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J. Brian Balta

@drjbbalta.bsky.social
744 followers 369 following 721 posts

Planetary Scientist and Petrologist, dog parent.

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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Eos @eos.org · 29/09/2026
NASA has ignored recommended funding levels for planetary research & analysis for 15 years, according to a new investigative report by Mark Sykes (@coop.planetary-research.org). And for FY2025, it hasn’t even spent 50% of what it budgeted for R&A. 🧪🪐🔭 eos.org/research-and...
eos.org
NASA has Underspent on Research and Analysis for 15 Years - Eos
Spending for NASA’s research and analysis programs has remained relatively flat for 15 years, ignoring recommendations from community-led decadal surveys and directives by Congress.
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The "Paid for by the US Government" ad just ran during the Ohio State-Illinois football game.
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution @whoi.edu · 24/09/2026
Celebrating oceanographer Marie Tharp’s induction into the 2026 Women's Hall of Fame! 🥳🎉 Born in 1920, at a time when there were few options for women in science, Tharp revolutionized our understanding of the ocean floor. Learn more about this year’s inductees: go.whoi.edu/womens-hall-of-fame
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Alyce: Old Media Enthusiast 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🍁 @thatretro.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
RIP Gerrit Graham We lost Franklin Sherman and that sucks.
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Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Pinning this story about how South Florida real estate agents deal with questions about sea level rise for the next time I’m told markets are effective at pricing in risk. Not if everyone ignores the risk instead! heated.world/p/the-open-hou…
Text Shot: Take the ground-floor condo I visited in the Bay Harbor Islands. “This is not a flood zone area,” the realtor said. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

Or the beachfront high-rise in South Beach. I mentioned that being so close to a rising ocean made me nervous. But the realtor said only the street would ever flood. “It won’t get into the building,” she said.

At a gorgeous single-family home in La Gorce, the agent told me flooding was only a problem in other neighborhoods. The grass might get some puddles during storms, but no more. “It doesn’t really get any flooding at all,” he said. “You’re kind of in the safe zone.”

The safe zone, it seemed, was whichever property I happened to be standing in.
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Kees van der Leun @sustainable2050.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Glaciologist @matthias-huss.bsky.social shows that the centre of the Great Aletsch glacier in Switzerland (the biggest in the Alps) lost 6 meters(!) of thickness just this summer. "No words...", he adds on LinkedIn.
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Rock Plodder @mtmagog.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Pro-tip: watch those lens caps #parkchat What was found among 20k pieces of trash removed from Yellowstone hydrothermal areas share.google/7iUF0JtzdfvW...
share.google
What was found among 20k pieces of trash removed from Yellowstone hydrothermal areas
What staff find while cleaning out hydrothermal areas at Yellowstone National Park can be surprising, and they shared all of it, from common to funny to just plain weird.
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Chinook salmon have recolonised 88% of their historic range on the Klamath River, with more than 13,000 fish passing the old Iron Gate Dam site in 2025, up from 7,700 the year before. Two years after the dams’ removal, it’s going better than anyone predicted. buff.ly/pToC9gB #ShareGoodNewsToo
nature.com
Rewilding the upper Klamath River Basin: rapid recolonization of Chinook salmon following the world’s largest dam removal - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Rewilding the upper Klamath River Basin: rapid recolonization of Chinook salmon following the world’s largest dam removal
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
When you synthesize monazite with specific cations in a lab, you can make quite the rainbow. Here are La, Nd, Gd, and Yb monazites (technically xenotime for Yb, almost the same structure but different enough that it has its own name). Nd was always my favorite. #mincup26 #mincup #monazite
A sequence of synthetic monazites, each crystal made in a lab from flux growth methods. In order, La, Nd, Gd, and Yb monazites (last is technically xenotime). Two crystals of Nd monazite, tip of tweezers for scale.Multiple crystals of La-monazite, tweezers for scale.
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Climatologist49 @climatologist49.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
🔥 August 2026 not only beat the record for the warmest August on record, but it beat July 2023 for the warmest overall month on record for Planet Earth since 1940 - and likely the warmest during the entire Holocene. 😢
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Paul Voosen @voosen.me · 01/09/2026
Had to accelerate this story, which means I got to dwell on far less termination shock science than I would have liked.
science.org
NASA’s New Horizons mission may shut down two instruments over lack of funding
Decision risks “incalculable loss” of data from the edge of the Sun’s influence, scientists say
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Ryan J Hollister @phaneritic.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This is a very excellent explainer of the scientific reconstruction of the Nepal debris flow. Lots of interactive data and visuals in the report. 23 minutes between the glacial collapse/landslide before it reached the border station.⚒️
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
10:23 pm in Houston, eclipse on iPhone. Some clouds rolled in just after this. I have an earth and space science intro class this year and said I’d give a few points for a photo of the August 27 eclipse. One student submitted a photo last weekend.
Partial lunar eclipse view with a wispy bit of cirrus clouds coming in
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Matt Johnson @matthewjohnson.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
You don't realize the power of water until you watch it casually roll a boulder the size of a house down a valley in Nepal.
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Nahel Belgherze @wxnb.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
An incredibly well-timed Landsat 9 pass captured the effects of yesterday’s catastrophic glacier collapse near the Nepal–Tibet border. The event was so massive that it was detected by seismometers around the world.
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Stephen Kane @exocytherean.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I'm very excited to share my latest paper about why Venus has no moon. In almost every scenario, a hypothetical Venus moon spirals inward and is destroyed at the Roche limit. Venus' lack of moon may thus be a natural consequence of its slow spin. arxiv.org/abs/2608.25036
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Mineralogical Society of America @mineralsocamerica.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Mineral Monday: Memorial: Dr. George Rossman By Dr. George Harlow His research focused on color in minerals, the effect of high-energy radiation on color, and the role of “water” (H2O, that is) in minerals, esp. when not part of the chemical formula. #MineralMonday #spectroscopy
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Dr Buki Fatona @bukifatona.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Came across this photo of Marguerite Thomas Williams, the first African American woman to earn a PhD in geology (1947).
B/w photo with caption: Marguerite Thomas Williams, the first African American woman to earn a PhD in geology (Catholic University of America, 1947). Shows off her new doctoral gown on her family's back steps in Washington D.C.
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Rebecca Williams @volcanologist.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Volcanoes are fascinating. Pictures, videos and articles of eruptions fill our social media feeds and newspapers. But can you believe what you read? Misinformation and rumours spread just as easily as facts. Misconceptions are easily created and hard to correct. @heatherkhandley.bsky.social
theconversation.com
During eruptions, misinformation can spread further than ash. How can we spot it?
From scary headlines to recycled eruption videos, new research reveals how common misconceptions can fuel misinformation about volcanoes.
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Dr. Jeff Masters @drjeffmasters.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Nice graphic from NASA (science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-...) showing a smoke-infused pyrocumulus cloud from Utah's Widemouth 2 fire as seen Aug. 3 from an INSPYRE aircraft during a sampling flight (Bernadett Weinzierl/University of Vienna). The fire is big: currently 130,000 acres, 91% contained.
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Rob Larter @polarrobs.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
🧵🧪More than 40 polar science experts and people working at the science-policy interface carefully assessed several of the geoengineering concepts mentioned against a range of criteria. None of these concepts survive scrutiny. Read our assessment here doi.org/10.3389/fsci...
doi.org
Frontiers | Safeguarding the polar regions from dangerous geoengineering: a critical assessment of proposed concepts and future prospects
Fossil-fuel burning is heating the planet with catastrophic consequences for its habitability and for the natural world on which our existence depends. Halti...
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Michael Busch @michael-w-busch.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Pretty good rocks. Although the sodalite is not from the UP - it comes from the north side of Lake Superior, so samples are nicely tumbled by the time they get halfway around the basin.
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Brendan O’Neill @permafrostee.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Beach ridges formed during Holocene sea level recession, Radstock Bay, Nunavut
A series of curved beach ridges in a vast landscape, with cliffs in the background
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Wait, did Charles Darwin actually sketch a full thrust sheet?
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
Pacific Northwest Seismic Network @pnsn1.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Our colleagues at the Cascades Volcano Observatory captured the arrival of a bolide (large meteor) over western WA on their infrasound instruments! Check out the post from USGS Volcanoes here: www.facebook.com/share/p/19Bb...
Graphic showing waveforms of bolide recording on infrasound instruments at Glacier Peak, Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount St Helens, and Mount Hood
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Boris Behncke @borisetneo.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
#Etna, 13 August 2026. Lava is some strange stuff. When advancing after having traveled a few kilometers, it will rather crumble forward, but if you record it in timelapse you do see a kind of flowage. All except the first few seconds of this video are 10-20 times normal speed.
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
I am trying to figure out whether I like the waning banking moon or the fact that Earth has apparently received a Sith title.
An AI slop version of lunar phases shared in a TikTok video. Earth is given the alternate name Darth, many of the lunar phases are mislabeled.
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Reposted by J. Brian Balta
J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Etendeka flood basalts, Doro!Nawas, Damaraland, Namibia.
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Henning @geohenning.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I looped the video so you can see just the surface rupture happening. ⚒️🧪
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Dr. Judith Hubbard @judithgeology.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Impressive! I wonder how common these kinds of videos will become - we are also seeing a remarkable (and horrifying) influx of videos showing buildings shaking and then collapsing. (And of course, figuring out what's real and what is fake is an increasing problem.)
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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
226 Ansel Adams Photographs of Great American National Parks Are Now Online www.openculture.com/2026/08/anse...
openculture.com
226 Ansel Adams Photographs of Great American National Parks Are Now Online
Like many American stories, the story of the National Parks begins with pillage, death, deep cultural misunderstanding, and venture capitalism. According to Ken Burns’ film series The National Parks:
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Douwe van Hinsbergen @vanhinsbergen.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Just in case y’all needed a thrust fault 😘
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Sosthène P.-M. Ung @sostheneung.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
academic.oup.com/oxrep/articl... New paper that looks very interesting, especially because it is a critical-minerals-economy 101 that aims to show the complexity of the sectors beyond base metal commodity economics. Studying this space really needs interdisciplinary concepts! #criticalminerals
academic.oup.com
From ores to outcomes: lessons for economists from science and engineering in the critical minerals scramble
Abstract. Critical raw materials (CRMs) differ from bulk commodities: markets typically are smaller, costs higher, technologies more complex, and supplies
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G Dan Mitchell | Photography @gdanmitchell.com · 07/08/2026
1/x From the archive: “Dawn on the Panamint Range” — Zabriskie point and dawn on the Panamint Range. gdanmitchell.com/2006/05/22/d... #deathvalley #deva #photo #photography #photoOfTheDay #lensCulture #landscapePhotography #photographyLovers #naturePhotography #fineArtPhotography #nature Photo
Zabriskie Point Sunrise
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Alex Spahn 🌋🌪️☄️ @spahn711.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
I've been to all 254 TX counties, and Big Bend is the very best of Texas. The stunning, expansive desert landscape still feels untouched. It deserves to stay that way. It breaks my heart thinking about it being needlessly ruined for a f***ing wall. Here's some photos I've taken there. 🧵4/4
A distant selfie of me standing in nearly waist deep water of the middle of the Rio Grande River, with massive canyon walls on either side and clear blue sky overhead. This is Santa Elana Canyon, where the proposed border wall would begin. That would be a travesty. Besides, these canyon walls are their own, natural border wall.A desert landscape in which the foreground is dotted with green shrubs and the background consists of mountains and two small peaks at the center. The sky is a warm yellow-orange due to the just-rising Sun. A large ocotillo cactus sticks up on the left side of the frame.A photo of a desert landscape featuring rugged mountains under a cloudy sky just after sunrise. The foreground includes various desert plants with sunlight peeking behind a mountain peak, creating a warm glow and highlighting natural terrain textures.A photo, taken at high elevation, of a mountainous landscape featuring layered ridges and peaks under a clear blue sky. Sunlight casts shadows highlighting rugged terrain and sparse vegetation, with distant mountains fading into a hazy horizon.
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Anthony Edwards @edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Mount Rainier, Mount St Helens and Mount Adams poke above a smoky Washington sky on Wednesday morning. #WAwx
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James Tuttle Keane @jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Ralph Lorenz—Huygens showed that Titan can be wet, even at low latitudes. As Dragonfly flies across Titan, the odds it’ll land in mud are low (<1%), and if so, the stickiness will be again to sticky wheat dough (and Dragonfly could still takeoff). #AOGS2026
A photograph of a sketch in my notebook summarizing Ralph Lorenz’s talk at AOGS2026. The pen and pencil sketch shows two spacecraft on the surface of Titan: Huygens and Dragonfly (loosely to scale). The two grey spacecraft sit on a rock littered orange surface with a yellow hazy sky behind them. Next to Hogan’s, I have a zoom in the regular showing how the acoustic sensor suggested that the soil was damp, with liquid sweating out of it. On the right, I show a little insect of some reel, analog dunes, which very rarely can have intradune lakes form in particular particularly rainy seasons. Situations such as this are predicted to be very rare for Titan, but the Dragonfly mission is planned to handle it.
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Melaine Le Roy @subfossilguy.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Absolutely insane footage of rock avalanches currently sweeping across the entire south face of the Matterhorn, as filmed from Cervinia! 🔥😱 📽️ Via @meteovalledosta
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Dr. Erik Klemetti Gonzalez @eruptions.site · 04/08/2026
Did everyone see @janinekrippner.bsky.social explaining volcanoes for Encylopedia Britannica? www.britannica.com/video/what-a...
britannica.com
Volcanologist Janine Krippner Explains the Science Behind Volcanoes and Lava Flow | Britannica
Volcanologist Janine Krippner dives into the details.
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Take that, #mincup
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 31/07/2026
Google has also decided to effectively kill the desktop version of Google Earth Pro - which has been a genuinely useful mapping tool for many years. They’ve apparently decided those resources are better spent allowing users to burn AI credits on creating satellite imagery disinformation.
theverge.com
Get Google Earth Pro while you still can.
In an update on Tuesday, Google says it will block users from downloading its Google Earth Pro desktop app starting June 25th, 2027. People can continue to use the app after that date, which offers ac...
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Bill Haneberg @haneberg.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Obviously a very bad situation. In addition to injection wells, Ohio has for decades allowed oilfield brine (aka produced water) to be used on roads for a winter de-icing and summer dust control.
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Izzy Jayasinghe @ijayas.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
This is like the best meme
Tom Hiddleston saying, “Right. Better find a helpful geoscientist, then”
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains.
Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen. Someone had to post it.  You never rest fighting the battle of who could care less.
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Adam Rose @adamrose.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
First video of gnarly rip current in Venice Beach today, with a Los Angeles County Lifeguard rescuing a young boy who was swept out to sea. It was all moving so fast!!!
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UIS Observatory @uisobservatory.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I’d like to make it clear for all the people following me what the sheer gravity of the news is. Without this facility we can’t ensure constant communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. If this facility is off-line, the Artemis program cannot send a crew to the Moon.
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Wow look at the lahar deposits in the river channel.
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J. Brian Balta @drjbbalta.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
It appears this quake is in a zone with a seismic history and a reasonable chance of a magnitude 6 earthquake, but also a history of oil and gas exploration and presumably waste fluid disposal. Many of these are listed in the attached document as uncertain trigger. www.weather.gov/media/ama/ea...
weather.gov
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Brandon Bishop @brandontbishop.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
(And the professional geologists grow increasingly impatient with universities and begin to set up alternatives...)
aapg.org
The Field Skills Crisis
Geologists warn that shrinking field camps threaten the profession’s future workforce — industry and academia race to save them.
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Elizabeth V @geolizzy.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Can’t wait for everybody else to realize that sand is in fact not an infinite resource, especially the really clean quartz sand we use to make stuff with. Not all sand is the same!
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