Where were we before the craziness that was this weekend happened? Oh. Right. Oregon!

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The Planetary Society just returned from a big trip to Washington, D.C. to advocate for continued planetary exploration. Here's what happened....

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First of all, this tornado was not the biggest and strongest tornado ever recorded on Earth, as one Oklahoma City weather-caster said. We don't know the wind speeds yet, and until then it cannot be given an EF Scale rating. I've seen some things ...

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BGS image ID: P687055Neuropteris obliqua (Brongniart). Kidston negative number: Kidston 1246. Quarter plate. Box 3. 

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This place is going to be Theropod Central for a bit (until the huge volume of ceratopsians kick in), so here's an ankylosaur to keep things ticking over. As usual, enthralled though I was with the exhibitions, I didn't pay that much attention t...

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Boarding the Victoria-Port Angeles ferry this morning, a gang of scooters:

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A massive and violent tornado at least a mile wide smashed through Moore, Oklahoma near 3 pm CDT Monday, causing catastrophic damage along a 20-mile long path. The National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma has rated the tornado at least an EF-4 (1...

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Dieser Beitrag auf Deutsch. Today, I'll finally explain a bit about the sneak previews I recently posted. All goes back to a crazy idea I had a long time ago, which I have elaborated on publicly for the first time in my SVP 2011 talk.  I've writ...

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By Chops Some research came out of RSES last week regarding the rotation of the inner core, and how it speeds up and slows down. This research, made by Hrvoje Tkalcic and others, has got a little bit of publicity (http://rses.anu.edu.au/news-events/...

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I need to apologize to my commentators. I only realized that I had a spam comment tab recently, and I found a bunch of great comments buried there - some from 2011!

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A new report by the Columbia Water Center, produced in conjunction with Veolia Water and Growing Blue, could help expose the real nature of water risk in urban and rural areas throughout the country--even in places that most people think of as having...

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Devastation in Moore (Suburb of OKC). This tornado was 14 years to the month after the May 3, 1999 EF 5. It passed very nearly over the same area. Below is from NWS Norman: Below is the radar image showing  a large "Debris Ball" being picked up ...

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Twenty four years ago, the idea of a CORK was sparked and first recorded on a dinner napkin as a sketch..yes, a dinner napkin. We are fortunate to be onboard with two of the scientists who were responsible for concocting the idea back in 1989-Earl Davis and Kier Becker. A third member of the trio is Bob Carson.

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After so many trips back to the '80s and '90s, it's good to return to a book that's properly vintage. Dinosaurs was number 355 in the impressively diverse Little Golden Book series from Golden Press of New York, and was published in 1959. It was a simpler time, when a kids' dinosaur book could be purchased for a mere 25 cents, and palaeoart consisted of lush forests, erupting volcanoes, and giant lizards...all too literally.

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Lens cap (bottom, left of center) for scale.

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Geokittehs are always good for stress relief.

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Shawnee, Oklahoma tornado, May 19, 2013

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(Click the pic for full-size. You know you want to.) Most cinder cones eruptions follow roughly the same story line: they start with a volatile-rich phase, tossing out bubbly, vesicular lava, with gasses acting as the propellant. A large heap of these cinders form around the vent. Since the slope is limited by the angle of repose- the steepest that a loose material of a given nature can be piled without collapsing- cinder cones tend to all look quite similar. The material they're made of is all vesicular basalt, so they vary in size, but not much in overall geometry.

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From 1997 to 2002 I was president of the Royal Geological and Mining Society of the Netherlands (KNGMG, www.kngmg.nl). One of my tasks was to present the Society's highest scientific award, the "Van Waterschoot van der Gracht Medal"[1] to a worthy recipient each year.

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Sometimes I get very frustrated by the way volcanoes are portrayed in the media. Yes, I realize that most people want to play up the sensationalism and "danger!" aspect of volcanic eruptions, but that doesn't mean I have to like ......

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One of the impressive open pits at Mogolokwena Platinum Mine. Picture taken by Jackie Gauntlett.

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Our team spent most of Friday on the Arctic sea ice, drilling and sampling ice cores at our main field site. For each core collected, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientists Andy Juhl and Craig Aumack take a number of different physical, chemical...

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For most of April, while Mars scuttled behind the Sun as seen from Earth, both Mars rovers were pretty inactive. Now that conjunction has ended, both are doing what rovers should be doing: roving and exploring. As of sol 3312 Opportunity had moved mo...

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From PhD comics: The tables can very easily be turned on you, the faculty, when a student goes over the syllabus with a tooth comb and then holds you to every dot and comma in it. My friend who is an igneous petrologist and faculty at a local ...

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When you hear the word "shrimp," you probably picture those that show up in grocery stores and restaurants throughout the world, which are then consumed voraciously by their terrestrial admirers. Also, some recent attention has been given to mantis shrimp, and deservedly so, because they are among the most gorgeous and terrifying of marine invertebrates today. But there are other marine crustaceans bearing the name "shrimp" that are neither gracing seafood buffets nor awesome predators, yet are worthy of our adoration, documentary films, and epic songs, the latter of which will be no doubt performed on Eurovision 2014. Yes, you guessed it: I'm talking about ghost shrimp.

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