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Rob Strachan on the Caledonian Orogeny
The Caledonian orogeny is one of the most recent extinct mountain-building events. It took place in several phases during the three-way collision of continental blocks called Laurentia, Baltica, and Avalonia during the early stages of the a
Joe MacGregor on Mapping the Geology of Greenland Below the Ice
With most of Greenland buried by kilometers of ice, obtaining direct information about its geology is challenging. But we can learn a lot from measurements of the island’s geophysical properties — seismic, gravity, magnetic from airborne an
Adam Simon on Battery Metals
As we wean ourselves away from fossil fuels and ramp up our reliance on alternatives, batteries become ever more important for two main reasons. First, we need grid-scale batteries to store excess electricity from time-varying sources such
Rufus Catchings on Pinning Down California's Faults
Knowing exactly where faults are located is important both for scientific reasons and for assessing how much damage a fault could inflict if it ruptured and caused an earthquake. In the podcast, Rufus Catchings describes how we can use natu
Sara Seager on Exoplanet Geology
During the past couple of decades, we have discovered that stars with planetary systems are not rare, exceptional cases, as we once assumed, but actually quite commonplace. However, because exoplanets are like fireflies next to blinding sea
Evan Smith on Diamonds from the Deep Mantle
We have only a tantalizingly small number of sources of information about the Earth’s deep mantle. One of these comes from the rare diamonds that form at depths of about 650 km and make their way up to the base of the lithosphere, and then
Roberta Rudnick on the Continental Crustal Composition Paradox
Continental crust is derived from magmas that come from the mantle. So, naively, one might expect it to mirror the composition of the mantle. But our measurements indicate that it does not. Continental crust contains significantly more sili
Alex Copley on Soft Continents
We tend to think of continental tectonic plates as rigid caps that float on the asthenospheric mantle, much like oceanic plates. But while some continental regions have the most rigid rocks on the planet, wide swathes of the continents are
Shanan Peters on Quantifying the Global Sedimentary Rock Record
Shanan Peters believes we need to assemble a global record of sedimentary rock coverage over geological time. As he explains in the podcast, such a record enables us to disentangle real changes in the long-term evolution of the Earth-life s
Paul Smith on the Cambrian Explosion
Complex life did not start in the Cambrian - it was there in the Ediacaran, the period that preceded the Cambrian. And the physical and chemical environment that prevailed in the early to middle Cambrian may well have arisen at earlier time
Scott Bolton on the Most Volcanically Active Body in the Solar System
Jupiter's innermost Galilean moon, Io, is peppered with volcanos that are erupting almost all the time. In this episode, Scott Bolton, Principal Investigator of NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter, describes what we're learning from this space p
Bob White on How Magma Moves in the Crust
We know that most magma originates in the Earth’s mantle. As it pushes up through the many kilometers of lithosphere to the surface, it pauses in one or more magma chambers or partially melted mush zones for periods of up to a few millennia
Richard Ernst on Large Igneous Provinces
At roughly 15-25-million-year intervals since the Archean, huge volumes of lava have spewed onto the Earth’s surface. These form the large igneous provinces, which are called flood basalts when they occur on continents. As Richard Ernst exp
Damian Nance on What Drives the Supercontinent Cycle
Perhaps as many as five times over the course of Earth history, most of the continents gathered together to form a supercontinent. The supercontinents lasted on the order of a hundred million years before breaking apart and dispersing the c
David Kohlstedt on Simulating the Mantle in the Lab
The Earth’s tectonic plates float on top of the ductile portion of the Earth’s mantle called the asthenosphere. The properties of the asthenosphere, in particular its viscosity, are thought to play a key role in determining how plates move,
Claire Corkhill on Geological Radioactive Waste Disposal
In many countries, nuclear power is a significant part of the energy mix being planned as part of the drive to achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions. This means that we will be producing a lot more radioactive waste, some of it with hal
Mahesh Anand on What Human Return to the Moon Means for Lunar Geology
We have learned a great deal about the geology of the Moon from remote sensing instruments aboard lunar orbiters, from robot landers, from the Apollo landings, and from samples returned to the Earth by Apollo and robot landings. But in 2025
Susan Brantley on Earth's Geological Thermostat
At the core of Earth’s geological thermostat is the dissolution of silicate minerals in the presence of atmospheric carbon dioxide and liquid water. But at large scales, the effectiveness and temperature sensitivity of this reaction depends
Clark Johnson on the Banded Iron Formations
Banded Iron Formations (BIFs) are a visually striking group of sedimentary rocks that are iron rich and almost exclusively deposited in the Precambrian. Their existence points to a major marine iron cycle that does not operate today. Severa
Catherine Mottram on Dating Rock Deformation
The geological history of most regions is shaped by a whole range of processes that occur at temperatures ranging from above 800°C to as low as 100°C. The timing of events occurring over a particular temperature range can be recorded by a m
Martin Van Kranendonk on the Earliest Life on Earth
In this episode, Martin Van Kranendonk lays out a convincing case for life on Earth going back to at least 3.48 billion years ago. To find evidence for very ancient life, we need to look at rocks that have been largely undisturbed over bill
Rob Butler on the Origin of the Alps
The Alps are the most intensively studied of all mountain chains, being readily accessed from the geological research centers of Europe. But despite this, there remains considerable uncertainty as to how they formed, especially in the Eocen
John Wakabayashi on the Franciscan Complex
The Franciscan Complex is a large accretionary prism that has been accreted onto the western margin of the North American continent. Unlike most such prisms, which are submarine, it is exposed on land, making it a magnet for researchers suc
Bruce Levell on Bias in the Sedimentary Record
How can we tell if the sedimentary record is good enough to make solid inferences about the geological past? After all, it can be difficult, or even impossible, to infer what is missing, or indeed whether anything is missing at all. As he e
Sujoy Mukhopadhyay on Probing the Hadean World with Noble Gases
In a recent episode, Nadja Drabon spoke about newly discovered zircon crystals that formed during the late Hadean and early Archean, when the Earth was between 500 million and a billion years old. The zircons revealed information about proc
Patrick Fulton on the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake
In 2011, a massive earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Japan. The destructive power of the earthquake was amplified by a giant tsunami that swept ashore, killing over 15,000 people. A major cause of the tsunami was the 50-m slip alon
Romain Jolivet on the 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquakes
Romain Jolivet studies active faults and the relative motion of tectonic plates. His research focuses on the relationship between slow, aseismic slip that occurs “silently” between earthquakes and the rapid slip accompanying earthquakes. As
Dan Rothman on Thresholds of Catastrophe in the Earth System
The geological record shows that the Earth’s carbon cycle suffered over 30 major disruptions during the Phanerozoic. Some of the biggest ones were accompanied by mass extinctions. Dan Rothman analyzed these disruptions to find a pattern gov
Nadja Drabon on a New Lens into the Hadean Eon
Vanishingly few traces of the early Earth are known, so when a new source of zircon crystals of Hadean age is discovered, it makes a big difference to what we can infer about that eon. In the podcast, Nadja Drabon describes how she analyzed
John Cottle on the Petrochronology Revolution
Over the course of Earth history, many parts of the crust have undergone multiple episodes of metamorphism. Modern methods of dating and measuring trace-element abundances are now able to tease out the timing and conditions of the individua
