the guy on the radio just said “gas prices aren’t so bad if you consider you’re really buying liquid explosive dinosaurs” and my perspective on life is forever changed
"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time."
Nobody says it quite like Isaac Asimov. (via americanhumanist)
The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2!
The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list!
What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life).
What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been found beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe microbial Martian past.
Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.
WOW. JUST WOW. AND WOO-HOO!!!!!
Most relevant post of the week.
I’m supposed to be writing a research analysis paper about the existence of a subsurface ocean on Europa and I probably have a thousand tabs open. I don’t know what will explode first, my laptop or my brain! (Really interesting topic, though).
My reaction to watching that video of the geologist getting a lava sample
ALDSKFJDSG IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT’S HOLY
Jesus H. Christ!!
It’s awesome how shear indicators can be seen at outcrop, and micro-scale.
I think that’s what is awesome about geology: mega, macro, micro. At any scale you can learn something about the world on which we live.
That is exactly what I say when people ask me why I’m so crazy about geology. In geochemistry, for example, we learn about everything from ion substitution in minerals to stellar nucleosynthesis. Every geology course I’ve taken has shed light on the world around me at scales both small and regional, and the best part is establishing the link between them!
Drawings of William Smith, 19th century Geologist and founder of stratigraphy
I’m currently reading a book about this man. It’s called “The Map that Changed the World - William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology.” So far so good!
