Happy Anniversary
This one will be real short (but I promise a more detailed discussion when my currently overloaded life allows me the time). The year was 1700 on January 26th. None of us were here,...
Category: Tectonics
Harmonic Tremors are Really Cool
Those of us who celebrate the earth and its processes are having a real good time in Iceland (late November 2023). Please don’t think me insensitive: while the situation is surely fraught with peril...
Pompeii vs. Herculaneum in 79 A.D.
Susie just loves to visit Italy, and suffers the twenty-plus hour one-way trip whenever she can find the time (and airfare). I tagged along several years ago, and while the focaccia bread on the...
Earthquakes, Seismic Waves, and the New Madrid Fault
How far do earthquake waves travel, and what can cause different quakes to be felt at a greater or lesser distance? This is a fine question, and before we get started, feel free to...
Quicksand (a.k.a. Liquefaction)
I had a great question a little bit ago on the Ask GeoMan section of my GeoMania educational website from Elizabeth in Lake Oswego, Oregon. She’d been walking on Nye Beach on the central...
Strickler’s Laws of GeoFantasy
I love being a geologist. Along with being able to spend my life outside and in nature (and drink a lot of beer in my salad days — it’s one of the requirements for...
Earthquakes: Prediction and Control
As discussed in a couple earlier posts (Intro to Quakes and the Richter Scale), earthquakes are gonna continue to rattle our teeth and level our cities, and there’s not a hell of a lot...
Earthquakes and the Richter Scale
Humans have been trying to describe the strength of earthquakes for almost forever — I imagine the initial attempt began soon after the first caveman got knocked on his or her butt. It wasn’t...
A Brief Introduction to Earthquakes
Stress… it can be a big deal. We all get stress all the time — from any number of sources and in a dog’s breakfast of exotic flavors and intensities. Sometimes we bend and...
A Brief Introduction to Volcanoes
Before we get started I gotta come clean: The year was 1957, I was six years old in southeastern Nebraska, and Pop had called a family meeting to inform my sister and I that...
