tuzo Wilson had a creepy daydream. He imagined himself lying at the bottom of a creek, looking up at water flowing overhead. He blew bubbles. They rose, were caught by the current, and drifted away. He came back from … Continue reading
Posted in History, How Geophysics Works, Non-drift Theories, People, Plate Tectonics
Tagged geophysics, Hawaii, hot spots, Meyerhoff, plumes, Romanowicz, seismic tomography, Tuzo Wilson
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Cuba, America, and Oil
With America’s president visiting Cuba this week, I thought it might be helpful to re-post my story “Has Cuba Got Oil?” which I wrote in 2014. It’s still valid. Cuba still has oil. But I argued that I doubt oil … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Exploration, Geology, History, Reblogs
Tagged Castro, Cuba, offshore oil, oil industry, oil seeps
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Broken Crystals
Every now and then, I write a short post on a long-dead geologist whom I had never heard of before, but have discovered that it’s their birthday anniversary. I do this because it forces me to learn something about someone … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Geology, History
Tagged crystallography, mineralogy, René Just Haüy
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100 Years of Drift: Part 4
Today, we continue with Alfred Wegener and his continental drift theory. Today’s piece will not be pretty. At times, suppression of Wegener’s idea was ugly. There are a lot of reasons for the vilification. He was an outsider, a meteorologist … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Culture, Geology, History, People
Tagged Alfred Wegener, Bullard, continental drift, David Attenborough, Harold Jeffreys
8 Comments
100 Years of Drift: Part 3
In today’s blog post, we continue our story of the development of the theory of continental drift – an idea which just celebrated its 100th birthday. Before Alfred Wegener’s 1915 book on contintents in motion, a few others had the … Continue reading
100 Years of Drift: Part 2
It’s been 100 years since Alfred Wegener proposed his idea of continental drift. Today’s blog continues the story we began yesterday – the tale of Wegener’s life and the development of his grand idea of mobile continents. This time, we’ll … Continue reading
Posted in Climate, Geology, History
Tagged Alfred Wegener, climatology, continental drift, fossils, Pangaea, Permian
4 Comments