Category Archives: History

Mud Flood

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Mud at 100 kilometres an hour? It happens. Mount Shasta, in northern California, let loose this afternoon with one heck of a mud flood, apparently caused by a sudden melt of one of its glaciers. Probably not at a hundred … Continue reading →

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A Cultural Backlash

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Ron Miksha

There seems to be a cultural backlash against science. Some of my liberal friends blame science for the evils of neonicotinoids, GMOs, and vaccines. They are wrong, of course. My conservative friends decry science for promoting Darwinism, the Earth’s real … Continue reading →

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The Billion Year Discovery

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Ron Miksha

About a century ago, a college student figured out that the Earth has rocks over a billion years old. Until Arthur Holmes’ experiments at Imperial College in London, geologists could only guess at the age of various rock formations. Geologist … Continue reading →

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The Bright Side of Solar Flares

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Electronics destroyed. Skin radiated. Mutations. Cancer. And if the GPS is down, how will anyone find their way home? But there is a bright side to solar flares. And that would be last night’s light show. For those of us … Continue reading →

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The Old Bird Sits Up

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Readers of this blog know that I have sometimes pointed at Emperor Lord Kelvin’s fragile suit of clothing. Although his early life was crammed with brilliant science, he was a fumbling troglodyte by age 50.  He became resistant to scientific … Continue reading →

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A Conversation with the Earth

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Ron Miksha

How many of us recognize the most important moment in our career? The instant when you realize exactly what you should work on, even if you don’t know where that might lead. It happened to a young theoretical physicist. He … Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, History, People, Philosophy, Plate Tectonics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

A Bad Day at the Beach

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Today marks the death of Gaius Plinius Secundus, aka Pliny the Elder. He died along with 20,000 of his friends and neighbors. On August 24, 79, Mount Vesuvius exploded and Pompeii and Herculaneum were no more. From the book, The … Continue reading →

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Earth Rising

Posted on August 23, 2014 by Ron Miksha

I was a child when the first photograph of the Earth, as seen from orbit around the Moon, arrived at NASA. Lunar Orbiter 1 was up there, scouting places for a future landing party of American astronauts. As an afterthought, … Continue reading →

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Who’s Got Mantle?

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Ron Miksha

NASA has reprocessed the Apollo missions’ old lunar seismic data. The data is from 1969 through 1977, the latter being recorded by equipment still active long after the last astronaut went home. This is old seismic data. Reprocessed, it tells … Continue reading →

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All Aboard the Barracuda

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Ron Miksha

Maurice Ewing was a Texas-panhandle farm boy,  became a geophysicist, and then and oceanographer. He conducted the first marine seismic acquisition, inventing the equipment he needed as he sailed the oceans. I find it odd that a lad from the … Continue reading →

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