The Geology Flannelcast

Happy Winter Solstice! The Flannelcasters talk about the history and geology of Stonehenge and how it related to the Winter Solstice.

We have a lot going on in this week’s installment of the Geology Flannelcast. Our guest this week is Chris Conwell. Chris is a Ph.D. candidate at THE Ohio State University and he studies ancient glacial activity on Earth nearly 450 million years ago. Also, Ryan Thornburg (Jesse’s brother) stops by and we determine once and for all if Jesse and Ryan really didn’t go swimming for a whole summer in 1992 because it was too cold due to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. And if that wasn’t enough... we also cover a huge tanzanite discovery and the end Permian extinction event.

Jesse’s Corner:
Small-scale miner finds largest tanzanite gems in Tanzania's history, becomes millionaire
Coal-Burning Contributed to End-Permian Mass Extinction

Here’s a bonus episode for this week because we were late getting our regularly scheduled episode out. We cover current events in geology like the 7.5 magnitude earthquake this week in Mexico, a giant dust storm moving across the Atlantic Ocean, microbes that may live in impact craters, and a mega-blob under New Zealand.

Powerful Earthquake Jolts Southern Mexico and Kills at Least 6
Massive Sahara desert dust plume closing in on the United States
Chicxulub collision put Earth’s crust in hot water for over a million years
Remnant of world's largest 'lava lamp blob' found off New Zealand coast

Kelly Blake is a structural geologist who works in the geothermal energy field. She discusses the 2019 Ridgecrest, CA earthquake with the Flannelcasters.

Kelly’s Links
Geologic map of the southern Slate Range and a portion of the central Garlock fault, China Lake Naval Weapons Station, San Bernardino County, California
Preliminary Report on the 1995 Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence in Eastern California
Neogene evolution of the Indian Wells Valley, east-central California
Active faults and associated tectonic stress in the Coso Range, California
Naval Weapons Center active fault map series

Jesse’s Corner
Greenland Has a Grand Canyon Beneath Its Ice, Carved by Ancient Floods
Pliocene–Pleistocene megafloods as a mechanism for Greenlandic megacanyon formation
Cheap oil is taking shipping routes back to the 1800s