J. Brian Balta

“If only there was some answer” says the petrologist with expertise in critical
Minerals and a teaching quality award in year 16 of a job search…

If this baseball game gets to 2:00 am Toronto time, we will see it shift back to 1:00 am in the middle of the game.

I was only the 2nd grad student of my advisor so...this does provide a big disadvantage to new faculty.

To be fair, if they’d played music, no one would have heard it over the crowd.

Is this a career move? If so congrats.

Oh no what now

I've had to update the plot of the strongest tropical cyclones by ocean basin all too often in recent years, since climate change increases the number of high-end storms. Melissa has joined the club, tied with Dorian (2019) as strongest Atlantic hurricane recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico.

I was saying…

Due entirely to this baseball game I just took the dog out and spotted Orion for the first time this fall.

Completely running themselves out of this game.

Especially if they were going to (correctly) walk Ohtani either way.

Why are earthquake insurance premiums skyrocketing in the middle of the country? Insurance costs for some Missouri residents have skyrocketed since 2000, and coverage has shrunk to just 10% of homes.

Great article on Earthquake Insurance costs rising very quickly in Missouri due to better understanding of New Madrid risks and pricing out lower-risk homes so more burden falls on higher risk homes.

www.marketplace.org/story/2025/1...

It’s always Earth.

@brandontbishop.bsky.social time for Death Star Shot units!

Let's unravel the mystery of Saturn's polar hexagon.

A jet stream speeds around the pole at 320 km/h (200 mph). That’s common among planets, but what's not is that it oscillates up and down *very* stably. Each low point of this sine wave becomes a corner of a hexagon, when projected onto a sphere:

Can you convert that into Death Star shots?

large.stanford.edu/courses/2017...

A zombie holding a piece of delicious brain. This zombie accompanied me on the train to the 2011 meeting of the geological society of America.

Ah found it! Couldn’t find the photo earlier, here’s one of the zombies on my train to GSA in Minneapolis.

At GSA in Minneapolis I shared a train car full of zombies.

Olivine is my second fav mineral after pyropic garnet and am super loving this forsteritic olivine ring. Peridotite xenolith in phonotephrite is from the classic location of the San Carlos volcanic field.

#olivine #xenolith #peridotite

Russia’s Coal Collapse Marks The End Of Fossil Fuel Post-War Illusion Russia’s Coal Collapse signals the end of the fossil era. From bankrupt mines to battery booms, the global energy transition is accelerating. Facing political resistance.

“The International Energy Agency now projects that global demand for coal, oil, and gas will all peak before 2030, marking the beginning of structural decline rather than resurgence.

The illusion of a fossil revival has unraveled under market realities.” www.forbes.com/sites/we-don...

From Fall 2023, my first view of Bryce Canyon's surreal hoodoos combined with a forest of Bristlecone Pines, Ponderosa Pines, and Douglas Firs at Rainbow Point.

#Scape #ForestFriday #Landscape #Nature #NationalParks #Utah

Angular Unconformity, west of El Paso, Texas Explore this 568 megapixel image.The Boquillas, Fort Hancock, and Camp Rice formations are exposed here in a classic example of an angular unconformity. For an annotated view of this same scene, try ...

We just drove by the site of this GigaPan that I shot in 2013, and the outcrop has been bulldozed. This image is now the best record of the site.
viewer.gigamacro.com/view/JFKylee...
⚒️

A prominent cliff of tan limestone rises above low foreground with bushes

El Capitan in the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, close to the New Mexico boundary: a Permian reef complex. ⚒️

Bird’s eye view of Dry Falls in Washington State, a remnant of catastrophic flooding in the wake of the Ice Age.

Dry Falls from Above: Interpreting Washington's Iconic Floodscape
dancoecarto.com & @joelgombiner.bsky.social

www.flickr.com/photos/wasta...

#NACIS2025

Crushed plastic drink bottle among polymetallic nodules in the Cook Island abyssal plains. ROV Hercules dive depth = 5,198m Expedition NA176 Green lasers (scale): 10cm apart Image: Nautilus Live (OET)

Plastic is everywhere.

On today’s dive, the E/V Nautilus/ ROV Hercules encountered a crushed plastic bottle on the abyssal plain- in the remote Pacific (Cook Islands @ 5,198 meters).

♻️ I challenge everyone to swap at least one single-use plastic item. Small steps for more eco habits. 🌊🧪🌎

Hand Lens?

Incidentally, Seattle fans doing the beat from Seven Nation Army while playing the Tigers, when Jack White is from Detroit? Wrong.

Y’all need to be able to chant the opening to Alive.

That one legitimately disgusted me as well.

That was a monster game he was catching everything. He’d have had more but the not called blatant PI was on him in the first half. I was telling the spouse that they couldn’t stop him on the TD drive.

An actual ESPN alert about Indiana football.

Well I…what? #iufb