There's no coincidence tsunami is a Japanese word.

Only a year ago Aon Bentham, an insurance company,  held a meeting discussing which places would be hit next with major natural disasters. They identified Indonesia, Chile and Japan as locations where an 8.0Mw quakes may hit next. Does this mean that Seismologists could have done more to predict the Japanese earthquake?

The March 11th 2011 earthquake which hit Honshu, Japan and measured at 8.9 Mw was preceded by a series of large foreshocks over the previous two days, beginning on March 9th with an earthquake of magnitude 7.2, occuring about 40 km from where Friday's earthquake hit. A further 3 earthquakes greater than magnitude 6 occured that same day. Knowing this I can't help but ask why was more prediction not implemented?

Information from the Japanese Meteorological Society about large earthquakes from the day before

Professor Peter Sammonds a seismologist at the Benfield Hazards Centre in London stated that "the problem with foreshocks is you never know if it is a foreshock or not until the larger quake comes". However, there are calculations and methods to predict earthquakes and after the 2004 Sumatran earthquake there was a paper published about the stress transfer along the fault line causing further ruptures, which correctly predicted a second major earthquake four months later. Sammonds admits that "the calculation is within our grasp, we just don't have the time to implement it within two days". Since the Sumatran earthquake occured in the same splay-fault system could there have been predictions and better defences built since 2004? In truth, despite being linked they are too far away for any of the stress transfer from the 2004 earthquake to have affected the section of fault line alongside Japan. 

Tsunami Wave heights as predicted by NOAA

As it is the Japanese people live with an ever-present expectation of natural disaster; floods, hurricanes, fires, and most of all earthquakes and the massive waves they can generate. Looking at the USGS damage predictions we see the damage itself is quite small, however they didn't predict the effect of the tsunami, and despite the buildings resisting the earthquake itself the tsunami  swept away all in it's path. Even if the major quake wasn't predicted from the foreshocks, you'd think in light of the knowledge that these thrust faults move under sea plates and often cause tsunamis, the Japanese would have been more inclined to evacuate the coastal areas. The Japanese have in fact built concrete walls along the coast to act as tsunami defence barriers and on Friday issued a warning 10 minutes before the wave struck to allow people time to evacuate to higher ground. There is evidence that these tsunami barriers and warning systems did work to some extent but it is still too early to say how effectve the warning system was.

Above The Tsunami covering the coast and breaking it's defences. Below: The Damage caused

Despite the damage and ongoing problems (like the melting nuclear reactors) Japan can't relax. This isn't the 'Big One' they've been waiting from, far from it. The most devastating earthquake would occur along the Nankai fault plane and would effect Tokyo massively. Since this is a completely seperate system the probablity of a quake occuring there has not changed and Japan may be in for much more turmoil in the future.

' No, we cannot give the job to this woman. She is too young and tender, the strain of the field work would be too much for her.' - Anonymous, 1990

On the final day of the week in which we heralded International Women's Day I felt this would be the perfect time to praise the women in science who are so often forgotten and to relive their, often amazing, stories. While many female geologists now are well known, and many geological societies worldwide are presided over by women (last year the president of the GSL was Lynne Frostick, a noted sedimentologist), there are many more who are now unable to tell their own stories.

In Victorian Britain the very idea of women doing serious science (except botany) was widely ridiculed, and women often worked as 'assistants' and family members, forgoing all acknowledgement of their work in order to further science for the greater good. Although Etheldred Bennett is heralded as the first woman in geology in the UK Mary Anning is probably England's best known woman in geology. The fossil hunter who followed her father up and down the clffs of Lyme Regis and discovered the Ichthyosaur struggled for years to have her discoveries  recognised as her own. 

Mary Anning in the field with her dog

Since she didn't keep a diary and was unable to publish any scientific papers there is very little known about the life of Mary Anning, unlike the male geologists of her time who couldn't wait to pen their biographies. When in 1824, she visited the Geological Society of London a noble woman Lady Harriet Sivester expressed complete disbelief at the gumption of this young, underprivileged and uneducated girl; ". . . the extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favour - that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, ". At least Lady Silvester appreciated that Miss Anning had worked hard for her knowledge.

In the US another hard working, and extremely determined young girl carved her place as the First Lady of Geology. Florence Bascom (July 14, 1862 – June 18, 1945) had to enrol in her father's college to gain a degree and was greatly influenced by her father’s friend, a geology professor at Ohio State University, Bascom became increasingly interested in geology and was eventually awarded the opportunity to study for a PhD. However, as the photo below shows field gear may have changed since the 1800's but the determination of women to even the gender gap in science still remains.  Bascom was only allowed to gain her PhD on the condition she sit behind a screen during classes so as not to disrupt male students (yes...really..!) 

Florence Bascom in the field with a compass- a different Geological fashion to now!

She was the first woman to be hired by the USGS and was eventually awarded the honor of four stars in the first edition of American Men of Science, an accolade which showed the men in her field at least accepted her as one of their own. An expert in mineralogy and petrography (and the youngest daughter of a suffragette) her legacy was to build a women's own college and train several women to become future geologists. She influenced most of the women geologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some of whom debated and argued with discoveries she had personally taught them (debates she in fact welcomed and results she championed). The college originally included geology as part of the natural sciences and so Bascom initially worked out of a storage area in the newly established sciences building, but after two years she had gathered a collection of minerals, rocks, and fossils worthy of their own building and eventually founded the school’s department of geology. Her work and contribution to geology is still being awarded and they named a crater on Venus after her.

Both of these women geologists were incredibly successful when being a woman was virtually worse than being a pet, but my all time favourite story of women in science is not that of a geologist but a woman ahead of her time even in an unrelated field. It shows the brilliant sense of humour needed to survive in a world where your determination and drive will only get you as far as that glass ceiling. Anna Barbauld was the brilliant young assistant to Joseph Priestley FRS, the great 18th-century chemist (who discovered oxygen and it's necessity to life). She pioneered animal rights in laboratories after noting the distress of mice as they were steadily deprived of air in glass vacuum jars. Accordingly, she wrote a poem in the voice of one of Priestley's laboratory mice and stuck it in the bars of the mouse's cage for Priestley to find the next morning. She entitled it: "The Mouse's Petition to Dr Priestley, Found in the Trap where he had been Confined all Night".

For here forlorn and sad I sit,

Within the wiry Grate, 

And tremble at the approaching Morn 

Which brings impending fate…

The cheerful light, the Vital Air, 

Are blessings widely given; 

Let Nature's commoners enjoy 

The common gifts of Heaven.

The well-taught philosophic mind 

To all Compassion gives; 

Casts round the world an Equal eye, 

And feels for all that lives.

Barbauld's penchant for study worried her mother who expected her to "end up a spinster because of her intellectualism..." and with it still a common legend that boys don't like smart women let's hope that's not the fate even for today's women in science.

Still waters run deep

Whoop! Today I was finally accepted onto the City University science journalism MA. After reading countless articles these days about the failing newspapers, graduate competition and lack of positions opening I'm really hoping this will give me the edge in future job markets! I think my place was won solely on my Geoscientist internship and the experience it gave me, let's hope it's worth the £8000 fees. My next article for the magazine is published here first, exclusive to my blog, for the time being at least. Enjoy!


Still waters run deep


In 1911 a meteorite from Mars hurtled towards North Africa, splitting into forty small pieces, and (legend has it) killing a dog. Harriet Jarlett reports.


Geoscientist Online 23 February 2011

Vein of martian clay and carbonate

Exactly a century after the first nakhlite meteorite was discovered in El-Nakhla, Egypt, the same meteorite is being used to discover how water may have flowed on Martian surfaces1. (together with other samples from Lafayette, Yamoto and Governador Valadares meteorites).


The Nakhla meteorite is a rare type of meteorite, being a sample of the planet Mars that was splashed off the surface of the red Planet by another meteorite impact. Mars, having a much lower gravitational pull than the Earth, requires a much smaller impact to force ejecta out of its gravity well, and into interplanetary space. Some of these escaped ejecta then find their way towards the Earth.


Scientists from the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre milled micron-thin slices off the martian meteorite fragments and examined them under the electron microscope in an attempt to understand the hydrothermal processes which formed the secondary minerals infilling some prominent veins.


The veins formed when a brine flowed through the rock (a lava) while it was still part of its parent planet. These veins were already known to have contained ice, carbonate and clay minerals in amounts corresponding to their depth below martian surface (the shallower meteorites contain soluble salts)2, which formed during the impact that sent them hurtling towards the Earth.


Changela and Bridges suggest the fluid came from an underground source, such as permafrost; and since deeper nakhlites, like Lafayette, show greater amounts of alteration Changela and Bridges realised that the water had not percolated downwards from the planet surface but instead flowed upward, like water rising from an aquifer to a source spring.


Changela suggests that an impact shock caused the minerals to fracture, and the subsurface permafrost to melt and flow through nearby rock. Dr Bridges, who is supervisor to Hitesh Changela’s PhD, explains the importance of this discovery: “We are now starting to build a realistic model for how water-deposited minerals formed on Mars, showing that impact heating was an important process.”

Martian serpentine atomic layers

Bridges and Changela have been able to identify what size of impact would be needed to form such a hydrothermal system, and can match this to the age and hemisphere in which the nakhlites were born. They have then been able to model how much fluid was likely to have been formed, and how long the system lasted for (one to 10 months).


This discovery comes soon after Mars orbiters revealed carbonate and phyllosilicates on the surface of the planet, such as those found in the Nili Fossae region, where surface fluvial activity and shallow lake deposits may have resulted in carbonate formation3. Clay minerals identified in the walls of impact craters suggest local hydrothermal systems created by impacts are common to the Martian surface.


Further reading:
Alteration assemblages in the nakhlites: Variation with depth on Mars (pp 1847–1867)H G CHANGELA and J C BRIDGES Meteoritics & Planetary Science 45, Nr 12, 1847–1867 (2011) Article first published online: 6 JAN 2011 | DOI: 10 1111/j 1945-5100 2010 01123

Love makes the world go round...

...And makes missions successful! February is the month for all things love related and whilst some of our Valentine's were disastrous for NASA's Stardust mission February 14th 2011 turned out to be full of romance.

Space has rarely left the news recently, in particular with the Kepler telescope discovering new, Earth-like planets and the exciting simulated walk on the red planet with the Mars500 project. One of the most exciting discoveries came yesterday when Stardust came within 180km of the comet, Tempel 1. Sending 72 images back to NASA and numerous details about the comet's dust, Stardust will be able to provide great insight into how these huge balls of ice and dust change over time. Comets are thought to contain frozen primordial ingredients that date back to the birth of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago, information about them could provide us with clues to how the planets and stars form.



Images taken through the day of Tempel 1 by Stardust,

Not only did Nasa have cause for great celebration after the success of their mission, but a scientist working on the project made sure this was a Valentine's day not to forget. Steve Chesley, of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program office was presenting data about the mission and slipped an extra powerpoint slide into the presentation reading 'Will you marry me?'
 

The Stardust mission has provided some fascinating insight into the inner workings of the comet, by imaging the surface. It's bigest achievment is  providing data on what happened when, in 2005, the Deep Impact sent a less-than-romantic impactor hurtling into the comet. The crater this impact left has a small mound in the centre which suggests that some of the ice which was thrown up in the collision came straight back down. Pete Schultz of Brown University explained the "cometary nucleus is fragile and weak based on how subdued the crater is we see today". He went on to explain that because of the frayed edges of the crater it is obvious the surface has changed since the impact, " the crater partly healed itself." Erosion features, newly formed pits and holes were visible on the surface, clearly altered compared to images sent back from Deep Impact. These all form as the comet moves closer to the sun, causing ice to evaporate off of the surface and form the dust 'tail' of the comet.



This isn't the first time Stardust has given NASA a present on V-day. In 2006 analysis of data sent back from the comet showed some of the comet particles to be heart shaped!



Heart-shaped comet particle extracted from aerogel - http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/status/060221.html

You can't get blood from a stone... or can you?

Two years ago I visited Canyonlands in Utah and I  thought even the most hardened rock-hater could be moved to geologise over the spectacle. However, after recently seeing new images of Blood Falls in Antarctica I think I've found a new contender for my top Geological Wonder of the World, the one place where it seems you CAN get blood from stone.

Blood Falls, Antarctica

With such an unexpected and gory appearance, especially against the bleak icy landscape of Antarctica, I can't understand why Taylor Glacier is not mentioned more often. Especially when the striped red sands of Arizona's 'The Wave' (especially with the recent 127 Hours film just released) and the Grand Canyon are so well known, and the processes which formed them are considered general knowledge.   

The Wave in Arizona

Although it seems as if a miracle, and the Earth literally appears to be bleeding, the processes which formed Blood Falls are in fact well known.  It was originally thought that algae lived on the surface of the ice and caused the colouration but last year something more spectacular was discovered.

The glacier is actually underlain by a dank and salty lake with no oxygen, light or food source. The lake formed 2 million years ago when Snowball Earth events caused part of the Antarctic Ocean to become trapped and the brine concentrated to be three times as salty as normal seawater. Despite less-than-savoury conditions, there are still microbes living there (seventeen different types to be exact), which have been there since the lake formed and have learnt to 'eat' sulphates and to 'poop' out iron. It's as this waste iron rises 400m to the surface and reacts with oxygen to form the red rust colour that it stains the ice to look like blood.

Diagram by Zina Deretsky, ref: Science doi:10.1126/science.1167350

These microbes exist in such unfavourable conditions that they are one of the best and most easily accessible (scientists don't even need to drill through the ice to reach them) extremophiles for NASA and other astrobiology organisations to use in research to discovere how  places like Mars and Europa could support life. 

What's black and white and red all over?

A sunburnt Panda! Although neither of the two Giant Pandas moving to Edinburgh Zoo will have to worry about sunburn.

My little sisters favorite things in the whole world are Pandas. When she was little and asked where she wanted to go on family days out her answer was inevitably 'the zoo', and she would wile away hours in front of their cage talking to Ming-Ming (who was later sent away in disgrace after fighting with her mate).  Although, my sister isn’t the only person afflicted by Panda fever, everybody loves Pandas and the Sneezing Panda was one of the most watched videos on YouTube. So what is it that makes these animals so cute?

In 1973 Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, a zoologist, put quantitative measurements on ‘cuteness’. He listed several infantile traits such as small body size, a disproportionately large head, large eyes, playfulness and curiosity. It’s easy to see that a wide eyed panda, rolling around whilst chewing his bamboo shoot with his funny human-like thumb (which is in fact an adapted wrist bone) would fit all of these traits.

These childlike features trigger a nurturing response in people so they respond more positively to animals that look like babies. It’s not restricted to people either, think about all those stories of gorillas adopting kitten and hippos adopting tortoises. Small cute things appear vulnerable and helpless so we want to adopt them. It’s an evolutionary trick, which has been in use for millenia. The recent find of a baby Triceratops skull with an overly large skull shows even ancient species knew the benefits of being a cutie-pie.

Although, I think the biggest reasons we like pandas is just that they are out right funny, with their black eyes they look like they smudged their make up from the night before and haven’t slept in a week, whilst their endangered nature make them the underdog we all love to help out.

With their guaranteed cute appeal it looks like Tian Tian and Yangguang will be welcomed with open arms to Edinburgh Zoo.

Facts about Pandas:

The giant panda is listed as endangered in the World Conservation Union's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Animals. It is one of the most critically endangered species in the world. There are about 1,000 left in the wild.

The Wolong Giant Panda Reserve is the world’s largest panda reserve and research institution. It is also the world’s largest breeding base and panda sperm bank.

It's Cheese, Gromit, But Not As We Know It!

As a child asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would ignore the likelihood that my asthma, 5'1 height and lack of army training would probably prevent my dream and reply 'Astronaut'. Well twelve lucky, strong-lunged and tall men got to live out my dream and visit the Moon. Now, over forty years on, the Apollo missions are once again proving their scientific worth and are back in the forefront of scientific minds as new analytical techniques applied to  seismic data taken from the moon during Apollo has discovered the Moon has a liquid core like our Earth. 

In the final Apollo mission (the only geologist astronaut), Harrison Schmitt, collected a pristine and beautiful moon rock sample, Troctolite 7653. Full of milky white and dark green crystals, an analysis of this sample showed evidence of magnetic alignment, and the possibility of a liquid Moon core. It can now be compared with data collected between 1962 and 1977 when the Apollo missions deployed four seismic stations which recorded seismic tremors beneath the Moon's surface.

Dr Schmitt poses with the American flag, with the Earth in the background.

 The new research shows that the core seems to have both a solid and a liquid section, similar to our own Earth, however it also contains a partially melted section which our own planet is missing containing both large lumps of rock as well as magma. Dr Renee Weber (a very accomplished woman in science and the project scientist for the Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project) and her colleagues analyzed this data to find the moon has a core of 330Km diameter, which is still liquid even 4.5 Billion years after the moon formed! She is currently involved in, what is now a very important, proposal to send seismic data instruments back to the Moon. Although, sending modern technology to the Moon surface has no guarantee of producing better results. The rarity of Moonquakes means data is sparse, whilst the cracked and broken surface means signals are masked by noise, hence why computers of the seventies were unable to decode the signals they received then. 

The Moon's layers

 Up until now the topography and mineralogical composition of the moons surface was well understood, but it's interior remained in doubt. If the Moon did indeed form when a Mars sized object impacted the partially molten Early Earth then it stands to reason it would contain various heavy elements and light elements which would separate out into a core, mantle and crust. Weber understands the implications of her discovery. "If we have any hope of determining once and for all how the moon formed then we need to understand it's structure completely." 

It seems Gromit will need to find some more evidence before we all agree with his theory that the Moon is in fact made from cheese.