Nick Hayman

Also, I think when compared with the lunar record, late Archean bombardment never holds up. But that's a foggy recollection from a college class I took, and I went to college, like, in the Archean it feels like.

I mean, they're intriguing. SIMS is a pain though, and it's tough to know what it all means. I think it also causes us to overlook the interesting fact that the crust is basically <3.8 Ga (e.g., www.geosociety.org/GSA/GSA/GSAT...)

That title is mean LOL

Force chain dynamics in a quasistatic granular pile Even when granular piles appear stable, they are in a fragile, nonequilibrium state, undergoing sporadic particle rearrangements and force-chain changes. The authors experimentally investigate particl...

Excited to share that Ben Allen and my paper on force chains is published! DOI: doi.org/10.1103/j8ch...

huh, woulda thought Anadarko Basin would show up a bit more prominently.

Miocene fossils (horses in particular) in many of those, amhibians (e.g. tortoises) others as well. Not an expert, but I think this blanket statement of 'no Neogene fossils' is a bit misleading

Texas felt they needed their own largest river

pretty funny since there was a stretch there in the late 00's when NYC was statistically the safest place in the world.

Very good point. But one social media feed isn't all of reality, and there are so few areas of the internet where free and breezy science discussions happen, the fear seems to be justified. Also, the feed (writ large) doesn't lend itself to more complex discussions of those political topics, imho.

tough call... hematite is way more fundamental, the mineral expression of oxidation and all that entails. Barite is closely related to the state rock of Oklahoma....

Space here at OU is centralized, but there is a dialog between Directors/Deans/Chairs and that office. I have given up and defended space before; it's always a judgement call/balance. I would think a returning rotator would be valued and supported so that's a chit to play with the chair/director.

I'm slightly surprised I'm just hearing about this now since there's been a rumor of serious financial problems there for a couple years. I don't think 'shared governance' is going to solve an intrinsic fiscal problem brought about by cuts in state funding and poor management.

YouTube video by Schmidt Ocean Beautiful Unknowns | In Search of Hydrothermal Lost Cities - Week 3

this hydrothermal field was brought to you by Ikaite: youtu.be/rPxqrxfQ7-E?...

YouTube video by Andy Quick Argument

youtu.be/xpAvcGcEc0k?...

Democracy is broken :(

OK people, why is Ikaite trailing. Clearly people don't know that life began in a pillar of Ikaite-cemented carbonate on the seafloor. Honor your ancestors!

I think it might've been Tim Kusky now that I think of it. I wonder if he ever wrote his thoughts up - prolific writer!

right, I think his point was that we aren't particularly in an icehouse condition (though maybe we are?), so who really knows why the Neoproterozoic anomaly developed. Or maybe he wanted to sound cryptic and succeeded in confusing me for decades?

I hit the paywall, but question: do you really think that's what it is? Or is it the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing? Or just maybe there are no hands at all even....

I recall being very interested in this in college, but some bigwig or other (I can't recall who) poo-pooed the notion saying "the Himalaya dominate the modern Sr87/86", I guess the implication being that 'normal' mountain erosion can create similar anomalies? I'll check the paper out though!

we used to call it Sphene before the mineral police showed up :)

I'm so lost in terms of #MinCup25, but if titanite is there, I'm there for it: publications.iodp.org/proceedings/...

Rose Rocks The University of Oklahoma

See here for some neat aspects of the Barite Rose Rocks in Oklahoma: www.ou.edu/ogs/generali...

Had to go with Barite for the Oklahoma State Stone, the Rose Rock. See here: www.ou.edu/ogs/generali...

Perovskite is literally a semiconductor! But, yes, MinCup is a vibes poll, like all elections ;)

I was tempted to vote for Calcite since I always feel MinCup should favor the common sense minerals over the niche ones, but Perovskite is the most common, but in planetary interiors, and it has all sorts of cool mineralogy things going on. That was an unfair match up though.

There's something brewing in the corners of that evil yet inevitable entity called 'capitalism' wherein CO2 is actually quite expensive to consolidate and move around and use and stuff. Given that it is both a pollutant needing mitigation, and a valuable commodity, remains an un-leveraged situation.

I missed Match 2....

Vote in Round 1 Match 2 — Mineral Cup Click here to vote in Stibnite vs Okenite

#MinCup25 Round 1 Match 2 - It's a battle of dark and light as soft, dramatic stibnite goes up against adorable cotton balls of okenite.

Vote: www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r1...
Results: www.mineralcup.org/2025/results...

Cool paper! Magali Billen explained this area to me years ago and there was some thoughts of an MG&G project. I don't recall the delamination idea floated (pun intended?).