By E. Kirsten Peters, College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences PULLMAN, Wash. – When I was a child, I read a lot of murder mysteries. At a young age I favored the books featuring Miss Marple by Agatha Christie. When I was a bit older I fell in love with Lord Peter Wimsey in […]
PULLMAN, Wash. – Caves fascinate people. I visited Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico as a kid when my family was on a summer vacation. Maybe that early exposure to the wonders of what geologic processes can do helped influence my decision to study natural science in college. With any luck, you’ve been in a big […]
Each year at this time thousands of tourists embark on cruises along Alaska stunning coastal waters. If they are lucky, the tourists experience dry weather, relatively calm seas and breathtaking vistas. In some places the ships can get up close and personal to dramatic scenes of glaciers “calving” ice that breaks off and falls into […]
The mountains of Antarctica, lying several thousand feet below the ice, as detected by radar. Image courtesy of Michael Studinger, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory Geologist Jeff Vervoort with a 1.86-billion-year-old piece of gneiss he found near Clarkia, Idaho, typical of the rocks at the core of the ancient supercontinent of Rodinia. Jeff Vervoort’s research […]
PULLMAN – Some geologists are heroes. That was the thought that came to my mind when I read of what Afghan geologists had done during the long and difficult time the Taliban had run their country. Even without real hope they might ever do geology again, but with fears about what […]
John Wolff looks at the microprobe computer screen to view an analysis of a rock sample. (Photos by Becky Phillips, WSU Today) Nick Foit holding a garnet crystal. The geologists had warned them — but people were still caught off guard when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980. The ferocity of that explosion […]
(Photo by Shelly Hanks, WSU Photo Services).Several volcano eruptions were witnessed on campus recently. Water volcanoes that is…Geology students watched simulations of how a volcano’s pressure builds up and releases energy, sending a trail of water about 30 feet high in the air. According to Kurt Wilkie, an instructor in the Geology department, Geology 101 uses the water […]