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Bill Lukens

@paleosol.bsky.social
793 followers 1.4K following 532 posts

geology | paleoclimatology | geochemistry | soils | sed/strat | Assoc. Prof. at JMU | views are my own Lab website: sites.google.com/view/lukenslabjmu Scholar profile: scholar.google.com/citations?user=N…

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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 3h
Grading sed/strat exams and someone referred to a quartz arenite's cement as "silicone" (instead of silica). 🤭 ⚒️
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Today the #JMU Sed/Strat class continued our experiments with meandering river cutoffs using the EmRiver Em3 stream table. This second group had A LOT of fun playing with the stream table once their work was done. 😆 @emriver.bsky.social ⚒️🧪 youtu.be/nguqgi3grq8
youtu.be
Meandering River Cutoff Experiment 10/02/26
YouTube video by JMUSedStrat
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I'd like to congratulate #Quartz on winning #MinCup26. ⚒️ Reliable without flare. Will travel long distances, but only at moderate speeds. Can be many colors but often isn't. You truly are the 1999 Toyota Corolla of minerals.
A photography of a gray 1999 Toyota Corolla, the most boring car ever conceived, lacking hub caps and parked in from of a very simple playground on an autumn day. Even the parking lot lines have faded out of resignation to a long life of boredom. 
Photograph by Brian Reider.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Today the #JMU Sed/Strat class begin our experiments with meandering river cutoffs using the EmRiver Em3 stream table. @emriver.bsky.social ⚒️🧪 www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmRj...
youtube.com
Meandering River Cutoff Experiment 9/30/26
YouTube video by JMUSedStrat
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This bag of rubber bands gave me a serious hankering for pappardelle.
A bag full of wide rubber bands that look like delicious pasta.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 29/09/2026
Slab Graveyard xkcd.com/3303/
4-panel comic. (1) PERSON 1: Any plans for Halloween? PERSON 2 with beret: Me and my friends are gonna check out a slab graveyard! (2) PERSON 1: What’s that? PERSON 2: When dense crust subducts, geologists think it might pile up at the bottom of the mantle. [illustration of Person 2’s related theory] (3) PERSON 2: We’re going to hide in the crust and ride it down to see. Wanna come? It’s gonna be spooky! (4) PERSON 1: Won’t that take millions of years? PERSON 2: Lots of time for ghost stories! PERSON 1: I think I’m good. PERSON 2: Too spooky? I understand.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
My GenEd exams are pretty short and contain a representative, but not comprehensive, subset of material. But b/c a good chunk of content is not on exams (for brevity), some folks think that equates to the omitted content being trivial or extraneous. Kind of a weird take, no? #AcademicSky
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Perhaps the most accurate description of Reddit that ever existed…
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
For this #FossilFriday, here is the bottom of a thin, little turbidite deposit. The sole marks include tool marks from nautiloids, with at least one visible at the end of the tool mark.
The bottom of a gray rock (lithic wacke) with grooves all over it, mostly trending from upper right to lower left. These are tool marks made by nautilus shells scraping the sea floor.Close up photo of a tool mark with a nautilus shells scraping impression at the end of it (yellow arrow).
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is the most egregiously unnecessary cubic spline I’ve ever seen in my life. 🥴 🧪📊
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I'm very relieved that Raygun has found a new career after the Olympics breakdancing disaster... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Miniaturizing and modifying natural proteins with Raygun - Nature
Probabilistic sequence encoding from language model embeddings within a generative AI framework enables protein miniaturization, modification and augmentation while maintaining native architectur...
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New form of anguish, by OneDrive: Anguish+ Email attachments cannot download, but you can save them to OneDrive. 🤗 Open OneDrive -> cannot load files -> close OneDrive Open OneDrive -> files load -> sort by most recent -> show from 2022 and earlier -> close OneDrive. Cool.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It's a rainy, chilly morning in the Shenandoah Valley. My toddler loves the rain, so he was the most excited, cheery person within about 1000 square miles.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Two new papers: we re-dated the Buluk fossil site in Turkana, Kenya, and applied proxies to reconstruct climate and vegetation. Out now in GSA Bulletin! @danpeppe.bsky.social @munyaka.bsky.social @kevinuno.bsky.social @geosociety.bsky.social #MammalMonday #isotope #GSAPubs 🧪⚒️🌱🌦️🐒
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A simple, quick adaptation would be to use real grass (as the World Cup required in NFL stadiums). Transpiration cools down leaves, which plastic turf cannot do. Perhaps this is the example that will help my #GenEd students understand latent heat? 🧪
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Gorgeous day for geology in Page Valley, VA! Our Sed/Strat class enjoyed turbidites of the late Ordovician Martinsburg Fm and braided stream deposits of the Silurian Massanutten Fm #JMU ⚒️🧪
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I recently set up a remote connection between my office and lab computers so I can more easily watch EA or IRMS batches run. Today I happened to glance at an EA batch and saw, in real time, the reduction tube get spent. Only lost 1 sample. How cool is that? Coulda been way worse! 🧪⚒️ #labwork
Readout of peaks measured in a thermal conductivity detector of an elemental analyzer. Time axis on the bottom is from 0 to 400 seconds. A black line shows a symmetrical peak (labeled "N2 Peak") at 120-180 seconds. Then a sharp spike shoots off the charts, labeled "O2 breakout". The next peak, from 240-350 seconds, is labeled "CO2 Peak".
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
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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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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Have a gander at this here paleosol for #FossilFriday, only 360 million years young! (Hampshire Fm. of WV) 1) beautiful fossil root trace (rhizolith) plugged with calcite. 2) pedogenic carbonate nodule with nice septarian cracks. These billets have been sent out for thin sections. Stay tuned! ⚒️🧪
A caucasian hand holding a brown rock, cut in half, with a yellow, light brown, and white streak and dots running along it. These form a beautiful calcareous rhizolith.A caucasian hand holding a brown rock, cut in half, with a nodule consisting of light brown and white streaks. Cracks emanate from the center of the nodule. This is a pedogenic carbonate nodule.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
All things aside, nobody's answering the first question. 38. Everyone on this app is 38, now and forever.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This was not a good year for me to focus on gardening, so I threw some wildflower seed packs into my raised beds. Most of what grew turned out to be amaranth. It has a subtle beauty once blooming. It also looks like it’s flippin the bird to everyone, which is cool by me. #GardenSky #wildflower
A raised bed packed with a mess of plants. Most are green to yellow with a touch of red.Closeup photo of a red amaranth flower. It has tiny red buds and orange to yellow-green leaves below.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Emissions from burning fossil fuels already kills >100k people each year, just from air pollution. Add in excess deaths from heat waves (>35k in Europe this year) and it's way higher. Data centers are supercharging our carbon emissions. 🧪 pubs.acs.org/estlcu/artic...
pubs.acs.org
Reducing Mortality from Air Pollution in the United States by Targeting Specific Emission Sources
Abstract. Air quality in the United States has dramatically improved, yet exposure to air pollution is still associated with 100000–200000 deaths annually.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The theme of the day is things turning red. Outcrop of the Silurian Tuscarora Fm on Wills Mtn, WV. I found a couple beds that were distinctly rubified. I suspect they were pedogenically modified (paleosols). One or two red maples are also beginning to blush at the incoming autumn. 🍂 🪨⚒️🧪
Tuscarora Formation sandstone beds in cross-sectional view. Lower bed is mostly white, upper bed is red. Vertical skokithos burrows cross-cut bedding. A blue paleo pick is shown for scale.Bedding plane view of reddened sandstone, with blue paleo pick for scale.Photo of a forest in West Virginia with a red maple showing just a touch of reddened leaves.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Modern technologies are built upon incremental progress AND sudden innovation. Example: my coffee stirrer tent for reheating pizza (technological innovation) has recently been improved with wooden stirrers instead of plastic (incremental progress). #lifehack 🧪 #NobelPrizeContender
A plate with two slices of pizza. Two broken wooden coffee stirrers prop up a paper towel.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
My mental picture of Team Quartz. 😆 #MinCup26 ⚒️ p.s. - please know that I love you all dearly and I'm just poking fun. And also I'll never stop taunting you over your basic taste in minerals.
A vintage, red advertisement for a Toyota Corolla that reads:
"If your friends aren't IMPRESSED by the extra features, GET NEW FRIENDS. Toyota everyday." then a picture of a purple Corolla speeding down the road. Under the picture is the text:
"The '99 Corolla CE Extra Value Package. Air conditioning. Power locks. Power windows. With all these extras you'll be in your car quite a lot. Good thing it seats five."
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
#AcademicSky
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Reviving this from 2 years ago to throw shade on Team Quartz. 🤪 #MinCup26
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I was at a family function today near Harrisburg, PA. Found a few gorgeous hand samples of Triassic calcic Vertisols in my cousin’s back yard. I wish there were more outcrops of the Gettysburg Basin! ⚒️🧪
A red mudstone with white calcite cement on the edge. Faint cracks allude to wedge-shaped ped structure in the rock.A red mudstone with swoopy lines indicating ped structure.Red mudstone with swoopy lines indicating ped structure.Red mudstone with swoopy lines indicating ped structure. A few small calcite nodules that may be pedogenic.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Witnessed a rather dramatic thunderstorm cruise by last evening. Mammatus clouds and all kinds of dramatic booms from the distance. #weather 🧪
Photo of thunderstorm clouds side-lit by the resetting sun. Trees in silhouette in foreground.Screenshot of thunderstorm passing Harrisonburg toward Charlottesville on a weather app.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Weathering products for the win! Let’s goooo ⚒️
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Come be my boss! JMU Geology is one of the best undergrad programs in the country. We have incredible facilities, very cool local geology, and a lovely community. Great place to work and live! Apps will be reviewed starting Nov 2. 🧪⚒️ #AcademicSky jobs.jmu.edu/jobs/academi...
jobs.jmu.edu
Academic Unit Head, Geology & Environmental Science - Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States
Working Title: Academic Unit Head, Geology & Environmental Science State Role Title: N/A Position Type: Instructional / Teaching Faculty Position Status: Full-Time FLSA Status: Exempt: Not Eligibl...
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Well, somebody had a great day and/or a horrible day. Found these bad boys on the ground after the Harrisonburg Block Party welcoming JMU students back to town. The alarm button didn’t trigger any nearby cars. Yikes 🫠🥴
A picture of car keys on the ground.
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Reposted by Bill Lukens
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup @mineralcup.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Oooh, a bracket! www.mineralcup.org/2026/bracket
A sports-style elimination bracket of 32 minerals labeled "Mineral Cup 2026". Text below reads, "Daily voting takes place on www.MineralCup.org in September. Campaign on your favourite social media using #MinCup26."

The starting matches are, in chronological order in pairs from top to bottom alternating from left to right each match:
Azurite vs Smithsonite
Erythrite vs Skutterudite
Sphalerite vs Anorthite
Bournonite vs Vesuvianite
Cuprite vs Orpiment
Quartz vs Asagiite
Monazite-(Ce) vs Andalusite
Stichtite vs Talc
Hafnon vs Putnisite
Pyromorphite vs Gypsum
Calcite vs Julienite
Pyrrhotite vs Cylindrite
Arsenopyrite vs Halite
Riebeckite vs Gadolinite-(Y)
Chrysocolla vs Xocolatlite
Cassiterite vs Graphite
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Reposted by Bill Lukens
Nahel Belgherze @wxnb.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
geopera.com/blog/bhote-k...
geopera.com
Bhote Koshi Flood 2026: A Reconstruction from Open Satellite Data
How open satellite imagery reconstructed the 26 August 2026 Nepal flood: flow heights, velocities, sediment depths, and an interactive 3D model.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Nothing like walking into an eerily silent lab the morning after a power outage. 😬 The orange X-ray lights are off, the IRMS vacuum pumps are off… lots of fun to sort out today! Our battery backups did their job, but the building backup generator did not! 🧪⚒️
An XRF instrument whose scary orange warning lights are not aglow.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Harrisonburg just got torn up by a band of wild thunderstorms. Trees down, many traffic lights and businesses without power. Good luck to everyone east of here! @callanbentley.bsky.social
Radar image of severe weather.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Just gonna juxtapose these two items... The reason why Nuclear is nearly a death-proof energy source is bc of regulations. We know where every spent rod is. Do we know where every fleck of coal fly ash is? 🧪⚒️ ourworldindata.org/grapher/deat...
ourworldindata.org
Death rates per unit of electricity production
Death rates are measured based on deaths from accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour of electricity.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Pro: our toddler (19mo) has reduced crying after daycare dropoff from 2hr > 1hr > 30min > 15 min > 5 min Con: Zeno’s paradox suggests he must cry each day, albeit briefly, until the heat death of the universe. #parenting #daycare #dad
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Dudes. Friends. Comrades. Brothers, sisters, and others. #MinCup26 starts next week. ⚒️🧪 #geology #mineral #getready www.mineralcup.org
mineralcup.org
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Gotta say, the Imagination Library books are amazing. Every one that's arrived freshened up our reading options and seemed to be the right book at the right time. And signing up was an easy opt-in form at the hospital. Can't speak more highly of the program! Thanks #Dolly! RIP
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The amendment to NCA5 wouldn’t allow reference to RCP8.5 or similar high emissions pathways as “business as usual” or a likely future unless similar results are found in lower emission scenarios.🤡 And yet, this is the administration doing their best to get us back on onto those exact pathways! 🧪⚒️
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
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GeophotoMarli @marlimiller.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Preparing an Earth Sci or Geog course for fall? Please check out geologypics.com. There, find >5500 searchable captioned photos for free download to promote good instruction. Just uploaded 60 new photos I shot from this year-- coastal to desert, rocks to landforms. Please share! #teaching #geology
six colorful Earth Science photos: melange, cross-bedding, differential erosion, soft-sediment deformation, desert varnish, Oregon Coast
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Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
So many people need to work on understanding the differences between a “stock” and a “flow”. It makes it far easier to understand things like the national debt versus an annual budget deficit. Or greenhouse gas levels in the air versus the annual emissions of pollution. And so on. And so on.
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Faculty retreats are just kidnapping for adults. You wouldn’t let your kids get in a car with a stranger. Don’t let your colleagues go into the conference room. #Spreadtheword #AcademicSky
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
What drives me nuts these days: economists thinking people's aversion to data centers is just misplaced anxiety about the future (etc). Shows up here yet again. What if, maybe, data centers building out massive fossil fuel power is actually bad for the climate? www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | A.I. Hype Is Running Into Reality
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
#AI #ClimateChange
Meme showing a dude asking a computer "how do we solve climate change" and the computer answering "stop burning fossil fuels" and the dude saying "oh my god."
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Bill Lukens @paleosol.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This was a helpful read. I've been very confused as to why we hear about the lab leak "theory" so often, given the numerous high quality scientific papers on zoonotic origins (since 2020!)? Was I missing something? Turns out that mainstream media has really dropped the ball here... 🧪
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