In A First, Scientists Have Discovered That The Marine Algal Species Nannochloropsis Oceanica Can Live

Iceland: Landmannalaugar, Suðurland

Heidi Gustafson, who has spent the past five years collecting and working with ocher, walks along Whidbey Island’s Double Bluff Beach, off the coast of Washington, in search of the material. She came to scout this area, where she spent time as a child, after recalling its interesting cliff exposure.Some ochers, Gustafson believes, are calling out to be turned into a pigment. Others are more resistant. Those ocher fragments are either returned to their point of origin, or, if Gustafson cannot get back there, placed outside in a stone graveyard of sorts that she has created in the forest near her cabin. A few of her ocher-based artworks hang on the wall.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/t-magazine/ocher-heidi-gustafson.html

I miss doing microscope work. Can we make a thread of our favourite thin section? This is mine

Actinolite Schist

As cat owners we like to joke about how the cat is the one who’s really in charge, but let’s be honest here: my cats think they’re in charge, but they’re also fucking dumbasses. It’s sort of an incompetent-king-and-long-suffering-advisor arrangement, if the king were prone to getting their head stuck in Kleenex boxes.

What if... what if I WANT an info dump???

Then you're my favorite and I will dump SO much info on natrocarbonatite lava

No one knows for sure why or how this type of lava forms. Oldoinyo Lengai is the only volcano on earth that actively erupts it currently, and Oldoinyo Lengai hasn't been extensively studied.

The factor that causes lava to be viscous (thick, and sticky) is its silica content. Rhyolitic magmas, like those in Washington, have around 70 weight % silica. Basaltic magmas, like the volcanoes in Hawai'i, are around 45 wt% silica. Natrocarbonatite lava is less than 3% silica. Its flow rate is close to water, so it flows faster than you can outrun.

It's also a LOT less hot than other lavas. Most lavas are from 700-1200 degrees C (basaltic lavas in the higher range, rhyolitic lavas in the lower), but natrocarbonatite is around 500-600 degrees C. It's cool enough that you won't immediately die if you fall into it (you'll be hospitalized for months, as one man who fell into it was, but it's survivable). It's so cool that you can't see it glow in daylight.

It flows black and cools white! This is because of its content of the minerals nyerereite and gregoryite, which are unstable and break down quickly when exposed to humidity.

Basically it's cool as fuck literally and figuratively and I'm obsessed with it

A Rainbow of Light Diffracts Through Hummingbird Wings in Photographs by Christian Spencer

The American Museum of Natural History takes you along on a dinosaur dig in the Morrison Formation of the US west, host of many of the famous Jurassic dinosaur bones found in North America.