Gold Rush: It's Fool's Gold!

            For the last couple of years I have painstakingly watched the television show “Gold Rush” on the Discovery channel with my husband Sam. The purpose of the show is anything but extraordinarily inspirational. It appeals to my dreamer’s heart like the Wizard of Oz appealed to my child’s heart. It is about men leaving their families and comforts of a familiar life in search of something better. They set out on a pilgrimage in search of a chance to strike rich in the gold laden wilderness of Alaska.  What more could one want in a television program? Set with a backdrop of breathtaking beauty and a premise of uncompromising risk- taking the viewer is mesmerized at the possibility of indeed finding gold.  It is no doubt a story worth investing your precious time into…Oh yeah and did I mention these men are amateurs?? Did I mention that not one of them have gold mining experience?? Yes, it’s true…not only are they leaving everything behind, but at an extremely high price because they haven’t a clue do what they are doing (seriously, what were their wives thinking?!?!?!) But isn’t that the part we all love, isn’t that what I the dreamer love about dreaming?? Yes, and that is why I have faithfully watched for 2 seasons and am currently watching the 3^rd. I would love to tell you that they have purged the glory hole for all its worth and have more money than Solomon, but that would not be true. No, because watching “Gold Rush” is a ceaseless emotional roller coaster with an endless supply of unrelenting hope. That is why I continue to watch because I have unrelenting hope. With a combination of mistakes, quarrels, machine malfunctions and geological obstacles, they have found enough gold to cap a tooth.

              But it is their unrelenting hope that keeps me a glutton for emotional punishment. How many times have we heard Todd Hoffman, the leader and the biggest fool, say “I guarantee you, we are going to see a thousand ounces this season.” Oh Todd!!! How many times have I heard you say that?!? Probably a million and yet I am still a believer.  Watching Gold Rush for me has been a ceaseless ranting of promised riches with no delivery. However, it was not until this latest season did a geological light turn on in my head.  Sitting next to my husband in between rants I exclaimed, “O my gosh, this is all about Geology!!!” My husband nods with a semi patronizing nod, but pleased nonetheless that I received this epiphany. And almost suddenly I am stricken with compassion for the tireless effort these men have put forth in trying to extract something from a sometimes brutal earth. Don’t get me wrong, Gold mining for dummies could not help them, but what a valiant effort they are to be commended for!   

              They have dealt with their fair share of permafrost, floods, cave-ins and threatening Alaska winters, etc. I never before had any sort of geological frame of reference to understand what a “glory hole” really is. Not only is it the holy grail of gold mining, but it is a depression formed in the earth from ancient waterfall that’s streamed carried and deposited gold in. OMG! Groundwater, I know what that is!!!!! I know Gold is a mineral and is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. It is a chemical element with the symbol Au and atomic number 79. I also know that bedrock, which is the solid un-weathered rock that lies beneath the loose surface deposits of soil, alluvium, etc. is where a miner wants to dig because that is where all the gold is. Bedrock is the solid layer below the earth’s surface and therefore does not experience erosion and that is why Gold is found there. Bedrock is more than just where the Flintstones live; it’s the cornerstone to mining (no pun intended)!  

                I also know that Gold has been mined for hundreds of years without the use of any expensive fancy equipment. And yet Todd Hoffman has put forth more money in the latest and greatest without anything to show for it. Geologically speaking I know Geology tells the story of how and when the gold got to where it is today. It seems to me that if the earth doesn’t want to give it up there is a reason. There is a history of earthquakes, floods, ancient streams waterfalls and numerous other reasons the gold is right now where it is supposed to be. Maybe it is not as easy as flying to Alaska and buying a state of the art sluice box… obviously it isn’t! Maybe it would do them some good to consult to a Geologist or two.  But like I said before, the earth can be harsh and maybe they deserve more credit. If I have learned anything about Geology it is that the earth is a wild, magnificent force we can only control part of the time. It is highly unpredictable and at times unmanageable, but in the same vein, it is also beautiful and it is kind. It is a subject worth knowing and appreciating and I am glad that I do. Peace out homies!!

                 

Guilty! Guilty! Read all about it! Scientists can't predict the future!

    There seems to be a universally accepted belief that the local weatherman cannot be relied on. It is widely accepted to doubt a meteorologist’s forecast. When we read the 5 day forecast we do so with a grain of salt, I’m I right? How many times have I said, “the weatherman said this…, but that doesn’t mean it will happen.”  Though Science in all its areas of study is widely dependable because of its extensive research and precision, it in no way can be an acceptable form of predicting the future. If it was, natural disasters would not be nearly as catastrophic. With timely predictions mass numbers of deaths could be avoided and the devastation, minimal. It is outright absurd to expect the weather man to prevent cataclysmic events simply because nature is a wild, wild force. We can study it and we can dissect it, but to think we can control it is a delusion. Scientists do a phenomenal job in the predictions that they can give, but when they can’t, have they failed? Do we as laymen know their pressure to predict? We are not talking about crystal balls and tarot cards, but sometimes I think we might think that we are.

            Just recently 6 Italian seismologists and 1 government official were sentenced to 6 years in prison for manslaughter because they did not successfully predict an impending earthquake that killed 309 people in the city of L'Aquila on April 6, 2009.

                “On 31 March 2009, during which they were asked to assess the risk of a major earthquake in view of many shocks that had hit the city in the previous months. The meeting was unusually quick, and was followed by a press conference, during which Italy's Civil Protection Department and local authorities reassured the population, stating that minor shocks did not raise the risk of a major quake. In a television interview recorded shortly before the meeting, Bernardo De Bernardinis, then deputy director of the Civil Protection Department, said, ‘the scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy’. Most seismologists, including several of the indicted, consider this statement to be scientifically incorrect.”

                It was also stated by the defendant’s lawyers that the minutes of the meeting was never made public and there was never an official statement made by the scientists, so how could they be made responsible for the deaths that were caused by an earthquake?

                A short term prediction for earthquakes is a very difficult thing to say the least! Countries like, Japan, the United States, China and Russia have made much effort in this field, but still nothing has led to a definitive formula in successfully predicting an earthquake. There in fact has only been one successful short range prediction that happened in China in 1975. Very few people were killed despite the fact that 1 million people lived near the epicenter. However, (and this is the real clincher) one year later an estimated 240,000 people died in another Chinese province which was not predicted. There was nothing base a prediction on. There were no foreshocks, there was nothing.

                It seems outright absurd to me that these 6 seismologists would be guilty of manslaughter for something only God could have known. If there was reason to think they kept the warning of an impending earthquake from everyone out of malicious intent, then we would have a case. However which scenario seems more absurd, that these men kept a deadly secret that an earthquake was coming or that they merely were not able to predict the future with the tools they had because nature is highly unpredictable.

                 I can only imagine the pain and grief of the families of the victims; what they are experiencing is an injustice, but isn’t sentencing innocent men to prison, who did their best with what they knew, also an injustice?  Taking these men from their families for 6 years will not bring back the dead. Would it not best serve the community for them to return to their field, to their research to better the study of seismology?

                If cataclysmic disasters could be avoided the world would be a different one…This is a visualization worthy of visualizing.  Most people all over the world would have enough time to evacuate and avoid death by tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, wild fires, flooding, landslides and volcanoes. It would be a different world…it would be a world we could control. It is hard to imagine. It raises all sorts of thoughts in my mind…we live every day at the mercy of many things that under the right conditions prove fatal. For example, air traffic controllers and pilots, they are under extreme pressure to get passengers to their destinations safely under difficult circumstances. Yet, fatalities happen all the time, but do we blame the pilots and the traffic controllers for these misfortunes? Do they not do they best they can under the circumstances they are in? It is no different, because the earth cannot be tamed as hard as we might try, it is not tamable. It is good what science does to learn from the earth to better all of our lives, but in the end we will not control it. This is partly why it is so awesome, no?

And you thought Ninja Turtles were old school!!!

Let's be honest with each other, my enthusiasm for geology is waning... I would like to say that I am trying hard to recover it, but that would not be the truth. I am going to fake it until I make it. I am going to continue to study and write these blogs merely because my grade depends on it and while doing so I hope to spark the dying zeal I so enthusiastically started out with!

 I do hope to recover some passion because just weeks ago I pondered again about spirituality and science and how for me they are not mutually exclusive. For me science is not necessary in proving Gods existence, I have all the proof I need, but rather science makes me marvel even more at God's wonderful creativity. Science dissects its intricacies and maybe that is what I have lost sight of.

We have already established that the earth is an old, old, old earth. It is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old! That is as old as anything we can comprehend. So to ponder this old earth is to ponder the many, many, many changes the earth has undergone, not to mention the infinite amount of living organisms that have graced this green/blue planet.

 It is no wonder that a huge part of Geology is the time scale…when did all of this happen? What age is this rock and what does it mean? A big part of a geologist job is to discover when something happened and what it tells us about the earth’s history.  As ego centric as humans can be, it might be hard to imagine a day on our planet without us, but there was a time, a very long time when we were not around.

When I was kid I wanted to be an archeologist or maybe it was a paleontologist, because I didn’t know the difference, but no matter, I wanted to dig up old things. I wanted wear khaki pants armed with a tiny brush and meticulously excavate dried bones so that I could tell their story.  Just recently the world’s oldest turtle fossil was found in Poland and paleontologists date it as 215 million years old!!!  They used the surrounding sedimentary rocks to determine its age.

They say the turtle belonged to a species called the Proterochersis robusta and that it roamed the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs.

They were able to place the turtle in the Norian age, which is a stage of the Triassic period and how they were able to do that is extremely fascinating to me. They found palynomorphs, which are microscopic fossilized plant matter, surrounding the turtle and found out it was a certain kind of pollen with a distinct feature. This pollen must be preserved in water otherwise it would disintegrate.
 Had the turtle not been found at the bottom of a basin covered in water we would not have known what time period this turtle lived in? Isn’t that fascinating?!

He's a Big Bang God!

  From as young as I can remember I was under the assumption that one could not believe in God creating the earth while believing the earth was billions of years old. I was also under the assumption that it was near heretical to believe in a "big bang" kind of nonsense! What more could say, "there is no God"?
    One of the first lectures my professor gave he mentioned this tension, this chasm between science and supernatural occurrences. And though some of my shared faith may disagree with me, I think he said it best when he said that science and religion need not have a relationship at all. Science can not disprove or prove the existence of God nor  explain how miracles occur, so why must become so uneasy when science doesn't want to include God in their lectures of how the world was formed (teach your children at home, right?)? I think we forget that science, though absolutely astounding in the knowledge it brings to mankind about something so vast as our world, still operates within certain boundaries. Lets not forget the scientific method, it is the parameter for experiments and testing hypotheses. It is not for testing God or even the way He created the earth. But my question is why can't I, a Christian, look at science, accept it as science and still believe in God?  

 For most Christians this is a quandary, given that you think about such things. I think about these things and  I would like to tell you what I think in hopes that if you have not begun to think you will start to. 
 I didn't know I was scared of the "big bang theory", but I was. It threatened me somehow even though I didn't know it. It told me God didn't exist and that we all came from primordial slim without purpose, void of reasoning and eventually we would become monkeys, without purpose, void of reasoning. It was an existential nightmare! It was like when I was afraid of the Da Vince Code" and decided to see the movie in hopes of disarming my fears and when I realized all it was was terrible movie based off a book of some guys imagination, I laughed in absurdity!

Do we even know what we are afraid of?

The big bang theory is defined as :

"A cosmological theory holding that the universe originated approximately 20 billion years ago from the violent explosion of a very small agglomeration of matter of extremely high density and temperature."

    

Genesis 1:1 says " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Now, I ask you this, why are we so adamnt of believing that when it says "God created" it must mean He created the neat little brown, green, blue ball we are all sitting on now? We have put Him in a bedtime story shoe box and placed Him under the bed. Is He not more awesome!!!  Could God not only for His pure pleasure have created the earth with a "bang"? A God size firework show? Just imagine it!! The Bible does not say how He did, it just says He did it. And do you think God has told us everything??!!? The magnitude of unknown galaxies is unfathomable to anyone...could He not have some secrets!? I know it might be uncomfortable for some of you, to imagine a God you can't imagine, but get over it...He is not God without His secrets.

       With that said, why can't the earth be 4.5 billion years old? Was Adam a man or a baby?? Is it out of the realm of possibility for God to create an old earth? 

 I just implore you...ask questions! Wonder about what you have been told and know for yourself. Life is too short and God too awesome, to not spend your time seeking to know Him in all His wonder, in all His BIG BANG-NESS!

    

Plates on Mars!!

    Let me start off by saying, I'm barely ready to do this! But did I not  vow to approach Geology with as much vigor as I do musing over the rest of life's complexities? I underestimate myself and my ability to ponder science and yet I find my mind at home contemplating Philosophy, a study with even less definition!!
 Nevertheless, here I am, searching the web for the latest story in Geology that would not only perk my interest, but yours as well.
     I'm not ashamed to say this, but it is true that I did not know Mars is a planet with similar features to Earth. And that is where my story begins:

 "Mars has tectonic plates, just like earth!"

    And when I read this I felt excited because in my second week of Geology I learned about Tectonic plates. They were two words I had no previous relationship to, but now I could recognize them! I couldn't say I knew much about them except that the were associated to other words like, mantle, crust, and  lithosphere and I knew that this all had to do with the Earth's vast and layered interior.

     In reading this article about this breakthrough discovery I came upon this explanation:

" Scientists have long believed that plate tectonics — in which huge crustal plates pull apart, smash together and dive under one another — exist nowhere in our solar system but Earth. But the phenomenon is also active on Mars, according to the new study."
 
      And for those of you who don't know the shifting plates are what causes earthquakes and volcanoes. My previous knowledge of this was limited to the "San Andreas Fault." Living in California I was familiar with this because of frequent earthquakes, but I did not know what it meant. I did not know that a fault line is when plates slide past each other. But now I know that not only does Earth  have Earthquakes, but Mars has Marsquakes!
         The article said,  "Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics," study author An Yin, a planetary geologist at UCLA, said in a statement. "It gives us a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked and may help us understand how plate tectonics began on Earth."
         
        This information also excited me because even though the earth is billions of years old this discovery on Mars could take us back billions of years! Time traveling geology! I imagine this would be a similar feeling to discovering America or walking on the moon. It is something you were born to discover!
             
          Yin analyzed about 100 images snapped by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. And what I found most interesting is that when he studied the satellite images from Mars, many of the fault systems looked like similar ones he had seen in Himalayas, and Tibet and in California. There are also many volcanoes on Mars and they could have formed similarly to the Hawaiian Islands.

     All this to say if Mars is similar to Earth, it could sustain life and if it could sustain life, then maybe a sci-fi movie plot could become reality and a colony of people will establish a home on Mars and I will be the first to sign up! It could happen!

Dear Geology

Dear Geology,
  
      Firstly, I must confess this one thing, I know that I have misjudged you! Please forgive me for it is not intentional. You see I often assume that my right-brained, artistic and extremely romantic outlook on life won't be compatible with your left-brained, deductive reasoning, and extremely precise calculations on life. However I fear this is wrong, because though I the poet, marvel at the Earth's beauty through metaphors and lengthy word descriptions, you marvel at it's complexity and discover it's depth, which is no less romantic in my eyes. And so may it be a marriage of science and romance. May I vow from this day forward to value our relationship with as much passion  as I possess while gazing at the atmosphere  as I do learning the anatomy of it's diversity.

       Sincerely,
                 Your apprehensively-eager apprentice