May 18, 1980: Where were you when Mt St Helens Exploded?

     May 18, 1980, was a remarkable day for me and almost every geologist I know.  We identified with David A Johnston, the geologist killed in the volcanic event. The explosion and subsequent landslide of the north face of Mt. St. Helens in Washington state, USA, was top news throughout that day and ensuing weeks and months.

      The USGS put together still photos to create this video of one of the largest (if not the largest) landslides ever on earth.

     An earthquake at 8:32 a.m. local time on Sunday, May 18, 1980, caused the entire weakened north face to slide away. This suddenly exposed the partly molten gas- and steam-rich rock in the volcano to lower pressures. The rock responded by exploding a hot mix of lava and pulverized older rock toward Spirit Lake so fast that it overtook the avalanching north face.

         An eruption column rose 80,000 feet into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states. A USGS friend brought back vials of varying sized ash collected after the explosion.

        At the same time, snow, ice and several entire glaciers on the volcano melted, forming a series of large lahars (volcanic mudslides) that reached as far as the Columbia River, nearly 50 miles to the southwest. 

       Individual trees in the direct path of the blast were charred. . .

and trees were caught up in the mudflows.

      Downed logs still remain as in this 2012 photograph:

     

What are your memories of that day? Were you nearby, perchance?

Steph

Magnetic Reconnection: Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission

      "Most people do not give much thought to the Earth's magnetic field, yet it is every bit as essential to life as air, water and sunlight. The magnetic field provides an invisible, but crucial, barrier that protects Earth from the sun's magnetic field, which drives a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind outward from the sun's outer layers. The interaction between these two magnetic fields can cause explosive storms in the space near Earth, which can knock out satellites and cause problems here on Earth's surface, despite the protection offered by Earth's magnetic field."

      "A new study co-authored by University of Maryland physicists provides the first major results of NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, including an unprecedented look at the interaction between the magnetic fields of Earth and the sun. The paper describes the first direct and detailed observation of a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection, which occurs when two opposing magnetic field lines break and reconnect with each other, releasing massive amounts of energy."

      "The discovery is a major milestone in understanding magnetism and space weather. The research paper appears in the May 13, 2016, issue of the journal Science."

     "Imagine two trains traveling toward each other on separate tracks, but the trains are switched to the same track at the last minute," said James Drake, a professor of physics at UMD and a co-author on the Science study. "Each track represents a magnetic field line from one of the two interacting magnetic fields, while the track switch represents a reconnection event. The resulting crash sends energy out from the reconnection point like a slingshot." 

      "Evidence suggests that reconnection is a major driving force behind events such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, magnetic storms, and the auroras observed at both the North and South poles of Earth. Although researchers have tried to study reconnection in the lab and in space for nearly half a century, the MMS mission is the first to directly observe how reconnection happens."

     "The MMS mission provided more precise observations than ever before. Flying in a pyramid formation at the edge of Earth's magnetic field with as little as 10 kilometers' distance between four identical spacecraft, MMS images electrons within the pyramid once every 30 milliseconds. In contrast, MMS' predecessor, the European Space Agency and NASA's Cluster II mission, takes measurements once every three seconds--enough time for MMS to make 100 measurements."

     "Just looking at the data from MMS is extraordinary. The level of detail allows us to see things that were previously a blur," explained Drake, who served on the MMS science team and also advised the engineering team on the requirements for MMS instrumentation. "With a time interval of three seconds, seeing reconnection with Cluster II was impossible. But the quality of the MMS data is absolutely inspiring. It's not clear that there will ever be another mission quite like this one."

     "Simply observing reconnection in detail is an important milestone. But a major goal of the MMS mission is to determine how magnetic field lines briefly break, enabling reconnection and energy release to happen. Measuring the behavior of electrons in a reconnection event will enable a more accurate description of how reconnection works; in particular, whether it occurs in a neat and orderly process, or in a turbulent, stormlike swirl of energy and particles.

     "A clearer picture of the physics of reconnection will also bring us one step closer to understanding space weather--including whether solar flares and magnetic storms follow any sort of predictable pattern like weather here on Earth. Reconnection can also help scientists understand other, more energetic astrophysical phenomena such as magnetars, which are neutron stars with an unusually strong magnetic field.

        "Reconnection in Earth's magnetic field is relatively low energy, but we can get a good sense of what is happening if we extrapolate to more energetic systems," said Mark Swisdaku. "The edge of Earth's magnetic field is an excellent test lab, as it's just about the only place where we can fly a spacecraft directly through a region where reconnection occurs."

      "To date, MMS has focused only on the sun-facing side of Earth's magnetic field. In the future, the mission is slated to fly to the opposite side to investigate the teardrop-shaped tail of the magnetic field that faces away from the sun."

Quite exciting, eh?
Steph

"Written" to the Core: A Core A Day

      Sediment coring from the bottom of the world's oceans includes miles of sediment and rock preserved at the USGS Repository here in Golden, CO, USA, as well as places like the Lamont-Doherty Core Repository.

     "Lamont has been actively collecting and archiving sediment from around the world . This is in large part due to Lamont's first director, Maurice Ewing, who instilled a philosophy of "A core a day" for all ocean research vessels. Ewing firmly believing that if we had the sediment we would be able to piece together patterns and stories about our planet, so every day at noon, or thereabouts, the ship would collect a core."

 The cores are used to reveal stories of earth systems, including those of climate cycles. Almost 40 years have passed since the groundbreaking work of the CLIMAP group that used the cores to connect the start of Earth's glacial cycles to changes in eccentricity, precession and tilt. (Hayes, Imbrie and Shackleton, 1976) . Collecting sediment on this Arctic GEOTRACES cruise will help scientists understand more of the stories locked in the oceans. 

    " The length of a core is dictated by the goal of the collection. Early Lamont cores were more about collecting just to gather the material because the ship was there. These early core were generally 6 to 9 meters long, although one incredibly long 28.2 meter core was collected from the Central Pacific. "

      For the sampling GEOTRACES is doing in the Arctic there is a specific goal of collecting just the top few dozen centimeters of sediment and the water just above it, yet at a depth of about 2200 meters. This will require a much different technique than what was used for the long Central Pacific core.

     "The sediment in this region is soft, so the plan was to drop a small general-purpose device called a Mono-corer over the side of the ship with a few small weights on top to help drive the core tube in straight."

     "The corer would hang below the bottom of the rosette of water samplers, far enough below that the rosette would remain 'mud-free' but still able to collect near bottom water samples. The mud in the mono-corer would be held in place by a spring-loaded door that snapped closed once the mud was inside and the tube began its return trip to the ship."

     You can read more about this technique, including the "Cone of Silence" here.

      I have two connections to these cores: a summer spent coring in the Mediterranean Sea on Duke University's Research Vessel Eastward and living in Lamont House (dorm) at Smith College, MA, USA.

       It was a fun summer.  What was your favorite educational summer?

Inspired to the core,
Steph

Partial Ellipsis of the Sun is on Spring Break, Week 2

     A smattering of images from our last week in NM and CO, USA. Guesses as to where? Some are pretty easy. Hope you are having a great week!

Happy Trails!
Steph

Partial Ellipsis of the Sun is on Spring Break

     Enjoy a few views of the Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado, USA, after our big April snow. . . Amazing Clouds! All the moisture slowed dune movement considerably. The snow outlined some great star and other dunes.

     Next up, Abiquiu, Taos. Santa Fe, Albuquerque. Ah--Georgia O'Keeffe country!

      See you next week! 

Have a great week!

Steph, Maizie, (CO contingent) Mom and Liz (CT contingent)

Abiquiu skies in GO'K country

The Tully (Not Telly) Monster was a VERTEBRATE (!) Extremely Well Preserved in Siderite

      A 300 million year-old fossil mystery has possibly been solved by a research team at the University of Leicester, which has identified the ancient 'Tully Monster' as a vertebrate, due to the unique characteristics of its eyes.

      Tullimonstrum gregarium or as it is more commonly known the 'Tully Monster', found only in chucky-jam full of fossils coal quarries in Illinois, USA, is known to many Americans because its alien-like image can be seen on the sides of large U-haul™ trailers along the freeways. 

    Dr. Sarah Gabbott from the University of Leicester's Department of Geology said: "Since its discovery over 60 years ago scientists have suggested it is a whole parade of completely different creatures ranging from molluscs to worms -- but there was no conclusive evidence and so speculation continued."

        Thomas Clements, a PhD student from the University of Leicester and lead author on the paper, explained: "When a fossil has anatomy this bizarre it's difficult to know where to start, so we decided to look at the most striking feature -- the stalked structures with dark blobs."

      The Tully Monster, unlike the Telly Monster of Sesame Street fame, is extremely well preserved in siderite which, as we've previously discussed has very high iron concentration.

     "In a new study published in Nature, the University of Leicester paleontologists discovered that the dark 'blobs' were actually made up of hundreds of thousands of microscopic dark granules, each 50 times smaller than the width of a human hair."

     "The shape and chemical composition of these granules is identical to organelles found in cells called melanosomes; these being responsible for creating and storing the pigment melanin."

     "We used a new technique called Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) to identify the chemical signature of the fossil granules and compared it to known modern melanin from other vertebrates and this proved that we had discovered the oldest fossil pigment currently known."

      Identifying fossil melanosomes containing melanin and a lens is the first time it has been conclusively proved that Tullimonstrum had eyes on stalks.

      Professor Gabbott said: "There were two distinct shapes of melanosomes in Tullimonstrum's eyes: some look like microscopic 'sausages' and others like microscopic 'meatballs'. This evidence was crucial because only vertebrates have two different shapes of melanosome, meaning that unlike previous researchers that thought that Tullimonstrum was an invertebrate (animal without a backbone), this is the first unequivocal evidence that Tullimonstrum is a member of the same group of animals as us, the vertebrates."
  

     Thomas added: "This is an exciting study because not have we discovered the oldest fossil pigment, but the structures seen in Tullimonstrum's eyes suggest it had good vision. The large tail and teeth suggest that the Tully Monster is in fact a type of very weird fish."

       So. . .Tully and Telly Monsters, melanosomes that look like meatballs and sausages, eyes on stalks, very weird fish--there must be some good puns and jokes in there somewhere. . .

Steph

South Park, Colorado, clouds 

Revisiting Iceland: A Kentucky-Sized Place Where Geology is in Your Face at Every Turn

         A friend's trip to Iceland the past two weeks has reinspired a look at this Kentucky-sized land. My friend's description of her trip included words about geology staring one in the face at every turn. Young, changing, extraordinary geology is located next to the much older geology of Greenland.

     "Iceland is a manifestation of plate tectonic activity along a 10,000-mile underwater mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The island, which is about the size of the state of Kentucky, is only 15-20 million years old, making it one of the youngest landmasses of its size in the world, according to Ari Trausti Guðmundsson, a geophysicist, poet, and former Iceland presidential candidate."

     “If you hop over to Greenland, the bedrock is over 3,000 million years old,” says Guðmundsson, who guided Pitcairn during his expedition to Bárðarbunga and wrote the text, including 120 poems, in his book. “In comparison, Iceland is an infant.”

     "The Mid-Atlantic Ridge gives rise to Iceland’s volcanoes, one of its signature geological features. The country boasts 30 volcanic systems, which contain hundreds of active volcanoes. The natural upwelling of magma from beneath the ridge, as well as a mantle plume located almost right under the middle of the country, send billions of tons of lava surging through the bedrock annually, causing the country to expand about one inch per year, on average, according to Guðmundsson.

       Additional information about this geologist's dream country is located at this link. Hoping to get to Iceland before too many of the glaciers have melted.

        I am also fascinated by the unusual diacritical marks in the place and author names. It's also fun to see a geologist poet who ran for the presidency of Iceland! With a small population, I guess residents wear many hats. . .

        How about you; what about Iceland fascinates you?

Steph