Yesterday I went to see 2012, the new movie by Roland Emmerich. It was a LOT of fun. I love so-called "disaster porn" movies, the genre including Dante's Peak, Volcano, Cloverfield, Independence Day, the Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, the Core, etc. What these films have in common is that they gratuitously display major scenes of destruction as a way of luring audiences to the theater. Most have a plot stapled on too! And maybe some pretty celebrities!

The science is not all there, though. I'm sure you're shocked to hear that.

Here's Emmerich's scenario:
Planetary alignment --> solar flares --> neutrino storm --> neutrinos heat up Earth's interior --> crust gets detached and starts sliding around willy-nilly --> hilarity apocalypse ensues

Here's the problems with that:

1. Planetary alignments don't trigger solar flares.
2. Neutrinos (mostly) don't interact with matter in the Earth. (50 million neutrinos will pass through your body today without any issues that we're aware of.)

...but if you ignore those two basic fundamental problems, you can enjoy the death and destruction that result. It's a smorgasbord for the eyes.

One of the main characters is a geologist, which is cool. The scene of Yellowstone erupting was probably the neatest part for me, geologically. Even crazy man Woody Harrelson thinks so, and it's the last thing he ever sees. The magnitude 10-plus earthquake that hits southern California/Las Vegas is pretty awesome visually, but doesn't really square with geological realities of how earthquakes happen. Basically the way Emmerich runs the show, soCal breaks into a huge number of separate chunks which mainly move apart from one another, although occasionally they exhibit convergent motion (maybe 1% of the time). Mostly, it's huge chasms opening up, and people/cars/buildings/airplanes/trains/Russians dropping into them. And of course, "California slides into the sea" (that old trope which ain't actually what geologists predict for the Golden State*).

There's a plot, too, but who really cares about that? That's not why you go to see 2012. So I won't even bother. Go for the effects; revel in the destruction of the world, but try not to think about the death of billions. It's all about planetary chaos, adrenaline, eye-popping awesomeness. You know you like to watch.

Some reviews worth reading:

1. Rebecca Watson on Skepchick
2. Ian O'Neill on Discovery News

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* A better depiction can be seen in the AGI-produced Faces of Earth, episode 2, where Los Angeles (still a city much like the current one ~10 million years in the future), atop the block of continental crust west of the San Andreas Fault, slides past San Fransisco, briefly merging the two megalopoli into one.

Labels: california, movies, pseudoscience, science and society, sun

If you don't read Tree Lobsters already, you should. Today's episode seemed particularly on-target.

Labels: art, humor, pseudoscience, science and society

Awesome: right-handed Anomalocarids!
Elizabeth Kolbert on getting things moving re: climate policy.
The volcanological blogs are all agog over tephra and teeth.
Lockwood tears into sloppy "press release" style "journalism."

Labels: blogs, climate change, evolution, politics, science and society

WHAT: Earth Science in the Spotlight: Engaging the Public

WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 5:30-8:00 PM; program begins at 6:15 PM.

WHERE: The Front Page Restaurant, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, Located near Ballston Metro on the ground floor of the NSF building. Parking is available under the NSF building or at Ballston Common Mall.

WHO: Ann E. Benbow, Ph.D., Director of Education, Outreach and Development, American Geological Institute

HOW: Special 1/2 price burgers start at 5:30 PM. Please come early to order table service and socialize. Short presentation begins at 6:15 PM, followed by Q&A. No science background required- only an interest! Cafe Scientifique is free and open to the public. Register online here.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: The news media routinely sound alarms about natural disasters, climate change, and the energy crisis. But who helps the public make sense of these issues? More and more, scientists are stepping up to help ordinary people, from school children to policy makers, understand the earth science behind the headlines. Earth science, after all, encompasses virtually all the sciences, from biology to chemistry to physics. Learn how AGI, an association of 45 member societies across the geosciences, is tapping the expertise of professional geologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, and other scientists to improve education and promote public awareness on such timely topics. Join us for a brief discussion, exciting video and hands-on activities showing how you can play a vital part.

COMING NEXT MONTH: November 3, Mario J. Molina, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1995 will speak on ozone depletion in the atmosphere.

Labels: meetings, science and society, teaching

The first of our monthly science seminar series is coming up at the end of the month:

"Cameras we cannot picture"
Dr. Ravi Athale, Senior Principal Scientist, The MITRE Corporation
Monday, September 28, 2009, Ernst Center Forum, 12 noon - 1pm

Abstract: The world of imaging has evolved from its humble origins as a pinhole camera to its current incarnations of very large (Hubble Space Telescope) and very small (pill cameras that one swallows). Last 10 years, in particular, has seen more rapid growth in our ability to record static and moving images than anytime in human history. This has been enabled by replacing film with semiconductor devices for recording imagers. Dr. Athale argues that as dramatic as this progress has been, the future will bring even more startling and unimaginable changes due to the integration of imaging with equally spectacular progress in computing, communications and storage technologies.

Ravi Athale is Senior Principal Scientist and Department Head, Emerging Technology office at the MITRE Corporation. Over past 30 years he has worked as a scientist, educator and manager in government, academic and industrial institutions. In 2007, he received Leadership Award of the Optical Society of America and Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. In addition, he is a co-author of a high school engineering textbook published by Prentice-Hall and is a co-founder of company that develops consumer products based on computer generated holograms.

Please join us, if you can!

Labels: art, meetings, nova, science and society, tech

WTF? Really?

Labels: evolution, primates, science and society

...Doggone it. There are other rock stars out there.

Labels: geologists, science and society, websites

I saw Ray Stanford, an enthusiastic amateur paleontologist, speak last month at a meeting of the Paleontological Society of Washington.

It was my first PSW meeting, and I got a warm welcome from PSW president and University of Maryland paleontologist Tom Holtz, who gave a specific shout-out to NOVA Geoblog, encouraging the ~30 attendees to check it out. (If you're arriving as a consequnce of that endorsement, welcome!) Four of my Honors students joined me for the talk. Just getting to go behind the scenes at the Smithsonian is a treat in itself. From the Easter Island moai in the Constitution Avenue lobby of the museum, we were escorted through labyrinthine passageways to the Cooper Room. Our route brought us past immense fossil collections, cossetted away in row after row of cabinets. It was enticing, and made me resolve to arrange a special tour there sometime for the Honors students.

The point of the talk was Stanford's immense collection of fossil dinosaur tracks (and at least one apparent mammal track which is quite large: raccoon-sized at least, with apparent dinosaur skin impressions right next to it). It used to be thought that Maryland only had Triassic/Jurassic fossil tracks, from the Newark Supergroup rift valleys that opened up during the breakup of Pangea / opening of the Atlantic Ocean. Stanford has made a real scientific breakthrough by demonstrating that there are early Cretaceous-aged tracks in the area too.

None of his Cretaceous-aged tracks are collected in situ. Instead, he finds them all as "float" (weathered-out loose blocks) in streams draining exposures of (what I infer to be) the Patuxent Formation. (He didn't specifically mention source formations that I heard during the talk.)

He's found a ton of stuff! Actually,if I'm being literal, he's found tonS of stuff! And he stores it all in his living room! He recently had the foundations of his house reinforced because he has so much STUFF. Hundreds of tracks, and other fossils, too. Whoa! This guy does not play by the same rules as most folks.

There were a lot of coprolites mentioned, including:

• a 98-pound coprolite (!)
• a coprolite with a dinosaur footprint in it
• a dinosaur footprint with a coprolite in it

He also shared what he claimed were skin textures preserved in tracks. Some were self-evident, and I readily accepted them as valid. However, others weren't visible to the naked eye, and he only "demonstrated" them with Photoshopped images wherein the contrast dial was turned up to 11 -- I think this "technique" generated patterns that resembled skin impressions, but when I looked at the fossil itself, they were nowhere to be seen. I am dubious about this particular claim.

The talk gave me lots to think about, but not so much about dinosaur lifestyles or anatomy so much as the role of amateurs in science. Here's a guy with boundless enthusiasm, and he's finding stuff that the books literally said didn't exist. His efforts have resulting in expanding Maryland's Mesozoic paleontological record into the Cretaceous, and he's found all sorts of stuff that's super-duper interesting, like that mammal track.

Stanford was profiled last year in Geotimes magazine, before it switched its name to EARTH. Discovery News also ran a story about his findings. Interestingly, when Googling his name for this blog post, I also came across some other wacky stuff he's involved in, including UFO's. This definitely jibes with the lack of scientific rigor that I perceived in his presentation. (Quote from the interviewer: "In the 1970s, Stanford was the moving force behind the Association for the Understanding of Man (AUM) and Project Starlight. The former an attempt to decipher the UFO enigma by psychic means, the latter using advanced scientific instruments.")

So, having learned this, what do I make of his paleontological data? The best I can come up with is to trust my own eyes and view his claims open-mindedly but with the traditional scientific filter of skepticism. I accept the coprolite data; I found it self-evidently convincing. The skin-texture data? Not so much. The UFO stuff? Don't get me started...

Labels: coastal plain, cretaceous, culpeper basin, fossils, maryland, meetings, mesozoic, museums, psw, science and society, smithsonian

This of mine doodle accompanied Cassandra Willyard's article on the role of non-specialist citizens in advancing scientific understanding.

Labels: art, humor, science and society

For a few months now, prompted by a comment on one of my blog posts from fellow geoblogger Bryan, I've been listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. It's pretty darned good. Last week, the team interviewed Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for SETI, who made an offhand statement that there was "plenty of bauxite" on the Moon. Considering that the moon's anorthosite has plenty of aluminosilicate minerals, but none of the tropical rains required to produce a secondary concentration of gibbsite, bohemite, and diaspore, a.k.a. bauxite, I wrote in to compliment the show in general but correct this one small tidbit. This week on the show, they acknowledge my correction, though (of course) they mis-pronounce my name. It starts at 25:35 into the podcast. Ah well -- my own little cross to bear. Glad to help advance human understanding of geological processes!

Labels: astronomy, minerals, moon, ore, podcasts and vodcasts, science and society

"Climate Change in the American Mind"

Tuesday, April 28th, 10am

National Science Foundation
Arlington, VA
Room 1235

Anthony Leiserowitz
Yale Project on Climate Change

Report here

Labels: climate change, meetings, science and society

Paul Hoffman is speaking next Wednesday (April 22) at the Geological Society of Washington; I've just recieved word that his topic has changed from Snowball Earth to "The Pleistocene glacial controversy and the discovery of climate warming and crustal dynamics." I'm curious to see what Hoffman has to say about the 160-year old controversy as to whether there had been recent "Ice Ages," and how that relates to his currently-controversial ideas about the Snowball. Whatever he says, it's likely to be thought provoking.

Labels: geologists, glaciation, gsw, ice, pleistocene, science and society, snowball earth

The Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists is having NOVA adjunct geology instructor Steve Stokowski talk at their meeting on Thursday. His topic blends petrology (the study of rocks) with applied science.

Sexy Pictures, Busted Bridges, Broken Buildings, and Messed-Up Monuments: A Petrographic Odyssey

Microscopic analyses and geologic understanding are essential for the correct diagnosis and corrective actions necessary when rock, brick, concrete and similar building materials deteriorate, as these four case histories illustrate. The first case history is of the deteriorated brownstone loggia at the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall, North Easton, MA. The second case history is of a total replacement failure of a large memorial to WWII veterans in the Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery, Exeter, RI. The third case history concerns the use of defective, cracked, and residually expansive brick to construct the Prospect Mountain High School, Alton, New Hampshire. The final case history concerns deterioration of the 1930's Fore River Bridge between Quincy and Weymouth, Massachusetts. It can be expensive to correct the effects of the deterioration of common building materials!

Pulcinella's Restaurant
6852 Old Dominion Drive
McLean, VA 22101

AEG members, guests $30.00
Students $10.00

6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Social Hour and Section Business
7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Dinner
8 p.m. Presentation
9 p.m. Closing Statements

Labels: geology, meetings, minerals, science and society

Even if you don't have iTunes, the NOVA-Annandale Science Seminar series will be televised...

Check at our new webpage: http://www.nvcc.edu/annandale/scienceseminar/

Specific video: Dick Pellerin on math's many uses; Me on my western roadtrip.

Labels: geology, meetings, nova, science and society, travel

I've been really digging my iPod. Yeah, yeah: "late adopter" and all that. But it's really cool!

The podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts) available for free are diverse and awesome, and I'm finding them much more interesting, rich, and deep than traditional radio. I've got music podcasts, science podcasts, story podcasts, and humor podcasts. In the interest of sharing the love, here's what I'm listening to:

All Songs Considered - From NPR, an every-few-days podcast showcasing new and interesting music from a wide variety of genres, often accompanied by insightful commentary from host Bob Boilen and his guests.

Morning Becomes Eclectic - From KCRW in Santa Monica, California, Jason Bentley (no relation) hosts an excellent radio show of... well... eclectic music. The only shows they podcast are the ones where guest artists are performing live in the studio, but that's fine by me -- there's some real gems here. (Although, I'll admit that I miss the former host Nick Harcourt.)

The Moth - An incredible storytelling podcast featuring one person per episode telling a true story, live onstage & without notes. These are incredible tales from our fellow humans: people who have experienced surreal, heartbreaking, or uproarious things, and know how to describe them to others. An absolutely inspired series. Five stars!

Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me! - The oddly informative NPR news quiz show. Invariably funny, sometimes hilarious. Hosted by Peter Segal, accompanied by luminaries like Carl Kasell, P.J. O'Rourke, and Tom Bodett.

USGS CoreCast - A weekly podcast from the United States Geological Survey, wherein stilted-sounding hosts interview scientists about their work, usually related to some story that's in the current news cycle. Mediocre listenability, but often interesting content.

Nature Podcast - From the acclaimed journal Nature comes this hip, well-produced podcast that features several hosts (male, female, British, American) interviewing scientists about their recent Nature publications and why they matter. Sometimes they give background information, too -- to bring listeners up to speed before the interview. It's detailed enough to be satisfying for a professional scientist, but not stiff or formal. Two thumbs up!

Central Washington University Natural Science seminars - Video of seminars on cool topics like mammoth digs, etc.

American Meteorological Society Climate Change video: Environmental Science seminars - These are a series of science seminars put on by the AMS on Capitol Hill for the benefit of policy makers, captured on video. I often try to attend, but if I miss one, I can get it via the iPod.

The Ricky Gervais podcast - From the talented British comedian comes this sporadic podcast which varies tremendously in content and satisfaction from one episode to the next. When this one is on while I'm driving to campus, the ones that leave me guffawing are the ones where Ricky and Stephen Merchant talk with Carl Pilkington. The three of them have a remarkable style of mutually-insulting comedy.

You can get all of these for free, searching on iTunes. Enjoy!

Labels: environmental, geology, humor, music, news, podcasts and vodcasts, science and society

Chris Nedin alerted me (via his excellent Ediacaran blog) about this video (which was in turn posted at Larry Moran's The Sandwalk blog). I found it worth watching, though the language change partway through (from the third-person to the second-person) gives it an accusatory feel. In spite of that, this is probably worth viewing for introductory science students to distinguish what they hear labelled as "science" in general society from what a scientist considers "science." It's 10 minutes long, but in many places cleverly illustrated:

Labels: blogs, evolution, pseudoscience, science and society

Ann Hornaday authored an interesting piece in this morning's Washington Post about Ota Benga, the Congolese Pygmy who was displayed for a time in a cage in the Bronx Zoo. It turns out that Ms. Hornaday's great-great-great-uncle, William Temple Hornday, was the one who put Ota Benga there.

Labels: africa, anthropology, new york, science and society

The Freakonomics blog draws our attention today to a new study suggesting that beer consumption and low publication records are correlated. Hmmm.

Labels: blogs, news, science and society

I reckon I'm due for a rant. Here's a list of words that bug me:

Dolomite in place of dolostone: dolomite is a mineral. A huge pervasive second use of the word, however, is to mean a rock made mainly of the mineral dolomite, for which the proper name is dolostone. This is so, so, so common it's hardly noticed. And it's so incorrect. Rocks and minerals are not the same thing.

Orogen in place of mountain belt: the word orogen is technically correct, and quite accurate, but in spoken speech, it sounds too much like "origin," and its use can sow confusion. The only real difference I am able to hear when people say "orogen" is that they tend to pronounce all three syllables, while "origin" is generally pronounced with just two: ore-gin. But maybe that's just the Virginians I hang around with. Mountain belt has the same meaning, but I guess it has problems of its own, since mountain belts may not be topographically mountainous any more. Hmmm. ...Toughie.

Extra-syllable words: Should we say benthonic when benthic means the same thing but with one fewer syllable? What about people orientating themselves instead of orienting themselves? What advantage do these extra syllables provide? Are they vestigial structures in our language?

An educational peeve is that students regularly refer to teachers giving grades. I don't know about the other professors, teachers, and instructors out there, but this one really rankles me. My students earn their grades. What I do is keep track of what they have earned, and eventually assign the proper grade to them. I am merely a secretary, an accountant. I tally it up, but the points they accrue (or don't) depends on them. No gifts required!

A huge bummer is the continued use of theory in non-scientific circles to mean hypothesis. In general use, "theory" has a tenuous, shaky implication, while in science it means "as solid and dependable as an explanation gets." David Quammen explored this well in his discussion of evolution in National Geographic a couple years ago. For the record: a hypothesis is a possible explanation of a phenomenon, calling to be tested. A theory is a well-corroborated hypothesis (i.e. it has passed a great many tests) that coherently unites a number of disparate phenomena under one central explanatory umbrella. Big difference there; huge. Makes communication about important concepts difficult.

Lastly, my all-time least favorite word: Believe.

Everywhere I look, I see statements like "Scientists believe that the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago," and it drives me up the wall. Scientists infer that the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, based on their reliance on data and logic. We have physical evidence (lead isotope ratios from three different radiogenic systems, measured in Earth rocks and in meteorites) that all suggest the solar system's solid-state clock started counting 4.5 billion years ago. Because we've never observed anything other than the steady, statistical decline of radioactive parent isotopes to produce daughter isotopes, we assume that the past worked in the same way as today (actualism/"uniformitarianism") and that these empirical measurements have meaning. We logically deduce that the Earth is the implied age, but we don't "believe" it.

Similarly, I get apoplectic when students ask me "Do you believe in global warming?" No, I don't believe it; I'm convinced of it on the basis of (a) physical evidence (data) and (b) logical inference from that data. To spell it out:

1. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation.
2. Infrared radiation is reflected upwards from the surface of the Earth.
3. CO2 is produced by the burning of coal, oil, natural gas, wood, ethanol, and biodiesel.
4. We burn a lot of these carbon-rich fuels by oxidizing them.
5. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are measurably increasing.
6. Oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere are measurably decreasing.
7. Globally, average temperatures are observed to be increasing.
8. Therefore, based on #1-7, the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere is causing the increase in temperature.

There's nothing there to believe in. It just is. Fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, and a logical inference that stems from those facts.

Ditto for the theory of evolution by natural selection. It's not something I believe in; it's something I'm convinced of because it's logically coherent and supported by reams of data gathered over 150 years of hypothesis-testing.

If there is one thing that scientists believe in, it's that the universe makes sense. Our starting assumption is that the physical world operates according to unchanging laws which may be deduced if we're clever enough. On the other hand, if the universe is mercurial in its physical laws, then science doesn't have a chance of figuring things out because the laws that apply on Tuesday will be different from the laws that apply on Wednesday. It should go without saying that, as far as we can tell, this is not the case. The universe does behave in a consistent and predictable manner, insofar as we can tell. Ergo, science is an appropriate way to go about elucidating its structure and properties. No belief necessary.

Which words bug you? Chime in.

Labels: geologists, science and society, teaching, words

I was somewhat astonished to see this image on the cover of this week's issue of Science:

At first glance, you might think this was the cover of the New Yorker or something -- a bold, clever piece of art, with a distinct (and satisfying) lack of screaming headlines. It draws you in, this art -- you wonder who made it, why they made it, what's art and what's photograph, and most importantly, why is this image on the cover of Science?

It turns out that there is an article in this issue about how societies deal with antisocial behavior. According to some, the work of the artist known as "Banksy" counts as antisocial behavior. Here's the caption Science provides for the cover: "An example of' 'art' by self-styled guerrilla artist Banksy, as seen in East London in November 2007. Human behavior that would be characterized as antisocial punishment can also be called art; prosocial institutions, most notably the campaign Keep Britain Tidy, refer to Banksy's work as vandalism."

I don't know much about psychology, and I'm not going to attempt to review the article, but seeing this particular artist on the cover of Science gives me an excuse to introduce others to his (admittedly controversial) work.

I've been a fan of Banksy's work for a couple of years now -- he does a couple of things worth noting: First, his bread and butter is outdoor "graffiti" of elaborate black and white designs, usually done with stencils, sometimes highlighted with deliberate focused use of color, and often exploring the "police state" aspects of the modern world, as in this example:

Labels: art, humor, science and society