A Friday Cat Blog...and "2012" again

It's a Friday! I've been grading midterms and lab reports non-stop for two weeks. I am geologized out for an evening. I'm heading up into the Mother Lode tomorrow with my students for an exploration of the gold rush mines and ghost towns, but tonight, it's a Friday Cat Blog. That's our ferocious cat Zoe either yawning, or dreaming about eating us.

By the way, for recreation tonight, I am once again enjoying the mayhem and total geologic destruction of the earth in the movie "2012". Why wasn't Woody Harrelson nominated at the Oscars for the best geologic movie death ever?

Photo courtesy of Mrs. Geotripper.

A Volcano Sundered: A Field Trip Along the San Andreas Fault IV

One of California's hidden treasures is Pinnacles National Monument, in the Coast Ranges south of the town of Hollister. It was the main destination of our field studies class last week as we explored sites along the San Andreas fault. Some of our other stops were described here, here and here. The park was established by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, to preserve the unusually rugged scenery that is quite unlike that of most other parts of the Coast Ranges. The surprising geological significance of the park was not discovered until a half a century later.

I described the geology of the park in some detail last year, so I won't repeat myself too much, but essentially the park is half of a rhyolitic composite volcano that erupted 23.5 million years ago...right on top of the San Andreas fault! The rhyolite weathers into the beautiful spires and peaks that are the centerpiece of the park scenery.

In the 1970's, geologists were looking to understand the nature of movements along the San Andreas fault, and some of them noted the apparent similarity between the Pinnacles volcanic rocks and those of the Neenach Volcanics down in southern California near Palmdale and Gorman. V. Matthews was able to demonstrate that they erupted from the same volcano, but that the rocks were separated by 195 miles by movements of the San Andreas fault. The discovery was a powerful confirmation of the possibility of large-scale motion of the crust of the earth.

Because of the crap going around today about the end of the world and 2012 movies, I feel duty-bound to point out that this 195 miles of movement was accomplished by thousands of individual earthquakes happening once every few hundred years, with 10-20 feet of motion during each earthquake. Such earthquakes are likely in the near future, and they will be disasters, but they will not be anything like what goes on in Roland Emmerich's imagination, as entertaining as his movies may be!

Some classic papers:

Hill, M.L. and Dibblee, T.W. Jr., 1953, San Andreas, Garlock, and Big Pine faults, California - A Study of the character, history and tectonic significance of their displacements: Geological Society of America Bulletin, volume 64, pp. 443-458.

Matthews, V., 1976, Correlation of Pinnacles and Neenach volcanic formations and their bearing on San Andreas Fault problems AAPG Bulletin 60: 2128-2141

2012: A Short Movie Review for my Geologist Friends

Let's face reality, nothing we geologists will have to say is gonna change anything about the "science" in this movie. So just sit back and enjoy the special effects, and try not to laugh at inappropriate moments.

Geologists get to be heros.

Oh, and Woody Harrelson dies one of the greatest geological movie deaths ever.

A lot of stuff happens, and practically everyone else dies too.

The World is Going to End in 2012! The Sequel

I am probably going to regret this, but someone needs to do it, and really, all of my geoblogosphere friends should do it, too...

THE WORLD IS NOT GOING TO END ON DECEMBER 21, 2012!

A movie is coming out, and the moviemakers benefit from lots of free publicity generated by everyone who is easily swayed by the newest and most bizarre conspiracy "theory". So it's going to be laid on really thick for the next two years, until the big day comes, and nothing happens.

It may be useless to try and explain the faulty and ridiculous logic to the true believers, because in addition to their lack of critical thinking, they also see us scientists as part of the vast conspiracy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Who knows, when the world doesn't end, maybe they will remember that we tried to explain to them just why it wouldn't.

A commenter from my previous post on this subject...

...our planet will experience a powerful event. This time we're not talking about Planet X, Nibiru or a "killer" solar flare, this event will originate deep within the core of our planet, forcing a catastrophic change in our protective magnetic field. Not only will we notice a rapid reduction in magnetic field strength, we'll also see the magnetic poles rapidly reverse polarity (i.e. the north magnetic pole will be located over the South Pole and vice versa). So what does this mean to us? If we are to believe the doomsayers, we'll be exposed to the vast quantities of radiation blasting from the Sun; with a reversing magnetic field comes a weakening in the Earth's ability to deflect cosmic rays. Our armada of communication and military satellites will drop from orbit, adding to the chaos on the ground. There will be social unrest, warfare, famine and economic collapse. Without GPS, our airliners will also plough into the ground…

Basically I'm speechless. The scenario certainly looks as if the commenter cribbed the movie "The Core" as their literary source. If only we could get some unobtainium in the next two years!

On the other hand, if the world DOES happen to end as scheduled (as I've said before), I will be glad to let you say "I told you so" wherever we happen to end up...

Today's picture is a photo of a disaster we can and SHOULD be thinking about and preparing for: a major quake on the San Andreas fault in California. The 1906 event in San Franicisco killed around 3,000 people and enough stress is built up on several strands of the fault that another damaging quake will probably occur well within the lifetimes of most of my California readers. If you want to be paranoid, be worried about something that has a real likelihood of taking place.