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Tag: geology

Climate change… on Venus?

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Two side by side pictures of Venus from space. On the left, Venus looks like a round and pale gassy planet wrapped in cloud wisps traveling up and to the right, with a smudge of light orange near the equator, and brown near the south pole. On the right is the same picture but enhanced to show clearer cloud patterns and brighter oranges and browns.

[Two side by side pictures of Venus from space. On the left, Venus looks like a round and pale gassy planet wrapped in cloud wisps traveling up and to the right, with a smudge of light orange near the equator, and brown near the south pole. On the right is the same picture but enhanced to show clearer cloud patterns and brighter oranges and browns.]

The most active searches for otherworldly life in our solar system are centered around Mars, Earth’s cold planetary neighbor, and Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. In fact, NASA just launched the Europa Clipper on October 14, 2024 with the primary goal of searching for life. And in recent years, many people have floated the idea of sending astronauts to Mars. It was for missions like these that, in 2023, NASA postponed the would-be next exploratory trip to Venus — VERITAS — by allocating its funding to other exploratory programs which were exceeding their budgets…

How did we find out that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs?

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[A large fireball is being hurtled toward the earth as two small dinosaurs look on, possibly in fear.]

If you ask almost any kid today how the dinosaurs died, they’ll tell you an asteroid killed them, but this didn’t used to be the leading theory. When you look at key papers about the asteroid impact the kids are referring to, you’ll learn that it defined the transition from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary ~66 million years ago. Before the discovery of the asteroid, there wasn’t a single agreed upon theory on what caused the 5th global mass extinction…

Biases of the fossil record

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[Mounted statue of a Triceratops fossil at a museum. People can be seen in the background looking at a wall of fossils. ]

As scientists, we strive to reduce error and bias as much as possible. But as a paleontologist, I need to be aware of the biases I can’t reduce. The fossil record is inherently biased. Not everything that dies becomes a fossil. Not every fossil has been found. Not every fossil stays intact well enough to study. These biases in the fossil record come in many forms and are studied under the branch of paleontology known as taphonomy…

The grocery store sells many kinds of salt, but are they actually different?

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[several bottle of white table salt sit on a metal rack. one of the bottles has spilled over on to the table. .

I walk down the spice aisle of my local grocery store. It smells like pepper and cinnamon, but all I need is salt. Scanning the shelves of alphabetically arranged spices, it isn’t there. It has a display all its own, just to the left. And there’s not just one type. There are many. Mediterranean sea salt, iodized salt, black truffle salt, kosher salt, smoked salt, the list goes on. But what’s the difference? According to Samin Nosrat, in her bestselling book, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat”, salt is the “most important element of good cooking,” so you have to have it. But what kind should you get? Well, it depends on what qualities matter to you. Is it the geology? The chemistry? The size of the crystal grains? Or maybe the flavor…

Perks of the job

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Six giraffes eating from acacia trees at the top of the gorge.

This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published in October 2016, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events.  What does summer vacation look like for a scientist? For some, summer break is much-needed time to catch up on research projects and writing, but for many of us, summer centers around one… Read more »

GPS: Not just for finding the closest pizza place

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A screenshot of a GPS navigation app on a mobile device. The screenshot shows a map of the IU Bloomington campus.

How exactly does your “Maps” app know exactly where you are, any time of day? The “little blue dot” on your phone tells you where you are as the result of billions of dollars invested in the Global Positioning System (GPS), a network of 27 satellites currently orbiting the Earth. Each satellite sends microwaves constantly,… Read more »

Can we reduce the impact of landslides caused by earthquakes?

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Have you ever experienced an earthquake? This probably isn’t something you think about often, especially if you live in southern Indiana, where earthquakes large enough to be felt (or cause any damage) are quite rare. Talk to anyone living in Japan, Chile, or even California, and the odds are that they have experienced one or… Read more »

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