Evolution of Geologic Thought Webinar Series

Just under a week ago I wrote a blog post about a few "dream" geology courses that I wish were offered at my university as well as at universities around the world. Thanks to Ron Schott (@rschott), part of this dream has come true. Almost immediately after the blog post went public, Ron commented:

Why just talk about them in blog entries? (Not a bad idea; I just think we can do better.) We have all the technological tools at our disposal to collaborate online to teach and learn from each other. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to get a critical mass of folks interested in covering options #3 or #5. I'd be in. I think topic #3 would have the best chance of drawing in a critical mass (unless there's another topic that consensus suggests would have wider appeal). I've been contemplating initiating some sort of an online seminar or focus group or virtual conference to test the online collaborative tools anyhow. If you don't run with the idea yourself, I just might.

Following a couple of back and forth comments on this blog, then an impromptu Google+ Hangout on Monday (5/21) evening, we have come up with a genius idea that I believe most of you would be interested in both attending and hosting.

Starting Monday, June 4th, we will begin a weekly discussion based course that discusses the progress that geologist have made throughout history on various ideas and research, titled: The Evolution of Geologic Thought. Each week will be centered around a single theory that has changed or has been proven wrong over the course of human history.

The format will be similar to the widely popular Accretionary Wedge blog carnival in that each week the discussion will be led by someone different, and over a different and unique topic. A week prior to each discussion, the discussion leader (host) will make available the paper in which his or her topic will be centered. If supplementary reading material is necessary, links or documents would be greatly appreciated.

What makes this whole idea possible are online meeting programs and apps such as Google+ (which we will be using). The tentative plan is to have Ron Schott set up the Google+ Hangout, "On Air" style, and invite those of you who would like to participate in the actual verbal discussion. Everyone else can see and hear the discussion, and can chime in at any time in the chat window below the "discussion committee". Logistically this makes more sense, and this ultimately weeds out posers who just join a Hangout to be annoying little pricks (if you've used Google+ Hangout you know exactly what I mean). If you are unfamiliar with "On Air" style of Google+ Hangouts then click here for an explanation.

The first Evolution of Geologic Thought webinar will be on June 4th, 2012 at 3:00p CST and will discuss the evolution of thought pertaining to crustal formation and evolution hosted by Graham Howes. You can see a full description and preview of the first discussion on Grahams Google+ page here.

Any takers for week two (June 11th)? Also, any thoughts and opinions would be greatly appreciated. Also, follow me on twitter @shcwright.

I Dream of (Geology) Courses

I've taken a lot of good courses during my time as an undergraduate student in geology. Most of them were mandatory so it was a nice coincidence that they were at least a little fun. Of course, being a geochemist/petrologist, I enjoyed mineralogy, optical mineralogy, and the small suite of petrology courses that were offered. But I needed more. As the majority of the readers of this blog are masters level or above, you can all understand my thirst for more. The result: graduate school.

A masters degree is designed to submerge the student more deeply into the giant ocean of geologic knowledge. While a masters student, one normally takes a few courses, but the majority of their time is spent doing research, field work, analyses, or anything else that leads them toward the end goal of producing a masters thesis in said students subfield (e.g. stucture, sedimentology, igneous petrology, geochemistry). However, the courses that are required along the way are often boring and only slightly more informative than those offered as an undergraduate. Don't get me wrong, there are exception. I have taken a couple of great courses as a masters student as well, but in general, I am still left with holes in my education. I have strong thirsts that aren't being quenched.

This leads me to the point of this post. If you could take any course you wanted, what would it be? If you're a professor then the question becomes: If you could teach or create any course of your choosing, what would it be? It doesn't have to be a course that's offered at your university, in fact, it's better if it's not. Have you every sat back and thought to yourself: "I really wish we offered ___________?" Well, I have. Here is a short list of courses that I wish were offered here. I think these courses would be of huge benefit to masters and Ph.D. level geology students. Some are more focused in geochemistry, but some are broad courses that would interest most of us.

1) Statistics in Analytical Geochemistry

As part of every geochemists theses and dissertations, we use a lot of statistics, more specifically in an effort to perform error analysis on the data that we collect by some multitude of techniques and methods. The data that we collect means nothing without an idea of the error (accuracy, precision, standard deviation, MSWD, R², etc.) The difference between my results being 400 ± 5 Ma and 400 ± 200 Ma is everything. I strongly believe that any geology department that is heavily weighted in geochemistry or petrology should offer a statistics in geology course. It doesn't even have to be focused in geochemistry, students working on quantitative sedimentology or geophysics could benefit greatly from this course.

2) Applied Analytical Geochemistry

Application is everything. Sure, it's nice to have the knowledge that acid digestion followed by some anion column chemistry and analysis on the MC-ICP-MS results in isotopic ratios and from that you are able to calculate an age of a sample. But until you actually do it, you're not a geochemist. If I were to teach one course following the receipt of my Ph.D. it would be this one. The entire course would be research based, with each student getting a small independent project. This project would include taking raw samples, processing them, performing analyses, and coming up with some results. I realize that a semester is a short amount of time for a course like this, but the project doesn't have to be big. I strongly believe that the hands on experience with a project like this, in a course like this, would be of huge benefit to any upper level student in geochemistry.

3) Evolution of Geologic Though

Geologist tend to get things wrong. A lot. They make observations, and from those observations, make conclusions. Sometimes these conclusions are wrong. But that's science, right? What's the old saying? You can prove a hypothesis wrong, but you can't prove one right. Some possible topics of discussion: ophiolites, meteorites, early planetary formation, evolution, this list could go on forever. I think a course outlining some of the more temporally extensive geologic though tracts would be a nice basis for a course. This would not only be informative, but also teach students that the consequence of being wrong aren't really that bad, I mean.... look how wrong geologists have been in the past. Sometimes even the famous ones.

4) Working The System

Nobody knows the "system" more than those who have navigated it. Nobody knows the "system" less than those poor new graduate students who haven't dealt with it. What is the "system"? For the purpose of this fictitious course, I use system to include several entities such as: the media, NSF, industry consortia (or is the plural still consortium?), the university, academia, etc. I think a course teaching students about the ins and outs, and ups and downs of these entities will provide them with very valuable knowledge, especially those who are looking forward to becoming professors or taking government research-based positions. I would assume those would be the only students taking a course like this anyway. This course would provide the foundation of how to deal with writing grant proposals, submitting papers, paper review procedures, budgets, and how to cruise right up to the top (theoretically, anyway).

5) Programming in Geology

A few years ago it seemed that knowing how to program provided a tool to those geologists wanting to create quick data reduction programs, or programs to manipulate data over large data sets. However, it seems that programming is increasingly becoming less of an optional tool and more of a necessity. Knowing how to program could possibly be one of the most powerful tools now, and in the future. I can guarantee that there are multiple tasks that you perform everyday that could be made incredibly easier through a computer program. Whether it be a simple program that runs on your desktop, complex modelling programs, or an entire control system that physically automates procedures (such as performing the very boring task of column chemistry). I am new to programming, and I don't know much about the actual workings of it, but I am learning (Python 3, unless you guys have other suggestions). I think a programming class specifically for geologist, with multiple assignments aimed at specific geologic problems such as: mantle melting, sequence stratigraphic reconstructions, structural rheology would be incredibly beneficial to any geologist.

These are just a few of my dream courses. I'm very interested to see what courses you guys dream of. Please leave comments here and follow me on twitter @shcwright.

Osmium and the Great Flood

I read an article a few months ago by one Brian Thomas concerning the relationship between osmium isotopic signatures in shales and the famous story about the Great Flood from Genesis (yes, that's in the Bible). I am going way out on a limb here already just by calling this thing an article. I guess by definition, it is an article, but other than by definition only, I have my doubts. I will direct you to the article using the link below. I suggest you venture over to the Institute for Creation Research to check out this article, if you dare, then come back here for my comments on it. I also recommend at least reading the abstract from Turgeon and Creaser (2008), the original research to which this crazy article refers.

Article: Osmium in Shale Reflects the Flood 

In summary: Mr. Thomas takes the results of research performed by Steve Turgeon and Robert Creaser at the University of Alberta, interprets it horribly, then proceeds to make conclusions based on his horrible interpretation. Basically, he's being a creationist "researcher". I would like to take a look at this article in detail, breaking it down to see exactly where the author went wrong.

Line 1: "Researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered osmium signatures in shale."

I know I am sort of nit-picking here, but it has been known for over 20 years that there is osmium in shales. In fact, scientists have been radiometrically dating shales using the rhenium-osmium decay system since 1989. Rob is a great scientist, but Mr. Thomas here needs to get his facts straight before writing a public article for a, I assume, "respectable" creation research institute. So right out of the gate, this article isn't looking good.

Line 2: "Osmium is a radioactive element that is commonly found in lava and in water that is near lava."

It appears as if Mr. Thomas has no idea of the working of the Earth. If osmium is only found in lava and in water that is near lava, does that mean that once the lava crystallizes that the osmium disappears? I like to think that he means igneous rocks, not lava, but either way, osmium is found in many more materials than just igneous rocks and in water near igneous rocks. i.e. meteorites, shales, pyrite.

The rest of the first paragraph isn't so bad. Mr. Thomas finally gets some facts straight about OAE's (oceanic anoxic events) - see future post.

I'm not sure where to start with the second paragraph:

"The once-living tissues of these marine organisms was preserved at the ocean floor and converted to oil. That oil was then mixed with mud, and the oil-mud mixture turned into oil-rich shale (a sedimentary rock)."

Oh.....my.....god! This couldn't be further from the truth (actually, it can, but it's a figure of speech and you know what I mean). The death and subsequent settling, preservation, and burial of these marine organisms takes millions of years and by no means are they converted to oil at the seafloor, then mixed with mud. The formation of shales is a long process that includes the burial of organic matter and detrital material, subsequent compaction and lithification, all prior to the cooking and generation of oil and gas. Maybe a little bit of physical geology reading may do some good for Mr. Thomas.

Noah's Ark (rectorscorner.blogspot.com)

He further goes on to take the conclusions of Turgeon and Creaser (the non-radiogenic osmium isotopic signature that they measured in shales from OAE2 suggest a massive magmatic episode caused the anoxic event, and therefore the mass extinction) and apply them to creation research by stating the following:

"The find fits well with the history of what the Bible describes as occurring during the Flood of Noah. Genesis 7:11 states, "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened" This passage indicates that fluids from the great deep, likely consisting of steam mixed with molten volcanic rock, burst out onto Earth's surface and it accounts for the volcanic-derived osmium found in the shale." 

And the best line of the paragraph: "This discovery now has science catching up with the biblical record."

I'm not an expert on the Great Flood, nor do I want to be, but from what I remember, the fluids responsible for the flood were water, not "molten volcanic rock" AKA magma or lava, for those of us that understand geology. If the fluids actually were water, Mr. Thomas has no argument, as these waters wouldn't have the non-radiogenic isotopic signature required to lower the entire worlds oceans isotopic signature to that observed by Turgeon and Creaser. Let's pretend for a minute that the "fluids" were "molten volcanic rock". Where are the products of the crystallization of this molten material? The volume of fluid responsible for the Great Flood had to be immense, if this fluid actually were "molten volcanic rock" we would expect to find global coverage of massive igneous rock on the sea-floor, much more voluminous than normal sea-floor spreading products. It is suggested that the non-radiogenic isotopic signature observed by Turgeon and Creaser, and the OAE2 were produced by the eruption of the Columbian-Caribbean large igneous province, and / or the Madagascar flood basalts. The volume of these combined wouldn't even begin to put a dent in the volume of fluid required to "prevail so mightily upon the Earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered." I must apologize, I'm getting carried away. This is way too long for a blog post, so let's wrap it up.

Mr. Thomas writes his final paragraph:

"Not only would the flood model predict the observed osmium, but its year-long, earth-shaping energy could have mixed mud with the organic debris, buried it, and preserved it as oil in shale...... If long, slow processes were involved, then why didn't the oil completely decompose into organic gases while it sat on the ocean floor for millions of years?" Surely, a sudden and dramatic event is required not only to explain the "oceanic anoxic event", but also the oceanic shale and oil preservation."

Again, could this be more wrong? Long, slow processes are exactly what are required for both the osmium signature, and the organic matter burial and preservation. Mr. Thomas asks "why didn't the oil completely decompose into organic gases while it sat on the ocean floor for millions of years?" Because it didn't sit on the ocean floor for millions of years! Maybe if Mr. Thomas actually understood the processes of shale formation and oil generation this article wouldn't have even been written, but then again, if the authors were actually doing real science we wouldn't have crazy articles like this in the first place.

References:

- Osmium in Shale Reflects the Flood - Brian Thomas
- Turgeon, S.C. and Creaser, R.A. (2008). Cretaceous oceanic anoxic event 2 triggered by a massive  magmatic episode, v. 454, 323-326

My BP MS-150 Experience

I first signed up to ride the BP MS-150 about 5 months ago. Something I also did 5 months ago was make plans to start training for the ride. I'll get back to this in a few minutes. To fill in the readers who don't know, the BP MS-150 is a 2 day, 150 mile or so charity bicycle ride between Houston and Austin, TX to support the cure for multiple sclerosis (MS). It's a huge event, with ~15,000 riders, that combined raises millions of dollars every year for MS research. I've always heard of it, have had friends who have ridden it, and always wanted to ride it, but I just never did, until yesterday. Now, back to my training, or unfortunately, a lack of training. As with most things that I plan to do that isn't related to my dissertation, my plans to train failed, horribly.

The ride started at 6:45a on Saturday (4/21) from Houston. Day one was split into several legs between 6 and 12 miles each, which didn't seem so bad...... until we started riding. Leg 1 was a breeze with nice, flat topography and no wind. After leg 1 I was sure that I had this thing nailed. By the end of leg 2 I was doubting my ability to finish the ride as we gained a 20 mph head wind which made it nearly impossible to cycle up hills. However, we pushed through. By the time we reached the half-way point for day 1, I was ready for a massage then a nap, but we pushed through. We managed to finish the 84 miles of day 1 semi-successfully and only endured one flat tire (on the last 10 mile stretch), but that's about it.

After crawling our way to the hotel at the end of day 1 our motivation for riding day 2 was basically non-existent. This only magnified 10X upon waking with sore butts and an extreme inability to walk. In short, my first MS-150 experience involved only riding the first day of the event. What did I learn from this? That it's a bad idea to go from not exercising at all to riding 84 miles in one day (12 hours). What did I gain? An awesome sunburn pattern on my head and legs, and some sore muscles and gooch. Regardless of how much pain I'm in today, it was all fun and for a good cause. Do I plan to ride again next year? You bet! But, obviously training will be a priority.

Now I sit in the Austin International Airport in Austin, TX waiting for my 3.5 hour delayed plane to get here so I can head to Long Beach, CA for AAPG ACE. Im hoping for some much deserved rest and relaxation.

Visible Geology

I was wasting some time a few weeks ago by browsing the Google Chrome Web Store and came across a neat application called Visible Geology. I strongly urge all of you, if you haven't already, to check it out. What's Visible Geology? Only the most awesome 3-D block diagram generator that I've ever seen. Created by Rowan Rockett at the University of Calgary, Visible Geology was originally designed in MATLAB for an undergraduate engineering geology course. After many tweaks, and updates, Visible Geology is now available as a web application at www.visiblegeology.com

   Visible Geology allows you to first define a stratigraphic framework with customizable thickness and lithology, then implement tilting, folding, faulting, intrusions, and it even includes things such as blind thrust faults and fault bend folds. Once you've created your block diagram you can add topography to demonstrate the various map patterns that arise from the interaction of dipping strata with topography.
   Perhaps my favorite part of Visible Geology is the option to take a cross section or drill core of your newly created block diagram. Here is a block diagram that I just created, including cross section and core views. In summary, Visible Geology  is worth a glance, or perhaps, in my case, a way to waste hours of my day.

Vi-Carius Rebirth

After two months of telling myself "I really need to make time to post something", It came to a point where this blog became a pit of neglect. I know, it should be illegal. I could give you hundreds of excuses of why I haven't been posting, but none of that really matters. What does matter is that I'm posting again! The big difference this time is that I'm not holding myself to a set posting schedule. I will post when I am motivated and inspired to post, not when my set schedule requires me to. I strongly believe that this will lead to better, more frequent posts. The only rule that I am putting forth is that I post a minimum of one time a week.

Lots has happened since my last post in December. Shell has provided me with some beautiful Eagle Ford shale samples and I have been off and running with carius tube digestions and osmium extractions. I have had some minor issues with over-spiking, and have now cleared up a slightly high blank problem. Since it seems all of the kinks have been worked out of the procedures I should be off and running with this Re-Os geochronology. It seems that I'm getting quite a head start on my dissertation as I propose next semester and will already have a considerable amount of data for the first of many (target 5) publications that I plan to publish over the course of my Ph.D. 

AAPG ACE is coming up in late April, as is the MS-150. This is my first year to ride in the MS-150 and I'm both excited and a little worried at the same time. For those of you that don't know, the MS-150 is a charity bike ride from Houston to Austin over the course of 2 days to support the cure for Multiple Sclerosis. It's roughly 150 miles, and this is the part that worries me. I'm not in great shape. I have only just started training for this ride, and it's in 3 weeks. The fun part? As soon as I finish the ride on Sunday, in Austin, I board a plane and fly out to Long Beach, CA for AAPG ACE. Do you think I can rent a wheelchair at ACE?

But enough about my plans, it's good to be writing again! Subscribe to this blog if you like what you read. resubscribe if you have already unsubscribed due to the lack of posts, I promise to keep this blog updated with exciting and informative posts. 

Thanks for reading,

Shawn

Proctoring and Preparation

As I stand here proctoring the final exam for the Mineralogy course that I TA'd this semester I can only think of the things that I have to do to prepare for Fall AGU. And by "things" I mean everything. I have been very excited for Fall AGU for months now and had planned to sort through the talk and poster catalog to have a look at talks I wanted to attend or posters I wanted to see, but the time for that never came about.

The reason I get so excied about Fall AGU is because it's a vacation for me. It's time away from grading, writing papers, or teaching (although I enjoy teaching tremendously). So since the time has passed and my flight out to San Francisco is among me (Saturday), I shall spend today finishing up some final things around the office, tomorrow i'll pack, then off to the airport on Saturday morning.

I'm especially excited to blog from AGU. The free time away from the University will hopefully result in more blog posts and the expansion of the number of readers of my blog.

I'll see you at AGU!