You are browsing the archive for April 2011 - Page 2 of 2 - Mountain Beltway.
13 April 2011
The tricky business of SRM
Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill to attend a briefing arranged by the American Meteorological Society on the topic of geoengineering as a response to climate change. The two speakers, Ken Caldeira and David Keith, argued that the U.S. should invest heavily in geoengineering research, so we can figure out what’s safe and what’s irresponsible before we actually make any decisions about which …
11 April 2011
Old Rag gigapans
Lily and I took a hike yesterday over Old Rag Mountain, a popular destination in Shenandoah National Park. I took the opportunity to shoot a few gigapan images of the scene. If you click on the word “Gigapan” in the lower right of any of these images, it will take you to gigapan.org’s full page viewer. Once we got above the trees, this was the view to the north: This …
10 April 2011
Owlprint
My high school classmate Christie Wilde Rogers posted this amazing photo on Facebook yesterday — a print, apparently made of feather dander (powder down) that was left behind on a pane glass window when an owl (apparently a great horned owl by the size and shape) smacked into it. Zoomed in, and with the contrast dialed up a bit: I find this quite astonishing. You can see not only the …
9 April 2011
Plaster joint
Here’s a joint extracted from gelatin during this year’s GMU structural geology “Make a Joint” exercise: A soda bottle full of congealed gelatin serves a “rock.” We then use construction clamps to impart a stress field to the gelatin bottle. Into it, we inject fluid plaster of Paris. The extra pore fluid pressure causes a joint to form, displaying all the characteristic anatomy. Here’s the other side: Here are some …
8 April 2011
Friday fold: a graceful number from the Billy Goat Trail
Spotted this one a week ago today, when I was out exploring north of the Rocky Islands with my GMU Structural Geology students…
7 April 2011
Where on (Google) Earth #279
Well, in spite of it being a busy week, I allowed myself ten minutes yesterday morning to search for Where on (Google) Earth #278, and I found it in southeast Australia. So now it’s my turn to put a screenshot of some location from Google Earth online, and it’s your job to figure out where it is, and what the geologic significance of the location is. The Schott Rule is …
6 April 2011
Mount Washington 5: glacial features & views
Busy days here in DC and northern Virginia… Blogging time has been limited. A few more shots from this past summer’s time at Mount Washington, to fill the void… Prius atop mountain: The Great Gulf: Hikers in relatively warm weather: Another look down the Great Gulf: Glacial cobble of diorite, exotic to the top of the Presidential Range, and therefore icily transported there from a distant source. Mount Jefferson, as …
1 April 2011
Friday fold: “Hinges Cemetery” by José Julian Esteban
Cretaceous calcarenite layers, folded along the coast of Spain (?). From the repository of geological images hosted by the European Geological Union, Imaggeo. I was reminded of Imaggeo earlier this week, and it’s a great place to go browse around for cool photos of geological things. It could use a better search interface, but oh well. It’s worth it to see images that are both geologically informative and beautiful, like …