Earthquakes ft Our Existence

Today during this snowy meeting, we learned about tectonic plates and the way they create the ground shaking, jaw dropping, equally interesting natural disasters known as Earthquakes.

From watching a lot of television, I could easily tell you what an earthquake is. It's obviously when the ground just shakes and causes a multitude of disasters. Kind of, but not really. The one thing the old me is leaving out is the slight detail that plates called Tectonics that glide over a layer of the Earth called the mantle shift in opposite directions causing these shakes.

There you go now. Here's to education and not television.

To measure these earthquakes, scientists use what's called a Richter Scale. It measures how bad it is on a scale of one to ten. Ten being the worst.

Now onto our feature of today's blog. Earth. The big round thing we live on.

The thing that might not live on forever. Of course we wouldn't know when Earth dies because by that time it's predicted that the human race, just like all others eventually do will end. If you think of the Geologic Time Scale as a clock, you'd realize that human's have barely been here for a second. We're very new in these aspects. So just like all Sensei's say to their pupils.


"You've got a long road ahead of you Young Grasshopper"

Earth is our Sensei, and we are the youthful Young Grasshoppers.

The Peabody's Secrets

From the outside, it's a successful museum with ancient fossils and great exhibits.

Dig a little deeper (no pun intended) and you'll find that it's a research lab full of secrets in gigantic cabinets.

I'm not kidding.

In the storage, there are around 13 million objects that the public has no idea about. The museum only has a select few of these things in their exhibits. In other words it's holding some dirty secrets. Of course, amazing dirty secrets. Secrets that scientists study day to day in hopes to uncover new findings about topics such as Invertebrate Paleontology.

Now, getting to these specimens is a hard process. It's not like the spy movies where the spy makes a easy door with a laser hidden in a pen. The issues here are more of accessibility. Take a scientist from Ohio wants a specific specimen that the Peabody has in their research storage. Traveling form Ohio to Connecticut is a bit much. Wouldn't it be better to meet somewhere in the middle? Say the internet? It would make research sharing much easier if there was a way to digitize the research.

That idea's not just floating around in mid-air. It's definitely in the making and will be the first step to easily sharing findings and discoveries in an efficient manner.

Then again why wouldn't the Ohio scientist want to come to the Peabody? We're amazing!

Sorry there... Blame the Peabody.

Dr.Butts

Today when Dr. Butts were giving her presentation about climate change and what Dr.Butts studies, I was very interesting when Dr Butts say that earth sea level was very high back then mostly all the earth was covered in water, also Dr.butts mention that sometimes Earth poles could expand to the equator, making that earth a big frozen planet. Dr butts wonder about marine life during those hard times, how do they adapt or  go extinct like brachiopod, that are now replace by clamps. Also in the collection of the Peabody Museum they're about 13 million types of fossils not on display.

I learned that the Yale Peabody Museum doesn't showcase all of its artifacts, fossils, and other tangible objects. There is kind of like an underground basement literally filled to the rim with a multitude of fossils of animals and plants.
Dr. Butt came in to talk to us about her study with brachiopods. She discussed various fields of her work including working with expensive equipment like the electron microscope and cataloging diverse fossils. Dr. Butt's work and experience really opened me to a new outlook of a special study. Her story to how she got exposed to work affiliated with microscopic fossils really inspired me even though she stumbled upon the field accidentally. She continued her discussion giving us ideas for our visual display. We decided as a group to dedicate a section that would be informative about fossils and what they are, what their attributes are. Furthermore, we would explain how climate change affected the characteristics of ancient animals and plants and their fossils now.
Overall, I developed a greater understanding on the importance of studying fossils.

Brachiopod Invasion

Today we got an idea of what an internship with Dr. Susan Butts would be like this sumer and how it might useful. Those of us who will be working in an internship with Dr.Butts this summer will be helping catalog an online database for specimen that lived over the past few million years. This internship will be useful in informing people about invasive species. A modern example of an invasive species would be bamboo that isn't native to this North America but you can find in backyards all over the place. What makes bamboo invasive is that it comes into a foreign environment and takes over most of the space that used to be available to other species, or in this case other plants. When invasive species such as plants take over foreign environments it effects other animals availability to survive and the production of other natural resources.

RETURN OF THE SHELLS

Today Dr. Butts came in to talk to us. We gained insight into what we were going to do during our internship. Dr. Butts opened up with a map of where birds moved in the US within the last 40 years. They were moving north because of climate change. It was basically a way to explain that we are going to find changes in fossils over spans of millions of years, due to climate change. She told us about the many many storage cabinets of specimens in the basement of the museum. She explained how we will digitize the fossils, specimens, and objects, as well as how we will find a way to present all the information we find at Sci.Corps. She also extensively spoke to us about brachiopods. She told us about how a lot of North America was once submerged, so now it is easy to find these fossils of the shelled fauna.

The Earth

Today in our meeting we learned that The earth is made up of layers going from the outside to the inside.first  layer to be the crust, then the mantel making 82% of the earth , then the liquid and then the nucleous....

Volcanoes

One of the things we learned about today was potential theories on how human life could end all across the board. These theories included life ending by volcanic erruption or the end of the life of the sun. We also moved towards cart developement and possible concepts that we could interpret to visitors. Lastly we formatted some research on a few different epochs that will one day be apart of our carts binder.

The Adventurous Adventures of Dr. Hull

Today, the amazing Dr. Pincelli Hull came in and told us about her adventures, sailing around the world's oceans (her exact quote was that she was"playing outside") digging holes into the floors to find out what there is to know inside of them using old oil rigs. She studies the forans in those samples and with the other scientists on the ship and together with their interesting yet laborious jobs they figure out everything there is to know about their samples. The jobs that they did on the ship were so strenuous, and when Dr. Hulls informed us about the amount of hours that they had to work, I almost fainted. I learned a lot about the work that she did and the logistics behind it. Like getting all those samples to create a library so that it's easy to locate where everything is. Then all of the books that they had to write about their findings gave me a new insight. It's not just that scientists go to the places and explore it, but they actually have to record their writings in a way that the public can see.

It makes sense because I doubt you can fit the entire population onto a boat just so they can see what scientists are doing. That's what why we have letters, and words, and many many sentences consisting of these things.


I feel like after this experience, the first thing that I'm going to think about right before I start complaining in the morning will be the scientists at sea working so hard to respond to questions that they themselves have brought up, and support it with real life evidence so people like us can learn and understand.

And maybe apologize to everyone I've complained too...

Janae - Operation Ocean Rocks

Today we had a visit from Dr. Pincelli Hull who gave us a presentation on her research and experience working on the ocean. The most entriuging part for me was learning how the dinosaurs went extinct! During these internship meetings, I am constanly learning things that will help become a stronger interpreter at the musuem. I often get questions about dinosaurs from musuem visitors and now I have more information to pass on to them when they're the main topic of discussion. We've also learned about the affects of carbon admissions on ocean life. I also believe this will be useful as an interpreter on our watershed cart and moving forward into this intership.

Dr Hull Presentation

 When Doctor Hull was talking to us about what she studies, I found it pretty interesting that she studies the period of time through the Ocean. By traveling in a boat and  a drill come down from the boat to drill holes in the ocean floors, they studies Foraminifera (Forams) that come out stuck to the drills.  what I found also interesting was the when we burned fossil fuels , the co2 goes not just in the air but it also goes in the ocean, making the PH water level rise.  killing small organism by dissolving their shells by ocean acidifications for example pteropod's.

Dr. Hull's Mission in the Sea

     After learning about Dr. Pincelli Hull's research and lab work. Her research consisted of Ocean Drilling, "The Titanic," and Life at Sea. Dr. Hull came today to talk to us about her experiences living in the ocean. She described the fun "life at sea," working with her co-chiefs, core describers, IODP technicians, and who she calls "Keepers of Time." Dr. Hull described her passion for geology as it is a combination of all her favorite sciences and her central subject of the ocean's ecosystems. Her life on the JR {Jodi's Resolution} was her working with large pipes of samples dug from the bottom of the oceans. she has collected various samples that she tested and wrote about. What interested me was the pure passion Dr, Hull possessed for analyzing the response of marine life to the different climate changes Earth has faced.

     Dr. Hull clarified many doubts of mine including how the dinosaurs actually went extinct. When an asteroid hit the Earth, most of the rock vaporized, but also sent man chunks of hot rock into the air falling as "tektites." The impact of the asteroid also sent dust and rocks flying into the air suffocating life {mainly dinosaurs}; killing them off. Dr. Hull described how their were other proposed theories of how dinosaurs may have went extinct such as the occurrence of a possible supernova. However a supernova would've resulted in a plethora of plutonium along with iridium, and there was no plutonium to be found, so that couldn't have been a possibility. 

     There was so much to take in form this meeting and it all emphasized the affects of different elements on our oceans and the history that got erased due to emissions. 

~Gayatri Sivalenka 

ohio Rocks

Geology is the study of the Earth, Geologist dont study the floor or  other things. Geologist study the history of earth through (Rocks) rock formations,landforms.
Ohio Geology is broken into 2 separated ways. The oldest being 500,50 million years old to about 200,50 million years old way older than the Dinosours. Those rocks are called Paleonzoic Rock. They can be Limestone,sandstone or shell stone. Also on the rocks all on the bottom layer are the oldest, while the ones on the top are youngest.
Water plays a very important part of Ohios geology but also the world. Water shaped most of the earths curving rocks and forming soils.
Oldest Glaciation we know about ohio is about a million years old. Last glacier that left ohio was about 15 thousands years ago.
Glaciated sediment = no more than a million
Paleozoic sediments = 250 million years old.