What child has not at some time dreamed of digging a hole to China? Geologists can be excused if they dream the same dream.
Articles from July 2019
The sealed and abandoned Kola Superdeep Borehole in 2012 • Photo by Rakot13 (CC BY SA 3.0)
R136 in the Tarantula Nebula • By NASA, ESA, F. Paresce, R. O'Connell (Public Domain)
New variety among the stars
A population profile of the stars is like a pyramid. At the top of the pyramid are the blue giant stars, the lords of the galaxy.
Gall on oak leaf • Photo by Berthold Werner (CC BY SA 3.0)
Plant galls: home for insects
The season has stripped the woods bare. The leafy veils have dropped. Now it’s all rock, bark, spike, and spine. And galls.
Woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (Public Domain)
God and the Big Bang
Next winter [1985] Halley’s Comet will make its long awaited dash around the sun. It will be the fourth appearance of the comet since Newton’s colleague Edmund Halley predicted its periodic return.
Eurasian Magpie • Photo by Airwolfhound (CC BY SA 2.0)
Wildlife sparse in Ireland
For several years now, correspondents to the letters columns of the Irish Times have heatedly debated the merits — or lack of them — of magpies. The magpie is a large black-and-white bird that first appeared in Ireland in the 17th Century and is now proliferating in every part of the country.
Photo by Mathias Appel (Public Domain)
Starlings: from the sea to shining sea
Economists have a maxim called Gresham’s Law that says “bad money will always drive out good.” Sometimes I think ecologists should enunciate a similar principle.
Photo by Dave Herring on Unsplash
Ireland’s changeable weather
For 12 years, off and on, I have been a student of Irish weather. I have studied the daily weather maps in the Irish Times. I have listened to the 6 o’clock shipping forecasts on the BBC. I have watched the barometer. I have held a moistened finger to the wind.
Glacial scratches • Photo by Amezcackle (Public Domain)
Ice works the land
Set a geologist down anywhere in New England and somewhere nearby he will show you the work of ice. Eighteen thousand years ago all of New England lay beneath a half-mile-thick sheet of ice, part of a continent-spanning glacier that reached from the deeply indented coast of the Pacific Northwest to the gently sloping continental shelf of New England.
White lady's-slipper • Photo by Dr. Thomas G. Barnes / USFWS (Public Domain)
Delicate balance makes our universe
The naturalist John Muir said the two greatest experiences of his life were camping with Ralph Waldo Emerson at Yosemite and finding the rare orchid calypso blooming alone in a Canadian swamp. Last spring I found a wild orchid as exceptional as a night with Emerson: a white lady-slipper, solitary, snow-pure, alone in a pine woods with 10,000 of its pink cousins. My Peterson wildflower guide admits the white variant of the lady-slipper and calls it rare and local. Rare and local, indeed! In my part of New England I have never seen another.
An annular eclipse • Photo by Kevin Baird (CC BY SA 3.0)
The Moon’s cone of darkness
The night has a shape and that shape is a cone. In Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound” the Earth speaks this line: “I spin beneath my pyramid of night, Which point into the heavens, dreaming delight.”