The Geological Society’s meeting room has changed a lot in the last century. Until a refurb in the seventies, it looked very much how it had done for most of its life – raked rows of benches standing opposite each other, an impressive throne (which now sits forlornly in a corner outside my office) at … Continue reading
Tag Archives: history
Murchison’s Peacetime Map of Siluria
Sir Roderick Impey Murchison spent much of the early 1830s stomping round Wales and the West Midlands immersed in an oceanic world of metre-long sea scorpions. A world which later gave rise to both leeches and creatures with backbones. Above the waters, plants began to grow on Avalonia. It was the dawn of the age of … Continue reading
Whisky on the rocks
No trip to Aberdeen would be complete without incorporating Scotland’s most famous export (apart from shortbread and Andy Murray). Luckily, we had a valid geological reason too – the link between whisky and geology is well known. Continue reading
Early Geological Social Networking
When I imagine the early geological map-makers, I think of men on grand tours, taking geological hammers to prise fragments of rock from exposed strata. Late at night they’d examine their findings by candlelight, take notes and draw sketch maps, later to be incorporated into the great cartographic works they published and left to us … Continue reading
The origins of plate tectonics
This week, we’ve been uploading clips from Richard Thomas’ film ‘Dan McKenzie and friends’, which looks at the early history of the theory of plate tectonics. It’s easy to forget that plate tectonics, an idea we’re all familiar with at least on a basic level, isn’t all that old. It wasn’t until the 1960s that … Continue reading
Communicating geology in the digital age
When the news broke on Friday that a new Icelandic eruption could be on the way, it didn’t take long for it to spread. This hasn’t always been the case. In its early years, the physics of geological communication was simple – involving nothing more than oscillations of pressure transmitted through a gas – talking. Continue reading
The Ross Sea Ice Shelf and beyond
Extending east from Cape Crozier, the front of the Ross Ice Shelf is a 30 metre high vertical wall of ice. It’s a remarkable feature, especially when you realise that it’s fresh water, it’s floating, and about 90% of it is underwater. With an area of 487,000 square kilometres, the Ross Ice Shelf is the … Continue reading
Scott’s hut on Cape Evans
So far, the geology on this trip has faced some stiff competion from history and penguins, but on tuesday it came into its own. We moved across McMurdo Sound overnight and into the fast ice on the west coast, ready for an assault on the Dry Valleys. It was a lovely sunny day on the … Continue reading
Stranded on the ice floes
Tom Sharpe continues his journey in the footsteps of Captain Scott, on the 100th anniversary of Scott’s journey to the South Pole… Friday 18 November As the ice charts showed, we reached the edge of the pack ice on schedule, open pack mainly of first year ice that was easy to move through, so we … Continue reading
Breaking through the Ross Sea ice
We’re breaking through the Ross Sea pack ice at the moment – the ice shelf was named after Captain Sir James Clark Ross who first discovered it in 1841. The Ross Ice Shelf was a popular starting point for early Antarctic explorers – both Scott and Amundsen crossed it to reach the Pole in 1911. Continue reading
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