Approaches to Macquarie
A recent paper by Brandon Shuck and colleagues has presented detailed information from seismic reflection lines in the vicinity of the northernmost segment of the Macquarie Ridge Complex. For the regional picture, gravity maps are hard to beat, but they must be used with care.
read moreThe starry sisters
Historically, women have always had a hard time breaking into science but two women, both sisters of astronomers but separated in time by 150 years, did manage it.
read moreMagnetic memories
In 2020 the Geological Survey of Australia’s Northern Territory had published a full-colour magnetic map of the whole of their area, with accompanying grids. For me, a trip into the days of my youth, because in mid-1964 I was party chief of a team flying part of a feature centred on Tennant Creek that had come to be known as the ‘Aeromagnetic Ridge’.
read moreThose damned beach balls
The Kaverina diagram used to display different tectonic regimes as defined by different styles of faulting has been modified by the addition of focal mechanism ‘beach-balls’. How helpful is that?
read moreMohorovičić’s Fault
The last twelve months have not been kind to Croatia, thanks to the jostling of crustal blocks for space as the northern edge of Africa advances relentlessly towards Europe.
read moreThe mystery of Mayotte
In May 2018, something very curious happened. The marine area immediately to the east of Mayotte, the easternmost major island in the Comoros chain, became seismically active.
read moreThe Aves Ridge and the migration of mammals
The leading article in the November 19 issue of Eos was entitled “By Land or Sea: How Did Mammals Get to the Caribbean Islands?” Could gravity maps have anything to tell us about the possibilities?
read moreA geophysical rant
In an ideal world, there would be a continuous dialogue between geologists and geophysicists. Sadly, there seems to have been little progress in that direction in the last fifty years.
read moreA confusion of units
Gravity units are a mess. About half of all surveys have their results reported in the c,g,s unit, the mGal, and half in the S.I unit, which differs by a factor of ten. And very few people have any idea of why the Eötvös unit is defined in the way that it is.
read moreMohorovičić geophysicist
There is no doubt that Andrija Mohorovičić deserves to be remembered. The work he did laid the foundations for the use of earthquake waves in understanding the Earth, but brilliance has not always been enough to ensure that a scientist is remembered. His work might easily have been overlooked, or lesser men might have received the credit, but this is one case where the right man has been honoured.
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