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Chris Rowan

@allochthonous.bsky.social
2.6K followers 586 following 2.1K posts

I like rocks. I think and talk about plate tectonics, geological hazards like earthquakes, the history of the Earth system, and how we silly humans can live sustainably on our amazing planet.

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Reposted by Chris Rowan
Garry Hayes @geotripper.bsky.social · 7h
geotripper.blogspot.com/2026/10/why-did-road-cross-san-andreas-fault-24.html Time for an update on the San Andreas where it crosses Hiway 25 near Pinnacles NP. Many geologic processes are slow, but given time they become more visible. Here's 24 yrs of change on the San Andreas! #SanAndreasFault
geotripper.blogspot.com
Why did the Road Cross the San Andreas Fault? 24 Years of Geologic Change (a new Update)
2002 I've been leading geology field studies trips to lots of places in the American West for 38 years and started to take digital pictu...
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Dr Elisabeth Kosters @elisabethkosters.bsky.social · 13h
Superb article www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...
theguardian.com
Why a Chilean salt flat is a microcosm of the extractive frontiers of green capitalism
In the Atacama desert, the extraction of lithium – so crucial to addressing the climate crisis – comes with escalating social and environmental costs
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 12h
Why golden eagles’ migration follows the Rockies (audio clip): I do wonder whether the orientation of the thrust sheets relative to prevailing winds makes much difference compared to there being mountains at all, but still a cool interaction between biology and geology!
cbc.ca
Geology series, the symbiotic relationship between mountain thrust sheets and golden eagles
Dale Leckie rejoins us to tell us about this incredible connection that makes migration a bit easier for raptors.
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canyonbirds.bsky.social @canyonbirds.bsky.social · 14h
Sandstone, telling a story. #OrangeSun
Cross-bedded sandstone with multiple small faults.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 14h
Geoneutrinos could be a important new source of information about the deep Earth in addition to seismic methods, but we are definitely at the stage where the uncertainties seem too large to confidently say anything other than that they exist.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 14h
The main thing I took from this article on geoneutrinos - neutrinos produced by radioactive decay in the mantle - is that it is really hard to measure a flux which is basically “what’s left after we subtract a bunch of neutrinos from other sources.” www.quantamagazine.org/neutrinos-from…
Text Shot: Scientists must eliminate signals from particles with too much energy, particles with the wrong measure of a property called helicity, and particles that they expect to see flowing from nuclear reactors. They must also eliminate geoneutrinos coming from Earth’s crust, with the largest contribution coming from the area within a few hundred kilometers of the detector. When those other detections are subtracted from the total count, the geoneutrino signal from the mantle should be all that’s left
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Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Time for 2026 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread, now with storage. If you like these, you might like edition 2 of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon. A 30% discount code WSQ0437 is valid on publisher website til end of Nov 2026. www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...
worldscientific.com
Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon
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Coconino from 🌶️ New Mexico @coconinoite.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Look at these brilliant women working to make us safer from earthquakes!
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Counterpoint: they do take that step, but it just makes them fret about “alignment”, or “what if we can make them like it?”
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HydrologyNL @hydrology.nl · 09/10/2026
The Vienna Basin, just northeast of Vienna, remains a remarkable mix of river channels. Scale: 16.6 x 26.5 km
Aerial lidar imagery shows the complex, swirling web of paleochannels and meandering river scars across a low-lying floodplain, watermarked by HydrologyNL in the bottom-right corner.
The image uses a monochrome, deep indigo and stark white color scheme to highlight the terrain's topography. Across the center and upper portions of the frame, hundreds of thin, glowing white lines twist, curve and form loop-like patterns, resembling brushstrokes or smoke trails against the dark background. A large, bright white river channel (Danube) cuts boldly across the lower edge of the frame, showing wide, braided patterns on the left that narrow into tighter, snaking meanders as it flows toward the bottom-right. Scattered faintly beneath the luminous river scars are thin, straight white lines indicating modern drainage ditches, roads and faint outlines of agricultural field boundaries.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Video: Taal Volcano near the Philippine capital Manila briefly erupted, sending a dark grey ash plume 4,000 metres above its crater alongside volcanic lightning
aljazeera.com
Video shows dramatic eruption of volcano near Manila
Taal Volcano near the Philippine capital briefly erupted, sending a dark grey ash plume 4,000 metres above its crater.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
AI allows you to be "productive" by offloading the thinking to someone else (and it's not the LLM), part 2.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
AI allows you to be "productive" by offloading the thinking to someone else (and it's not the LLM), part 1.
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Suvrat Kher @rapiduplift.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
How a massive earthquake in Eastern India led to the birth of modern seismology. Very interesting article by Utsa Bose on the consequences of the Assam earthquake of 1897 on the field of seismology, public interest in science and its reportage. www.nature.com/articles/d44...
nature.com
How a massive earthquake in Eastern India led to the birth of modern seismology
Archival record of the tragedy spotlights the evolving relationship between scientific research, its reportage and public trust in science.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Have just been informed this is known as “snowliage” 🤣
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Up high in Vermont today it felt like looking down on autumn from winter (the snow had only stuck to vegetation, fortunately, because I was not expecting it at all!).
High view of tree-covered mountain slopes. Many of the trees have golden or orange foliage, which is particularly prominent on the nearest slope where sun is falling. A snow covered pine tree is in the foreground on the left.
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Charnwood Forest Geopark @charnwoodforest.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
🥳 In celebration of International Geodiversity Day we're releasing a new animation that brings to life the amazing 562 million year old story of Bradgate Park and Swithland Wood! 🌐Read more, and watch the video, here: www.charnwoodforest.org/new-animatio...
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Jess Keating @jesskeatingbooks.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Instead, they saw her data and called it “girl talk”. (That’s a quote, btw.) So, she mapped it AGAIN. Point by point. In that tiny office. Lo and behold, she was right (duh), and the ridge did exist. Thereby supporting PLATE TECTONICS. No biggie. She wasn’t credited until years later.
A woman’s hand holding up a copy of the book Ocean Speaks, featuring teal green and blue undersea vistas, and a woman in a skirt floating above holding paper.
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Jess Keating @jesskeatingbooks.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
More? Ok! Marie Tharp. She was an oceanographer who wasn’t allowed on the BOAT bc women are “bad luck” on ships. No prob, she said. She took their data and mapped the BIGGEST geographical feature on the planet. (The mid-Atlantic ridge). This MUST have gotten their attention, right? Think again —
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Jess Keating @jesskeatingbooks.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Hey yeah, friendly reminder that men denying or minimizing the work of women and taking credit for it themselves happens so much we have a NAME for it. (It’s the Matilda Effect.) 2nd fun fact: I’ve written many bios of women in STEM at this point and this is *always a factor in their history*
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Gail Simone @gailsimone.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
You guys want to hear a short but adorable story that happened right in front of me at the baggage claim in NYC yesterday? I wasn't part of it and there are bits I didn't catch but holy crap, I can't stop thinking about it.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus: No. The defining moment (at least with respect to this story) was in 2024, and you determinedly failed to meet it. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/nyr…
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
This is the techbro equivalent of “you can’t comment on the effects of gun violence unless you can dismantle an AK-47 blindfolded.”
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
⚒️ “We suggest that [formation of this particular mineral structure at high pressures] can transfer water from peridotitic rocks into subducted crustal rocks in the deep mantle.” A deep mantle sponge, huh? Intriguing.
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San Francisco Chronicle @sfchronicle.com · 03/10/2026
Motorists who cross the Golden Gate Bridge at night next week will drive through a landscape of work trucks, the most visible sign yet of a $1.8 billion effort to prepare for a major earthquake.
bit.ly
The Golden Gate Bridge is getting a $1.8 billion retrofit to prepare for the Big One
Motorists who cross the Golden Gate Bridge at night next week will drive through a landscape of work trucks, the most visible sign yet of a $1.8 billion effort to prepare for a major earthquake.
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 02/10/2026
This is a better epilogue to my January story about the private equity firm profiting off of ICE's cruelest flights than I could have ever possibly hoped for. CHICAGO: You went to the mat and protected (at a minimum!) thousands of immigrants from torture. Take a bow. prospect.org/2026/10/02/i...
prospect.org
The City That Brought Down an ICE Airline - The American Prospect
In Chicago, progressive alderpeople held up a contract until a private equity firm was forced to dispatch Omni Air International, protecting thousands of immigrants from deportation.
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David Grimm @david-grimm.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"The safety officer had recovered the cube of Nazi uranium from the drawer of a deceased geology faculty member. The unexpected gift would overturn our understanding of Germany’s nuclear effort during World War II." Fascinating story by @richardastone.bsky.social for @science.org
science.org
Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal
Experimental reactor needed much more uranium and heavy water than the country could muster
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Perhaps we should leave the question of how the profound human-induced changes to the Earth system will appear in the rock record to the cockroach geologists of the far future, and instead focus on making it as much like an ‘event’ as we can.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
'Geologists can't agree that humans are changing the Earth' is a gift to the forces of deny-delay. That is not what actually is in dispute, but that is how it looks, and it's certainly how it can be framed.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
⚒️ Sigh. Apparently we're relitigating the ICS vote to reject establishing the Anthropocene as a formal geological epoch. I'm not sure what is actually going to be achieved here except to keep everyone mad at each other and muddy public understanding. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Battle of the Anthropocene: allegations re-ignite row over proposed geological epoch
Researchers say that a vote to reject the epoch violated procedure and call for transparency.
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Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Not only are the flat earthers wrong, they are getting wronger by the day.
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Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Well, I'm 20 years late to the party on this one but this is why it pays to hangout with the Earth Sciences people when you're near their building. TL;DR - Geology is complicated. It's good to ask geologists before you dig deep holes or you will learn SURPRISE GEOLOGY.
en.wikipedia.org
Staufen im Breisgau - Wikipedia
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
In this current time dystopian tech companies who strip mine Tolkien for their name are ten-a-penny, but Valar rang a bell, and… well.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
For some strange reason, I continue to have concerns about the “move fast and break things” crowd being anywhere near nuclear power.
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sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
thinking about Shakespeare's sonnets about immortality and realizing how weird it is that the AI cult believes in the idea of preserving human consciousnesses while actively destroying the only technology we currently have to do that: Art
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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Dynamical [chemical] systems view on the emergence of heredity in evolution: "This paper proposes that early chemical systems could preserve and pass on differences through stable chemical states rather than through stored sequences like DNA or RNA" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧪 #Complexity #EvoBio
Behavior of compartments in environments selecting for different autocatalyst composition.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Childcare costs have meant teaching the odd adjunct course over the past couple of years has been more about keeping a toehold than adding to the family income. Potentially easier now the youngest has started kindergarten, but not that much easier because I'm now too old, and also *waves around*.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I mean, did they even read that sentence? "Free childcare would not be attractive to stay at home parents" is very much a "tell me you have never had to look after children full time without telling me" moment.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
An examination of the rapid deployment of behind the meter solar in countries like Pakistan and Nigeria - which in the absence of feed in tariffs is really mostly “instead of the meter”, which is causing problems for utilities and their remaining (poorer) customers.
e360.yale.edu
The Solar Boom in Developing Nations: Fast, Chaotic, and Unequal
Soaring energy costs are driving a solar rush in developing countries, but as households unplug from the grid, those who remain face higher electricity bills. If governments fail to manage the buildout, the growth of solar could destabilize power systems and deepen economic inequality.
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John Hawks @johnhawks.net · 27/09/2026
Vanguard Cave, Gibraltar, is known today for Neanderthal behavioral evidence, including a remarkable controlled hearth for production of pitch from gum rockrose. In 2021, the team discovered a chamber sealed for more than 40,000 years, results to come! www.johnhawks.net/p/a-visit-to...
johnhawks.net
A visit to Vanguard Cave, a Neanderthal workshop
The site has seen remarkable discoveries over 30 years, and excavations have opened a new unexplored chamber.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
How could a super-regressive tax on consumption of water have any problematic consequences?
static.klipy.com
Futurama Fry's Suspicious 'Hmmp' Look
Alt: Zooming in on a cartoon person (Fry from Futurama)’s narrowed eyes.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
⚒️ Glacial striations with a view! Crown Point, Lake Champlain, NY. Two snapshots of the past are recorded here: the warm marine climate when the limestone was deposited, almost 500 million years ago; and a time when this view was buried under a thick ice sheet, 20,000 years ago. #SilentSunday
View focussing on a ledge of grey rock in the foreground. The rock - a limestone - is etched with dark lines that mostly align with the direction of view. The rock ledge is looking out over a rocky lakeshore beach. A train of waves is moving obliquely towards the beach, and mountains can be seen on the horizon.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I was thinking that there’s probably a missing end to this anecdote which involves someone being fired for not being there to do these things for him.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
Every line of this article is just completely stunning
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
🧪⚒️ Interesting: modelling of length of day changes suggests that primary coupling between core and mantle is mainly a gravitational torque (dense bits of core and mantle attracting each other) rather than mechanical drag at core-mantle boundary or interaction with geomagnetic field.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A related and very illuminating point also discussed here is how all the apocalyptic scenarios that get obsessed over long predate LLMs/transformers and are basically unmoored thought experiments. They do not arise from current developments, but instead just affect how one interprets them.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The first 20 mins or so of this podcast is a fantastic reframing of the ‘AI may kill us all’ pronouncements by asking “how, exactly? Give details of how your actual current technology could produce this outcome,” and demonstrating there is no actual scenario more detailed than “somehow, AGI/RSI.”
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I can’t think of a bigger red flashing warning light on the dashboard of the nation than the regressive, 19th century mutterings of Jacob Reese-Mogg - Jacob Reese-Mogg! - now being located in the saner wing of the Tory party.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I’m almost afraid to ask who is arguing that we have enough?
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It is absolutely no surprise that a quasi-philosophic justification for being absurdly rich was popular with absurdly rich peope.
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