Geodiversity

First of all reader an apology as I appear to have neglected you since going to Cyprus, but don't fear, I'm back now with more exciting news on geoscience communication;

Whilst trawling endless pages for something completely unrelated to this blog I came acroos a section on the Natural England website, entitled Geodiversity. Their definition of geodiversity is as follows;
"In simple terms, geodiversity is the variety of rocks, minerals, fossils, soils, landforms and natural processes"

The website goes on to explain all of the reasons that geodiversity is important covering in simple (but very factual terms) economic development, toursism, recreation and climate change. This is fantastic as it is promoting geoscience education to the public! Many people use the natural England website to plan days out and this information is needed in many other places too. The site has a geological histpry of England by county, again simple but factual and suitable for both adults and children to understand.
There is a large section explaining how the geodiversity of England is protected and managed, and several PDF's explaining geological conservation. If natural England has got behind this topic and is committed to it it's a fabulous start for communicationg geoscience, so well done Natural England. We still need to do more though! I'd suggest geological information signs at areas managed by natural England (I've seen these in a GeoPark in Spain, and they work really well, just simple drawings explaining what's going on), adn maybe a little more detailed information on the website. Maybe even geo-guides at locations on busy Summer days. But all of this costs money and the time of volunteers, so in order to get a scheme started we need to promote communication further and hope we can get more people on board!

GF

Dinosaurs...... Again

More dinosaurs in the news today, but this time, it's a good story. A boulder has been found on the Isle of Wight that contains 3 DIFFERENT types of dinosaur footprint- An adult iguanodontid, a baby iguanodontid and a theropod. This offers a rare glimpse into the palaeoecology fo the area. Now I remember ecology lessons at school, and the food web and all of that but only because I chose to follow that area of science for a career path. You ask the other that were in my class and they probably won't remember. But I can gaurantee you that if you taught it using this boulder and dinosaurs as an example, many more children would remember what ecology was all about. This boulder would also make a fascinating documentary, all about the cretaceous eco-systems of the South East of England. The dinosaur heritage of our little Island is huge, but so little is known about it by the publice, as so much hype is given to the American and Chinese dinosaurs. So how can we go about communicating the dinosaur history of the UK to the general public? Well short articles on the BBC website probably aren't going to cut it. One way probably would be to make a documentary or a mini series (this was attempted by fossil detectives, but this programme didn't concentrate soley on dinosaurs), better promotion of the Lyme Regis fossil fair is another way of going about it, but then Lyme Regis is a long way to travel for the day if you live in Edinburgh. The other way, which I think would be fantastic, is for the British Science Association along with the Geological society of London, to set up a national fossil festival, celebrating Britains Dino History at key localities all over the UK. GF

The Red Planet

Have you ever wondered why Mars is Red? Chances are you have, and similar chances are that you know it is due to the oxidation of Haematite minerals on the surface. Well one man claims to have completely revamped the idea of where the red in "The Red Planet" comes from.

I came across this story via FB and thought, "ahhh it's in the Daily Mail" (the Daily Fail to us scientists and pretty much anyone with half an ounce of sense) "let's see what tosh they're spouting today"

LINK TO STORY

Dr John Brandedneberg a senior propulsion scientist believes that 180ma a natural nuclear explosion wiped out everything on the planet and the background radiation still present causes the planet to be it's famous red colour. Well It sounds like a plausible theory until you think of Earth, and the many many nucleur explosions (man made) that have happened here. We don't have a red planet.....

But this supposed "whacky" theory has had some backing from NASA. A NASA spokesperson has said that in order to prove this "very interesting and plausible" theory, a mission to Mars would have to be planned. As always with Daily Mail stories I do like to have a giggle at the reader comments, and most of these seem to be centred around the failure of NASA, and how NASA are lying to us, and when the Russians release pictures the world will see that Mars is actually blue, there was also the usual dribble about the Earth ending in 2012 (quite how that relates to Mars and its colour I'm not sure).

So readers, is the colour of Mars a topic that should come into our classrooms as a part of the curriculum? I think so... If teachers made the usual "this is how and why things go rusty" lessons relate to Mars it would be a lot more interesting and it may just stick with children into the future to when they are adults and come across a poor story like this one in the daily mail. Then they will be able to make an informed judgement on the accuracy of the science and make their minds up for themselves.

GF

British Science Week

So last week was British Science Week ("was it?" I hear you cry). And like you I was blissfully unaware of it until I was asked to volunteer in the local museum with school children and a fossil quiz. So from the 11th to the 20th March this Year we were meant to be trying to get the masses involved in Science.... did we? Well if you did a poll of everyone in the UK and asked them when British Science week was you'd probably realise that No, we didn't.

We could have spent last week bombarding our fellow countrymen with new documentaries, short films, pamphlets through the door and street science. We could have taught them all about what actually happens during an Earthquake (As I'm sure many people would have been more interested given recent event in Japan), what "climate change" actually is, we could have used it to educate the public about renewable energy. But we didn't. Oh and here's the kick in the teeth to me and everyone who is trying to promote communication, the theme of this years science week was, yep, you've guessed it "Communication".

A google news search for British Science Week brings up less than 2000 hits (shocking when you think about Mr Bieber really)and only 1 hit relevant, as a part of an article from "Women and Technology". I applaud all of those who were involved and I know it was hard work organising things and looking after little children, but perhaps we could have made British Science Week as much about adults as we did children, especially as the theme was communication. Maybe next year you can sort it out British Science Association?

GF

DINOSAURS

Dinosaurs..... I thought that would get your attention.... So dinosaurs everybody loves them young and Old, but what do they actually contribute to the world of science? This topic has come about due to a conversation I was having with colleagues a few days ago. As many of you reading this will know, the Natural History Museum has cut funding to its micropalaeontology department, and shut it down. For me, this is a great shame. We need micropalaeontologists, not just to look at the "pretty dead things" and catalogue them, but to study their life habitat so we may predict the future of our changing planet. So if microfossils are so important why didn't the NHM close the dinosaur gallery? Money and Tourism. And what can we do about it? Probably not a lot. We need to emphasis the importance of these little "bugs" and tell the public just how important they are for both practical and academic applications. I remember last year when word was first circulated about the funding cuts an online petition page was created. This did get several thousand signatures, but clearly not enough. If all the public new how important this department was the petition would have got many more signatures and maybe we would have saved the department.

GF

Worms from outer Space!

Two conflicting stories for this afternoons post, but both about the same thing. Fossils in meteorites. Many of you will know the theory proposed that all life originated elsewhere in the universe and was carried to this planet via "space rocks" or meteorites. Now NASA scientist Dr Richard Hoover claims to have found life in a meteorite he has been studying. Many of his peers have laughed at his claims, but some including Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe who is director of astrobiology at Cardiff university has stated that Dr Hoover has proven without a doubt that "we are all aliens". The story is reported in both the Sun Tabloid (not very reputable I know, but I linked from the Palaeontological Association website and I trust their information 100%) and on Christian Science Monitor (CMS), and online web-based newspaper. Although Dr Hoover is an astrobiologist working for NASA, NASA have declined to comment on any of Dr Hoovers claims, a point that the CMS picks up on. The article in the Sun is short, only a couple of hundred words stating the basic facts, where the research has been published and a few quotes, the CMS however have gone to town with perhaps 1000 words on the article. Although they are trying to put across a non-biased opinion, it is obvious from the writing style that the CMS thinks that alien fossils are a load of rubbish, and this is made clear in the several paragraphs they devote to calling the journal that the research is published in "rubbish" and including several quotes from those that strongly disagree with Dr Hoovers research, but no quotes from those that agree with it. The CMS does however do one thing, they link directly to the original research article (which is available free online, so read it please and comment under here with what you think ).

These articles lead me to doing a quick search on, what else, google. I know that this type of research is at the forefront of biology, geobiology, and planetary science, so how accessible is it to the general public how are curious, or scared (because let's face it, several people are going to be imagining a war of the worlds type situation)?

So "origins of life in space" was my search terms, and it yielded 5.5 million results. Not an impressive number when you think that the "pop sensation" Justin Bieber has over 202 million hits. So the first few results don't include wikipedia (which is a fantastic thing, sometimes) but a number of confusing articles debating the subject and talking about glycerins and elements (and even I had to "wiki" a lot of the terms). This is not good! We want to make important discoveries such as this available to Joe Bloggs. Maybe we need a Joe Bloggs google? A search engine that only brings up hits that the common person will understand? I mean we have google scholar for the academics, why not google bloggs for the education of the public? Maybe I'll contact Google and see what we can do :p

GF

A little giggle for those more educated

Afternoon all,

As I sit on the train on my way to Fugro Robertson in the deep depths of North Wales, I thought I'd share something that made me laugh my socks off last night. Unless you have been living in a box you would have heard about the magnitude 9 Earthquake that struck just off of the coast of Japan. The resulting Tsunami and aftershocks caused considerable amounts of damage to several reactors at Fukushima a Japanese nuclear power plant. Several words have been flung around by the media such as "melt down" and "high radiation" following the damage to the plant. This understandably has left many many people worried, not only those living within the "blast zone" of the plant, but also many others all over the world. For Example, Germnay have suspended operations at 7 of her plants (although the reasons for this may be more political, and less safety concerns).
Yes, high radiation levels have been shown to be detrimental to health, but this is what a UK leading radiation expert had to say on the levels surrounding Fukushima last night;

" The levels of radiation that we are seeing around the Nuclear power plant at Fukushima are higher than normal yes, but I would not be worried. For example, the levels of radiation dectectable are in the order of 5 to 6 times LESS than the levels of radiation experienced on an everyday basis to those living near Dartmoor in Cornwall and Devon"

Happy Wednesday All

GF