Geology Bites
Episodes
Bärbel Hönisch on Reconstructing Climate in the Distant Past
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bärbel Hönisch uses the skeletal remains of foraminifera as her raw material in reconstructing ocean and atmospheric conditions that prevailed in pa...
David Rothery on Volcanism in the Solar System
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Rothery investigates volcanism on Earth and elsewhere in the Solar System using remote-sensing Earth-orbiting satellites and space probes.  ...
Harold C. Connolly Jr. on Bringing an Asteroid Sample Back to Earth
28 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are some things we just cannot learn about other bodies in the solar system without actually having our hands on a sample of the body and analyz...
Laurent Jolivet on the Origin of the Mediterranean
21 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Laurent Jolivet is an expert on the dynamics of tectonic plates and the mantle and is a Professor at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Sorbonne U...
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart on Transitioning to a Post-Carbon Economy
18 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart is a former chairman of Royal Dutch Shell and is a director of Saudi Aramco, which has the largest daily oil production of any o...
John Marshall on the Riddle of the Mass Extinction 360 Million Years Ago
01 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Earth has endured many mass extinctions. We are pretty confident that we know what caused these events. Except for one of them: the on...
Laurence Robb on Where our Mineral Resources Come From
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
So much of what we make starts with materials we extract from the Earth. Some of these materials make up only a tiny proportion of our pla...
Bruce Buffett on Probing the Earth's Core
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Buffett is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He investigates t...
David Sandwell on Seeing Plate Tectonics Under the Oceans
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Sandwell uses satellites to make accurate measurements of the shape of the ocean surface. He explains how this enabled him to create a glo...
Barbara Romanowicz on Seeing Deep into the Earth
28 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Barbara Romanowicz uses the seismic waves triggered by earthquakes to probe the interior of the Earth. She has forged new techniques for analyzi...
John Valley on the Early Earth
20 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Earth was formed just over 4.5 billion years ago. What happened just after it formed and what were conditions like then? John Valley r...
Sara Russell on What the Asteroids Can Tell Us About the Earth
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It formed out of the same protoplanetary disc as the Earth, but many astero...
Clare Warren on Divining the History of a Rock
09 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most rocks were formed many millions of years ago. Since then, some have been largely left alone, while others have been baked at high temperatu...
Steve Sparks on What Makes a Volcano Erupt
01 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why do some volcanoes erupt almost all the time but others lie dormant for centuries, millennia, or even longer? Steve Sparks has turned our ide...
Dan McKenzie on What Venus Can Tell Us About the Earth
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why look to another planet to reveal something new about the Earth? Dan McKenzie describes an ingenious way of using the data sent back from the...
James Jackson on the Fatal Attraction Between Cities and Earthquakes
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, James Jackson explains what happens, geologically-speaking, during an earthquake, why they strike where they do, and why earthquake-p...
Mike Searle on Why Mountains Exist
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Searle applies the theory of plate tectonics to explain what causes mountains of all kinds to form. They range from enormous mountain belts...