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1 April 2010
Amazing natural resources in south-central Utah
Some neat news has come out of the Marysvale Volcanic Field in southwestern Utah (one of my stomping grounds!) about a very recently reactivated hydrothermal system in the Marysvale Canyon. According to an interview with specialist H. McClintock, prospecting in the vicinity of Belknap (five miles north of Marysvale, Utah) has revealed some pretty interesting features that certainly weren’t there when I visited last summer. “We’ve come across some darn …
11 November 2008
Geology reference alert!
House is on, and our favorite misanthropic doctor just made a comment about mineralogy. And what’s even better? One of the other doctors understood it. [Yak yak yak how do we find this tumor if we can’t bring the guy to the hospital and have only limited equipment…]House: “What part of olivine, pyroxene and amphibole don’t you understand?”[Blank stares]Cameron: “They’re indicator minerals. You can’t see diamonds so you look for …
29 October 2008
More evidence for water on Mars
And guess how they know? Opal! (Here’s another article, and here is a link to a PDF of the original article in Geology.) Score for mineralogy! This interests me at the moment for a number of reasons, besides the fact that finding out anything new about Mars is just cool. First reason: I’m taking a remote sensing class right now, and we’re getting ready to do projects that involve tasks …
23 October 2008
Miracle Mud
On Thursday, our department lecture series brought Dr. Lynda Williams of Arizona State University to talk about antibacterial clays. Now, mineralogy was never my strong point, but this talk brought a whole new perspective to it – that mineralogy can contribute to medical research! For a little background: There’s a kind of mycobacteria (yep, that’s spelled right) that exists in African swamps that gets onto the pincers of a biting …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.