PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast Chris and Jesse

This is the first episode in a series of 3 on the world's longest cave system - Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. In this episode, Chris and Jesse talk a little about Mammoth and some of its impressive statistics. The focus however, is more about the necessary ingredients for cave development in general. We talk about the 4 general ingredients: suitable rock type, a solvent, hydraulic gradient, and time. We also go into some detail on what each of these really mean. We h...

In this episode, Jesse and Chris talk about the geology of Iceland - although we keep it at a high level. We're going to come back to this - Iceland - later after Chris returns from his trip. Then, we'll get into some of detail that makes Iceland so unique. Here, we discuss how Iceland might be a prototype for the formation of continents and also talk a bit about the diversity of igneous rocks that make up the Island. The diversity of rocks speaks to the diversity of v...

Hardpan! Where did this idea for an episode come from? Chris has been doing a ton of yard work lately and it’s not uncommon come across a layer when digging a hole that is next to impossible to penetrate. He has to bust out my pick axe to get through it. It's Called Hardpan.Really dense layer that often occurs below the topsoil. Problems:Roots can’t penetrate into the hardpan (Hayden Valley in YNP). Trees are easily blown over if they can even grow he...

Today we really go into the weeds. Jesse and a colleague just published a paper in the journal Nature that proposes a new model for how continents became stable. Stable continents have all the granite at the surface, which contains all the heat producing elements like U and Th and K - elements that decay away. Today, we discuss that paper in detail, and along the way learn a bit about the early Earth, what we know and don't know! Here is a link to the paper, which is open access and can be do...

Today, Chris and Jesse get into a discussion about Earth’s oldest material. Earth is 4.568 Billion years old. First of all, that’s amazing the geochronologists have refined this down to 3 decimal places. How do we know this? The oldest grains ever found are 4.38 billion years old. If that’s the case, then how do we know the Earth is significantly older than that? Join us as we answer that and many other important questions about Earth’s oldest stuff. ...