New research using fine iron meteorite fragments and volcanic ash to catalyze organic molecules:
Synthesis of prebiotic organics from CO2 by catalysis with meteoritic and volcanic particles
Scientists still working on how the universe works and disappointing creationists who depend on no more research being done so they can cling to their gods.
Tag: geology
What the Boss Likes – Bloganuary #2 – What road trip would you like to take.
January 2 – What road trip would you like to take?
To bat country! Which is a reference to one of the most demented and hilarious books, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson. The movie with Johnny Depp wasn’t bad, but do read the book.
““We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
and a bunch more quotes.
Now, for a more serious answer. I’d like to take a road trip into the Rockies, to satisfy my love of geology. I’ve been to Mt. Rainier, which is terribly cool, but I’d like to see a *lot* of mountains. We have little worn-out things here in Pennsylvania, the roots of several mountain building (orogeny)events over billions of years. You can see the repeated folding and upheaval here.
What the Boss Likes – Finger Lakes vacation, part 1 – geology, food and drink
We’ve not taken a vacation for a couple of years due to various circumstances. So this year, we decided to go somewhere relatively close to us here in central Pennsylvania but somewhere we’ve never been before. We chose the Finger Lakes region of New York state, a place full of wineries, restaurants and interesting geology.
First thing I’ll tell you that in my opinion there are too many wineries up there. The place started in wine production back in the 1800s, had a pause thanks to the utter ridiculous idea of Prohibition, and restarted in the 1970s. There are some very good ones and then the rest? Well, it’s far too many people making meh wine to cash in on the tourists. And the meh wine can be dry or sweet, it’s just not anything special.
There are a few breweries springing up and distilleries. I’ll get into detail on some of them later. The breweries will likely get too many also since hop production is returning to the Finger Lakes and the state is offering tax incentives to use them.
The area is very much like where my husband and I grew up, though writ larger with the hills being twice as high and the valleys twice as wide. (nice satellite photo here, the lakes are at the bottom) As the name indicates, there are lakes, long, narrow and some quite deep (the deepest, Seneca, getting over 600’ or 188 meters). These are the result of glaciers and very soft rock, mostly shale, created from the erosion of the old mountains on the east coast.
We stayed on Keuka Lake in Hammondsport. We also spent some time around Seneca Lake, the largest of the lakes. My husband is having a great time postulating lake monsters, and with US Navy testing equipment in Seneca, it has all sorts of possibilities for stories on how the tests aren’t tests at all….. 🙂
These posts are going to combine stops along the road, reviews of food, wine, etc and of course my opinions. I’m going to try to keep it vaguely chronological.
We headed up US Route 15 which is pretty much a straight shot between Harrisburg PA and the lakes. We stopped in Watkins Glen, at the southern tip of Seneca Lake. It’s the location of the Watkins Glen state park, with great geology. It also has the Watkins Glen NASCAR racetrack, an American pastime that seems to be nothing more than high-speed chariot racing, with the audience just as blood thirsty as the ancient Romans. It supposedly had its origins in the bootleggers from Prohibition who had to get their illegal alcohol cargo in and out fast. (incidentally, my husband’s grandmother, Effie, was one of those bootleggers, she was the hammer girl in the backseat who would smash the glass bottles so the liquor could drain out the holes drilled in the floor of the car. Thus, law enforcement would not catch them with the goods). As you can see, the leaves are beginning to turn colors thanks to autumn in these latitudes.
We stopped for lunch at the Wildflower Café/Crooked Rooster Brew Pub (they stock Rooster Fish Brewing’s ales). One reason we wanted to stop there is that they have deep fried jalepeno peppers. Also got a blue cheese burger and a caprese Panini (tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil). Beers were a good Hefeweizen for myself and a classic Mysterious amber ale for my husband. Most of the small towns in the area are full of lovely Victorian mansions, results from the old wealth of timber, etc.
After lunch we headed to the state park, right on the edge of town. The ad copy for the park says that it leaves visitors spellbound. It also leaves them breathless, literally. The park is a chasm between 200 foot cliffs and has 800 plus steps on slippery rock paths that are all up from the town. Sometimes they have a shuttle to bring you back down but they didn’t have that when we visited. You want to be in shape for this and have good shoes. Also, take water. There’s plenty of it in the chasm but none to drink.
The park is very similar looking to the slot canyons in the US southwest and other parts of the world, although it’s wetter and darker. The chasm is lined with walkways, all about one person wide. They do have walls on them but the walls only go up to about mid-thigh. If you have issues with heights, I would recommend giving this place a pass. See photos in the gallery below.
Since my husband and I do like our sword and sorcery fiction, this all looks like where one would be meeting dwarves or elves. One can imagine just how hard it would be to fight with sword and shield on such a small path.
Next post, more about the wine, mead, whiskey and food.
What the Boss Likes – volcanoes, videos and more
Why you don’t screw around on volcanoes:
Crater floor dropping hundreds of feet.
Scads of live web cams of the volcanoes in Hawaii courtesy of the USGS: http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/cams/
Odd and old videos
We like the moon – squeaky things singing badly and for some reason I find this very funny. Even spong monkeys know that the moon causes tides, unlike Bill O’Reilly.
Viking kittens – yes the kittens and Led Zepplin.
Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian™, on biblical marriage
Random things
Penguins of Madagascar – love this cartoon. There are enough sly comments that adults can enjoy it immensely. Neil Patrick Harris recurs as the arch villain, Dr. Blowhole, a cybered dolphin. My favorite penguin is probably Rico, the demo expert. For some reason, I end up playing demo experts in role-playing games. Husband is real-life demo expert 🙂 Mort the lemur seems to be more spong monkey than lemur. Stuff Mort says. There are videos on youtube if you are inclined.
Salon’s article about how to counter your ignorant uncle at family gatherings http://www.salon.com/2013/07/04/july_4_guide_how_to_debate_crazy_relatives_at_the_family_bbq/?source=newsletter
I’m utterly musically inept. But I love these “harp guitars”.
Here’s a tree just outside our window. It’s a mimosa or china silk tree. They are a rather aggressive tree, growing madly and are considered an invasive species in some states. They also shouldn’t grow in our hardiness zone, but they do. Global warming, donchaloveit!
What the Boss Likes – a small hiatus and some cool things
Since I’m wrapping up my last two days of work at my current position, I’ll be taking a little longer to answer replies. I should be back to normal (or a reasonable facsimile) shortly.
A couple cool things. John Paulk, the posterboy for the lies about “ex-gay” therapy, has admitted that he’s lied about being “ex-gay” and has apologized. Better late than never, but the harm he has caused can’t be forgotten.
Most awesome geology and science show on Australia the First 4 Billion Years thanks to NOVA. I thought I was reasonably informed about Australia and its geological and paleontological history. I wasn’t.
First episode here. (the green bar on the right) You can watch them online but I’m not sure if that is restricted by country.
Postscript – and this, I had to put this up
Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 9, the second half of #19, limestone, coelacanths and circular reasoning
Part 2 of the entry for #19 We’re at the penultimate post for addressing all of this nonsense!
Next are mentions of limestones, living fossils and polystrate fossils. Oh and a quote from Dawkins, whom creationists are sure that all atheists worship. The quote is “”Creationists are fond of saying that there are very few fossils in the Precambrian, but why would there be?” asks Dawkins. “However, if there was a single hippo or rabbit in the Precambrian, that would completely blow evolution out of the water. None have ever been found.” This is a paraphrase of the Precambrian rabbit quote from Haldane. The idea is that one out of place fossil would destroy evolutionary theory. And as we can see in the link to the rabbit quote, it isn’t necessarily true. It would surely show a major problem with it, the thought that the Precambrian is the era of some of the simplest creatures, but all of the current evidence for evolution wouldn’t be shown wrong. We still have adaptation to environment still demonstrated in the fossil record and still going on.
Despite what it might look like in your driveway or on a gravel road, limestones are very diverse and not all come from fossils. They are also not often pure calcium carbonate. One of my early tasks as a geologist was to identify a bunch of them. Here in central PA, we have lots of limestones and we were doing a lot of drilling into them when setting wells to monitor pollution. The limestones could be identified by their chemical make-up and that required some of the nastiest chemicals you can buy, including some wickedly toxic mercury compounds, hydrogen cyanide, etc. By that we can know the environment where they formed. We can date them, by radiometric dating, etc. Since they do not always have fossils, they are not always dated by fossils. Other ways to date are date the rocks above and below and the ones between are between the others in ages, which can happen with limestone, when you might get a coal layer showing up or a volcanic ash deposit that can be dated easier than the limestone.
One other thing that limestones do to creationist claims is make them ridiculous since the time to build up foraminifera enough to make a layer is far more than their silly 6000+ year time line. And when simply chemically precipitated out, well, we get poached Noah again. Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 9, the second half of #19, limestone, coelacanths and circular reasoning”
Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 8 – #19 the first half, geology, misapprehensions about evolution, carbon dating and more quote-mining
We’re on the home stretch now, though the section numbered 19 is probably the longest one. It’s also probably the best for someone like me who wishes to show how creationists are just so silly. The pdf of the text of the last part (sections 19-23) of our TrueChristiantm’s post is here: truechristian post 19-23.
The geologic column ( I’m guessing, he uses “coulomb” repeatedly) would be very thick *if* people were ignorant enough to assume that every geological formation were formed everywhere. This goes back to our Christian’s ignorance of what the geologic column is. In some places we have a sandstone formation and in others we have a shale; both formed at the same time and both are represented as having been formed at that time on the GC. It was indeed initially formed in the early 1800s and alas for our Christian, no radioactive dating was needed for it at that time; it was a relative scale.
Our Christian claims that the evolution of the horse is “backward in South America”. I have yet to find evidence for this claim. Like miracles, a lot of creationist “evidence” is to be found in “deepest, darkest X”. Also, to claim that evolution has a “backwards” or “forewards” demonstrates an ignorance of what evolutionary theory claims. Evolution says that populations will show a change of attributes due to environmental pressures that select for those attributes that are more favorable for survival. So, if we had our “horse A” and it was adapted for a forested land, then there was a drought, it would evolve to fit that better. And if the drought lifted, and went back to forest, the “horse A” would keep evolving. (Addition: video that shows how a creationist has come to accept evolution from first not. The creationist? Kent Hovind, he just calls it “variation” but he accepts every point of how species form. Ah, recordable media, nothing better for showing hypocrisy 🙂 ) Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 8 – #19 the first half, geology, misapprehensions about evolution, carbon dating and more quote-mining”
Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 7 – more geology and creationist “credentials”
If you’ve haven’t been reading along in the original post, you won’t know that the name of the book “_” is verbatim from his text of part 16. One would hope the poster would correct that but it is unintentionally funny and demonstrative on how much real evidence bible literalists and young earth creationists have.
Our TrueChristiantm tries to claim that the biblical literalist and young earth creationist does not depend on the claim that every geologist must believe in uniformitarianism. That’s unfortunately nonsense that is shown to be false throughout the original post. He tries to say that those like him only mean “the evidence is merely in opposition to such a belief” (a belief that is a strawman argument since our Christian has no idea what uniformitarianism is). That’s hilarious, trying to claim that you are only taking a stand against a belief that you don’t think that geologists hold. Soooo, why are you basing your whole claim on this? Evidence for the flood has yet to be demonstrated by our poster so it is very hard to critically evaluate anything that hasn’t been presented. I have seen plenty of hypotheses of how the flood happened but no evidence to support these at all. I may as well be critically evaluating claims of the Tooth Fairy and coming up with an economic model to explain her nightly flights and exchange rate.
He does finally admit that “modern” geologists do accept that catastrophes do occur. He wants me to find two geologists (two again? are we filling the ark?) in the 1800s that believed that volcanoes never erupted and earthquakes didn’t happen because he doesn’t think I can find his strawmen. This is due to his ignorance of what uniformitarianism and catastrophism entail. Always good to get the willful ignorance once again. Especially in the 1800s, those interested in geology thought that we knew every mechanism of geology. And that included volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunami, etc. Uniformitarians assumed that everything was uniform in those mechanisms, from past to present. Catastrophists thought that there had to be huge intense events like the Flood since they were using a presuppositional argument that said the Flood *had* to happen. They could not conceive of otherwise.
We end up back again at this mysterious “Father of Geology” but as I stated before, if this is James Hutton, he didn’t believe in the bible flood nor in a young earth. The TrueChristian does go on to mention a “magical uniform lake” in a swipe at abiogenesis but that’s for another time. Curious about it though? Here and here should get you started. Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 7 – more geology and creationist “credentials””
Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 6 – Geology and the burden of proof
In 14 (of the original post here), our Christian reveals that river floods aren’t worldwide. Great shock to all of you, I know. After finding this bit of the glaringly obvious, he then declares that while ancient people knew this kind of flood, they certainly wouldn’t mistake it for a global flood “even after the compounded interpolation of the centuries”. I will guess that he is trying to say that the people wouldn’t have claimed a local flood to be a global one even after time has passed and the event becomes badly remembered.
He asks for two instances where an event was exaggerated out of proportion and became a myth. Along with floods, tidal waves are caused by the Midgard Serpent and will cover the world in water during Ragnarok (hey, a flood myth that’s also a end times myth!). Winter is invoked as a apocalyptic force that covers the earth killing all humans in a Fimbulvetr. A great wind was the culprit in Aztec world destruction, not suprising since hurricanes are common in the Yucatan area; fire was also another cause of the world/human kind being destroyed in Aztec mythology since they postulate various incarnations of the world. What is highly amusing is that he excepts his Bible from this for this reason: *I* (me, Vel) don’t believe in it. Well, I don’t believe in the other myths either, Suprise! He also uses his own word “fraudulated”.
We still have the same baseless claims that the bible is literally to believed and he now asks for: “list two events in the Bible which have evidence that actually proves them not to have happened not just raising vague doubts like you tried to do this time” Back again to our Christian trying his best to shift the burden of proof, how cute. Of course, we do still have the biblical flood, the supposedly vanishing of Tyre from history and the events of Exodus. No vague doubts here, direct positive evidence that these did not happen.
To explain burden of proof a bit further, we have our Christian insisting that I show that something doesn’t exist. He wishes to declare that the absence of evidence isn’t the evidence of absence, aka “”You cannot prove that God does not exist, so He does.” Alas, he forgets, again, that positive evidence that precludes a claimed event or item is all the evidence you need to demonstrate that something doesn’t exist. The claim of a catastrophic physical event can be shown to be untrue if physical laws do not allow for it and our Christian said much the same himself. Since he is claiming extraordinary events have happened, he has essentially claimed that he has evidence for said events and is beholden to produce it.
We do get to some geology in 15. Our Christian is again aghast that if something he doesn’t like is true, the Bible is wrong! That is a problem but only for him. There is repetition of prior arguments here. Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Part 6 – Geology and the burden of proof”
Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – The Illegible Post, Part 4 – On population bottlenecks and honesty
In this installment of “just how silly can this get”, we have our Christian making some claims about science in some detail and in general.
“#11 This population bottleneck is a matter of genuine science and the excuse for it not being true is probably just as valid as any second rate blogger’s posts can be against the science magazines that published it. Yes, scientists have proven we all come from one female.”
We start right off with the usual creationist tactic of making a claim and offering no support for it. Many Christians want to claim that “genuine science” (and I can only say that with a broad southern US drawl “gen-u-wine science!”) supports them. As we have seen, that is not the case and has never yet been the case. For all of the claims of how science supports creationists, they never come up with scientific discoveries on their own that demonstrate how their god exists. No, they take legitimate scientific discoveries and misrepresent them through their personal ignorance as something they can glom onto when their faith flags. From what we know about creationists throughout the ages, the ones now would be heretics to their brethren who were sure that genetics weren’t true, geology wasn’t true, etc. Many creationists have indeed evolved, disbelieving what their forefathers claimed and now grudgingly accept at least some of the science that they continue to decry when it shows their myths are pure nonsense. The myths pick up more claims of scientific truth in a vain attempt to keep them appearing valid in the fact based reality of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Population bottlenecks are indeed known facts thanks to the scientific method. We know them because of work with cell biology and genetics, all sciences that creationists hate until they want to run to them for “evidence” for their god. Essentially, a population bottleneck is when a population’s gene pool is severely diminished by the widespread and relatively sudden death of much of the population. This website has a very nice illustration of how this occurs.
If there is a limit to the gene pool, there isn’t as many possible combinations to appear in the population and the population is limited in the attributes it displays, attributes that are selected for and against by environmental pressures. For example, if one of Darwin’s finches, let’s say the heavy beaked seed eater, had a major population decline and the environment changed so that there were few of the seeds it eats around (but there were more bugs deep in tree back) The population would not have the genetic grab bag that a larger population would to have. They would not be able to adapt as easily to the environment with fewer of those individuals who had those slightly different attributes that favored getting the bugs to survive and pass on their genetics to another generation. Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – The Illegible Post, Part 4 – On population bottlenecks and honesty”
Club Schadenfreude 
