Astronaut Readjusts To Life Back On Earth

Blue tit/blåmes.

Me, just an unstoppable juggernaut of geology fun facts once I get started: And did you know that Frankenstein and Dracula were written during the year without a summer? A time when Ash from a big volcanic eruption covered much of Europe for the whole summer forcing it into a dark volcanic winter and so the Gothic Mood was influenced by a geological catastrophe at the time. Our art and culture are and have always been heavily influenced by the changes of the shifting rocks beneath our feet and the interplay of how we interact with and react to the world around us is fascinating.

cave exploring, thailand

Unearthing Ireland’s deepest fairy secrets and darkest myths

A fairy fort, with corn stooks of four sheaves each, in Loughinisland, Co Down, in 1962. Photograph: Michael J Murphy/duchas.ie

“A worldwide crowdsourcing movement is currently unearthing Ireland’s deepest fairy secrets and darkest myths. A voluntary collective online is working its way through transcribing 700,000 pages of folklore that were collected throughout Ireland between 1937 and 1939. This mass of previously inaccessible material was gathered by more than 100,000 children who were sent to seek out the oldest person in their community just before second World War to root out the darkest, oddest and weirdest traditional beliefs, secrets and customs, which were then logged into 1,128 volumes, titled the Schools’ Manuscripts Collection.

Half a million pages have been digitised by the National Folklore Collection, of which more than 100,000 pages have now been transcribed by volunteers, revealing the fairy situation in every townland, the types of leprechaun and butter churn common to each area, the names of people who tried to steal gold and what happened to them, or who had relationships with mermaids. There is material on local cures, holy wells, strange animals, travelling folk and spirits.”

The Irish Times

OMG. THIS IS AMAZING.

the great bear rainforest in british columbia is one of the largest coastal temperate rain forests in the world, with twenty five thousand square miles of mist shrouded fjords and densely forested islands that are home to white furred black bears.

neither albino nor polar bear, these rare black bears (there are fewer than five hundred) are known as kermode bears, or what the gitga’at first nation call mooksgm’ol, the spirit bear — a word they did not speak to european fur traders lest the bears be discovered and hunted. to this day, it remains taboo to hunt a spirit bear, or to mention them to outsiders.

the white fur in these bears is triggered by a recessive mutation of the same gene associated with red hair and fair skin in humans. though it remains unclear as to how the trait arose (or disappeared), it is especially pronounced on certain islands.

photos by (click pic) paul nicklen x, fabrice simon, denis binda, kyle breckenridge, and paul burwell

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

Smoky quartz with the inclusion of hydrocarbons ( oil and bitumen ) Alatau Ridge, Republic Of Bashkortostan, Ural, Russia Photo: Pakhneva Ekaterina

Omg lol.

What did South Eastern Australia look like 130 million years ago? This watercolour landscape is part of my on going work recontructing fossils discovered last summer in Boola Boola Forest, Gippsland Victoria. They date back to the Early Cretaceous period - the golden age of the dinosaurs.

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On our dig we found fossils of every species shown in this illustration. The plants in the foreground and fossil shown here is Otozamites douglasii, a member of the cycad-like Bennettitales which are completely extinct now. However the rest of the scene depicts plants that have similar modern decendants: Cladophlebis ferns down low, a forest of conifers including Bellarinea richardsii (Podocarp family), and very tall Brachphyllum tyersensis (Belonging to either the Araucaria or Cypress family).