iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 29/09/2026

I'm saving all of these for class. That should be good for the penultimate lecture (on deep Earth structure, tomography, that sort of thing)!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 25/09/2026

New office mate! Wouldn't have wanted to have encountered him in the Ordovician ocean, but our meeting today was quite convivial. Buy your own Paleozoic friend here: pri-gift-shop.myshopify.com/collections/...

Box saying 'Giant Eurypterid', as delivered to my office

Me and the giant Eurypterid in my office

Giant Eurypterid on my office chaise longue. No room for me anymore

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 25/09/2026

Still bloody hot here though! Hopefully it will realize it's Fall soon!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 25/09/2026

And they're off! Lecture 1 (of 27) of intro geology in the books!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 24/09/2026

Prophesying caldera collapse?

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 23/09/2026

Triassic? Paleogene, no?

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 18/09/2026

We're not in Maryland anymore! Today I am hanging out with soil scientists in the high desert (and later giving a talk). It's a rather lovely day.

View of the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve in southern California – a desert oasis

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 17/09/2026

I very much enjoyed the tour. If someone could arrange another facility (Johnson? Ames? Marshall?) for me to go and visit next week, to keep the streak going, that'd be awesome!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 17/09/2026

Some Nancy Grace Roman-ology: the great woman immortalized in Lego form. And an example of one of the mirrors on the telescope that bears her name.

Nancy Grace Roman – NASA's first Chief Astronomer and apparently a knitter – rendered in Lego

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 17/09/2026

This is the largest clean room of its type, it fills the whole building! Seems a little empty right now – only thing they were working on there today was the aforementioned Dragonfly. But they assembled the Nancy Grace Roman telescope in there and are rightly very proud of it!

A big, empty clean room, just the thing for assembling a big space telescope. Or a small quadcopter.

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 17/09/2026

A couple of toys for @markpanning.seismology.space, I think? One of the LEMS lunar seismometers, in for testing, before Artemis takes it to the Moon. And the Dragonfly drone (allegedly) under some kind of anti-static blanket, being prepped for its eventual flight off to Titan.

A clean tent with (possibly) bits of the LEMS apparatus – the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station, basically a suitcase-sized seismometer to be deployed on the Moon by Artemis

The Dragonfly drone, allegedly, under an anti-static blanket in a clean room

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 17/09/2026

This is Integration and Testing – we got clean tents for instrument payload assembly, and a whole load of super heavy duty torture testing apparatuses for putting your spacecraft through the wringer before you let 'em go to space...

The Integration and Testing facility at Goddard – the tents are for sterile assembly of instruments, the blue tanks are vacuum ovens for imposing space-like conditions on your gear, to see if it can handle it

This is the Space Environment Simulator – a giant vacuum tank, with both ovens and liquid nitrogen cooling. They fit the whole Nancy Grace Roman telescope in there, satellite and all, pumped out all the air, then subjected it to alternating extreme cold and extreme hot conditions. Brutal!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 17/09/2026

Another week, another NASA facility tour! (I am at the NASA Cryosphere/Geosphere PI meeting in Maryland...)

Sign saying "NASA Goddard Space Flight Center"

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 16/09/2026

Last time I looked, Senator, you were in Congress. And representing me. Could you take up the reins and be part of the solution?

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 16/09/2026

I do feel that this is burying the lede a little. Yes, there probably are unofficial deadlines to submit before panels, possibly in Spring and Fall, and it might help to know when they are. But there has also been a 90% cut in outgoing GEO grant revenues, so is there really any point in applying?

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Reposted by Gareth Funning

Seismica @weareseismica.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

📣 Join the Seismica Editorial Board! We’re recruiting Handling Editors for a 3-year term beginning January 2027. We especially welcome expertise in statistical seismology, machine learning applications, and hazards communication. Details: seismica.library.mcgill.ca/announcement...

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 15/09/2026

It is a deliberate choice being made by someone, for sure

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 15/09/2026

We do know their expected budget is a fraction of what they had before the current regime, though, and, NSF-wide, overall grant spending is a fraction of what was appropriated

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Reposted by Gareth Funning

Dr. Katie I. @hellyeahcorks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

My thread got a bit broken in my furious typing... here's my $0.02 on today's useless GEO office hour.

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 15/09/2026

NSF GEO webinar summary: we have reduced programs from 15 down to 3, we have no deadlines, we have no guidelines on project size, duration or budget, we have no money

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 15/09/2026

I believe that change happened before the new regime came in

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 15/09/2026

Once had a flight cancellation that punted me to a red-eye en route to an EarthScope board meeting. Arrived half an hour before it started, already sleep-deprived and loopy. Which I reckon is worse.

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 12/09/2026

They were always up in the hills, but during COVID they realized that the grass was much greener down here!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 12/09/2026

I asked! Not recently, it seems. The deer have attracted the interest of mountain lions in the past though!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

Earth observation is a big part of NASA's science portfolio - and of course, technologies developed for observing Earth are often then adapted for planetary missions (and sometimes vice-versa)!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

It is all for Earth - the surface disturbance product shows you the locations of landslides and wildfires, the inundation product is for flooding, the displacement product (what I use) shows us where the ground may be subsiding or moving as landslides. The workshop was to highlight potential uses!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

So all in all it was a great day – I learned a lot about potential uses of OPERA data products and got to see lots of cool things. And (importantly) I also got my hands on some NISAR merch! Thanks to the OPERA staff for the invite!

A NISAR mug, as can be purchased from the JPL store

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

And one of the staff (Reynato) kindly offered to take three of us on a tour of the campus to show us all the cool things – the Mars Yard (with model of the Perseverance rover), the clean rooms used for assembly, mission control, the museum...

A model of the Perseverance rover being tested in the Mars Yard

The clean room where satellites and other mission platforms are assembled. On the right is ASTHROS, an infrared telescope that is launched on giant helium balloons

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

I also got to meet a scale model of NISAR in the building lobby

NISAR (left, 1/6 scale) and me (right 1/1 scale)

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

The occasion was the OPERA Stakeholder Engagement Workshop, attended by ~20 people in person (pictured) and 200 online. OPERA is a NASA-funded project making value-added remote sensing data products operationally (surface displacement time series, surface disturbance, surface inundation and more)!

Some of the in-person attendees at the OPERA workshop. Marin Govorcin (white shirt, right) was presenting on NISAR displacement time series. Note the awesome view of the mountains from the window!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

My working life is not all about seeing donkeys on my way between my home and my office. Sometimes (yesterday) you get to visit someone else's campus and see what large mammals they have kicking around (JPL, mule deer)!

A concrete sign saying "JPL" (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Three mule deer chowing down on the undergrowth next to a loading bay

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

I would say it is not a contest to complain about who was affected by it first! I stand with everyone who is against it! (And I am in STEM and have been dealing with more than my fair share of essay slop and cheating for several years now.)

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

Pardon my French, but what the fuck is Julienite? #CampaignForRealMinerals

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Reposted by Gareth Funning

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 11/09/2026

Fault Taunting xkcd.com/3296/

4-panel comic. (1) [Giant fishing rod-like cat toy positioned above four tectonic plates. Two helicopters that appear tiny due to scale fly above. People next to device are so tiny they cannot be seen.] PERSON 1: The key to exposing new geologic layers is understanding the three forces driving plate movement: slab pull, ridge push, and taunting. (2) PERSON 2: Taunting? What do– PERSON 1: *Initiate thrust fault pattern!* [The dangly end of the toy wiggles.] (3) “Rumble” sound effect from tectonic plates. (4) “Lunge!” sound effect from tectonic plates. [Plates split at a diagonal angling toward toy.]

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

Heading into work after a couple of Zoom meetings that I took at home, I was so lost in my thoughts that I nearly missed five donkeys seeking shade under a tree (and six more in the street)!

Donkeys under a tree from the other side of the tree

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 11/09/2026

The difference between fracture energy and radiated energy!

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 05/09/2026

(And obvs I am a huge fan of Prof Brodsky, and find her backstory really interesting.)

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 05/09/2026

This is all awesome, not least because one of the interviewees is Emily Brodsky (pictured), and the last conversation I had with her was at about 2 am on Monday night, staggering back after the SCEC karaoke, on whether she would sing next year (unlikely) and what (maybe Bob Dylan, still unlikely).

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 01/09/2026

Anyone who guarantees *grant* funding, I agree that is almost impossible. But my department, at least, will make offers that are backstopped with guarantees of TA positions, and if anything, with the drops in incoming grad student numbers, we are going to need all the TAs we can get...

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 01/09/2026

They shouldn't, at this stage, but these are still officially the provisional versions of the data products, so there still could be minor tweaks to the processing. It was fixing issues with the dithering of the data which caused the long delay to the data release, if I remember correctly.

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 01/09/2026

I suspect it is the dithering that they do during the image acquisition that is the cause of the banding.

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 01/09/2026

3) I think ARIA-tools could be used to mosaic them. Or you could do it with GIS. There shouldn't be any issue with that. 4) I'd be interested to see if there was any precursory movement before the rock slide – you would be more likely to see a real signal there, I'd guess.

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 01/09/2026

1) Slopes steeper than the incidence angle will lay over – I haven't checked (yet) how this might appear in the geocoded products 2) I would be surprised if you actually see the rockfall movement in offsets. I imagine there could be a mismatch which could look like a signal at its location though

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Gareth Funning @gfun.earth · 31/08/2026

Oh those pictures were taken in March. In the Bay Area. Was chilly then, if anything. Spent about 3 minutes outside total today.

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