Bad News For Life On The Ocean Floor

I was sitting in the bathroom reading last months (NOV 2012) Popular Science (TMI?) when I ran across an article that said a company called Nautilus Minerals will begin remote mining of the sea floor by the end of next year.  This strikes me as a somewhat iffy endeavor.  The article focused on the machines that will be used for this large-scale mining operation.  It looks like they are going to be removing, crushing and sorting the entire ocean floor.  If they were on land I think their method could be accurately called strip mining.  I thought we were past officially condoning this sort of approach to get at the Earths riches.  One of the machines pictured, called a bulk cutter, has a large cutting drum, think of a steamroller with cutters, for tearing up anything that gets in its way and a tube sticking out back for debris.  I keep thinking of the black smokers and the new forms of life that have been discovered near them which have hardly been studied at all.  These black smokers are good at bringing up minerals from the depths of the Earth and it seems this would make the areas around them particularly rich in valuable minerals.  Based on the track record of mining companies on land I am thinking this could be a terrible environmental disaster.  After all the trouble and expense these companies have gone to in order to make this real I don't see them giving up just because of horrible consequences down the road.  On land mining has caused a lot of problems for people and in the depths of the ocean, with no one to witness misdeeds or be affected directly by the chemicals and byproducts, there is a lot of room for plausible deniability.  When more companies start heading to the ocean floor they can all point fingers and say, "It must have been them because nothing is more important to us than safety".  The first site, approximately the size of 21 football fields, holds as much as 3 billion dollars in minerals.  People are killed every day for a lot less.  Good luck ocean life, you will need it.

mrjuybarijohnson killer earth

Thanks for sharing. I had fun.  Cool pics.

Lorraina Paz Mount Vesuvius

Good post.  In high school we went on a field trip to the Getty.  I remember the large statue of Aphrodite and seeing my first Hieronymous Bosch painting.  I have a new appreciation for the effect the Vesuvius eruption had on the world since your post and visiting the Getty site.

Geology of Skyrim

Geology class has increased the immersive qualities of my time in Skyrim.  I find myself wondering about the geologic history of this fine province.  It seems at least some thought was put into this subject while the game was being developed.  Skyrim is a chilly place overall due in part to its northern placement on the globe.  Based on the climate of Cyrodill to the south and what I know of the climate of Skyrim I would put it around 45 degrees northern latitude.  On clear nights there is even a chance to see an aurora borealis.  There appears to be areas of permafrost in the far north but some crops can be grown in the southern part of my beloved land.  Skyrim is bordered to the north by the partly frozen Sea of Ghosts which could be part of the reason why it is so mountainous and geologically active.  Cold oceanic crust being subducted under the continent could help explain the many hot springs and rich veins of minerals in Skyrim.  Skyrim is dominated by a huge central mountain called The Throat of the World.  I have observed it from all sides and several hypotheses concerning its origin come to mind.  From some angles it looks like a cinder cone volcano with sides that are a bit steeper than you would find on Earth.  Maybe the gravity is a little weaker in Skyrim, it would help explain how those dragons stay in the air.  If gravity is the same I would guess that the mountain is the leftover lava chamber and/or tube of  a volcano that has been eroded away. It is connected to an east/west mountain range to the south by some mountains which could be made of debris from the former volcano.  Perhaps there was a highly explosive eruption or maybe glacial processes pushed the former volcanoes remains south, leaving the debris in the glacial "shadow" produced by resistant igneous rock in the oversized lava tube.  Skyrim shares many varieties of minerals with Earth including gold, silver, iron, malachite, corundum, moonstone, and quicksilver.  Since the quicksilver of Skyrim can be formed into ingots I suppose it is an alloy or not exactly the same as the mercury of Earth.  Some of these deposits can be found in less travelled areas laying on the ground while others are in fairly shallow mines.  They are probably found at depth as well but Skyrim is not heavily populated and current technology is not up to the task of heavy mining.  Mages in the area do not appear very interested in mine work.  They are not well liked by the Nords who currently dominate the province.  At the edge of the Sea of Ghosts is the mage college of the city of Winterhold.  In the recent past a large chunk of land holding part of the city dropped into the sea.  The locals think it is the mages fault but the college believes it was a naturally occurring geologic event.  It is possible the area was undercut by continuous wave action and although there are no earthquakes in the game  itself this seems to be a prime area for tectonic activity.  Well that is about all the geology I can mine out of Skyrim for now and my old arrow injury is starting to make my knee hurt.  I think I 'll go enjoy a frosty Blackbriar mead.

comment on Amanda Duke's Cave of Crystals

I saw a show on that cavern and thought about writing a post about it but it was too long ago to remember details.  Thanks for letting me revisit it.  Excellent blog overall as well.

comment on My First Thoughts blog Guilty!

Good post.  Maybe the pope should be the next official Italian seismologist since they want someone who is infallible.

Blue Planet

Our reading assignment reminded me of  a blog post I was going to make about two months ago.  I was still having trouble getting into my account so I never got around to actually doing it.  I watched a television show called "Blue Planet", on the Discovery channel, it was about deep ocean hydrothermal vents(Chapter 13 page 370).  Extremely hot( 400 degrees C according to our book Earth: An Introduction to Physical Geology by Tarbuck, Lutgens, and Tasa) mineral enriched water pours out of these vents and when it interacts with the regular sea water it appears as black clouds so the vents have been given the name "black smokers".  The water is under too much pressure to boil, in case you were wondering.  What I found most interesting was all the marine life down there where the sun does not shine and the pressure would squeeze you or I into a relatively tiny lifeless ball.  It seems to me that if life could exist down there it could exist on many worlds that were previously thought to be uninhabitable.  The show had footage from a deep sea submersible and narration by a guy who rode down in it.  One of the parts I remember had him talking about the clear plastic "window" on the craft.  Apparently the melting point of the plastic was lower than the temperature of the water coming out of the black smokers so in addition to the many perils of high pressure environments they had to keep a safe distance to keep from being crushed.  The life down there is incredible.  Many of the creatures are bio-luminescent, mostly whites, greens, and blues, but there is one predatory fish that generates red light.  Most of the creatures cannot detect red light so it is invisible to its prey. I would not have thought life would find light so important down there when there are so many other ways of detecting your environment but these creatures shine like hundreds of glow sticks.  At one point they showed an undersea "lake" made of greater than normal salinity water.  The narrator said when they tried to enter the lake they bounced off it as though it were made of rubber.  Something about its density or maybe it was the salinity or surface tension or all of it made it impassable(nothing is impossible).  Another creature down there had the biggest teeth for its size of all the life on Earth.  Anyway, if you like pretty lights and/or grotesque beauty check out "Blue Planet".  There is a lot of material on the Discovery channel site.

Remember summer? It was like this but 3 months ago.

10/18/12Over the summer I read the first four books of the Dune series by Frank Herbert.  The first three were excellent and are good reading if you can overlook some old gay stereotypes.  To be fair the first book was released in 1965 so, although not exactly enlightened in my opinion, he followed the (at the time) current psychiatric views of homosexuality.  In short I do not think he was trying to be hurtful I think he was misled about a few things, which is not a good excuse it is just the bad reason.  In the Dune series the whole known universe, and there is a lot of it, is dependent on the output of one planet, Dune.  Dune produces melange, a cinnamon tasting, awareness increasing, addictive drug which also extends the users life and vitality.  It also allows those with special training and/or biology to access superhuman or magic powers such as prescience or the ability to fold space and thereby travel anywhere nearly instantly. As you can imagine, in a vast empire which spans galaxies, folding space is necessary just to keep the empire running when there is no other FTL travel.  There are other herbs and drugs which can be used for many of the superhuman feats, but not folding space, and once the spice, melange, has    been used other drugs no longer function but nobody seems to mind.  It is tasty, beats back old age, and makes you smarter, what's not to like?  The reason melange is found only on Dune is its unique geology.  It has no surface hydrosphere and anywhere water starts coming up it stops a short time later.  The spice is produced by sandworms, to whom water is toxic, and no efforts to transplant them have been successful. It probably did not help that the worms were up to hundreds of meters long.  The rest of the biosphere is mostly small animals that can survive on dew.  This leads us to the planets name, Dune, because sand is all you see for the most part, even in the atmosphere.  The native humans live in whatever solid rock they can find and call these refuges "sietches".  If you have read Chapter 11 in our class book the name can give a clue as to what they do there other than live another day(they are hoarding water). The characters in the book are constantly adapting to a hostile environment, Dune kills the unwary all day every day. It kills with geology.  Collapsing dunes, sandy wind so powerful it strips flesh and etches bone, dehydration, and giant killer worms all compete for the honor of your death. And that is not even considering the people who will kill you for the water in your body.  Reading the series gave me a new appreciation for how geology shapes humanity.  Even today many cities are located on or near a body of water and if they do not have sufficient water resources underground they pay to have it pumped in.  How many battles or even wars have been decided in part or whole by who holds the bridges or waterways? I certainly do not know that one. Why is Switzerland the only country that gets a pass on major wars that rage all around it?  Partly because it is surrounded by mountains and the only tunnels in are set with explosives, partly I suspect is economic but that is another class.  Dune, read it, forgive its faults, love it, think about it, and then ask for extra credit.

Recently in class Professor Schott mentioned one of my favorite science newsbits from the past several years. Two Russian-born scientists based in the UK, Geim and Novoselov, won the Nobel in 2010 for their work with graphene, which is graphite the "lead" in an ordinary pencil, except it is just one atom high. In other words it is a crystal lattice with length and width but almost no depth. The real world applications are still being worked out but it shows huge promise in the field of computer chip manufacture. It is one of the strongest and lightest materials currently known. My second favorite part of the story is how these scientists managed to get graphite down to one atom thick. They used regular sticky tape. By sticking it on some graphite and doubling it over roughly 10 or 20 times then dissolving the tape they manufactured what may well be a primary next generation material as well as another clue to the nature of quantum mechanics. My favorite aspect of the story is it shows one or two resourceful people and some tape can still make major contributions to the world knowledge base. Take that LHC. (Just kidding, I love the CERN.)

it came from outer space