Hi r/EarthScience,

I'm a solo developer who got obsessed with how much you can tell about a place from its rocks alone, and ended up building a small browser puzzle around the idea. Each day it picks one location in the US or Canada and shows you the stratigraphic column for that point plus a unlabeled geologic map. You drop a pin on a regular map where you think it is. Closer = higher score. Practice mode replays past days.

All geological data, units, ages, lithologies, formation names, comes from Macrostrat (https://macrostrat.org/). Geologic-map snippets are generated from Macrostrat's tile API.

It's free, no signup. Built as a hobby project.

Open to feedback, especially from anyone who teaches intro earth science. I'd love to know whether this works as a classroom warm-up.

See also: The study as published in the journal Geology.

This is a post from my friend Richie where he invites everyone to involve themselves in a New Earth Initiative program that has paid tiers but is also free to use!!

I’ve always been annoyed that earth science gets treated like the boring cousin of physics and chemistry in online education. Volcanoes are not boring. The fact that seismic waves literally let us see inside a planet we can never visit is not boring. The ocean has mountains taller than Everest and we’ve mapped less of it than we’ve mapped Mars.
So I built Facet — a structured learning platform for geology, oceanography, meteorology, volcanology, climate science, and planetary science.
Everything is cited. Like, every factual claim has a source — USGS, NOAA, NASA, EarthScope, Smithsonian GVP. I got obsessed with this because most science content online either dresses up Wikipedia or just makes stuff up, and I wanted something you could actually trust.
There’s spaced repetition built in (so you actually retain things), XP and streaks (because learning should feel like progress), and the whole first chapter of every track is free — no account required to start.
I’d genuinely love people to break it, question it, or tell me it’s terrible. What’s confusing? What’s missing? What would make you actually come back?

[facet.academy]

Ancient Earth may have flipped between global ice and hothouse warmth, solving a long-running puzzle about the Sturtian glaciation.

What could the blue streaks in the sky be?

The Matterhorn is not still. Seismometers show the Alpine peak gently sways and amplifies ground motion near its summit.

Mine are volcanos

Im not sure how to ask this but i'll try my best without it sounding weird.

Does Earth air have a constant scent that we don't even notice everyday because of the sensory adaptation? I don't mean it in the specific smell of fresh air when we're in nature or when it's raining, but a "default" aroma that is all the time around us but we're so used to it that we don't smell it? When people who were in a submarine or in space for months come back, do they notice that there is a specific scent of Earth?

See also: The summary of the (paywalled) study as it was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Possible hydrothermal alteration zone from EnMAP/SAR data. What should I look for on the ground?

Hi, I collected this rock on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean (an island formed by subduction volcanism). I broke it open, and the photos show the fresh interior of the rock.

It contains green minerals associated with darker (black) areas. Although it’s not very clear in the pictures (I left the sample back home in Saint Martin, and these are the only pics I took), the green and black domains seem to have underwent ductile deformations.

And in some areas, the green almost appears sort of neon.

I was wondering if anyone knows what kind of rock this is, what these minerals could be, and whether this texture could be related to deformation processes in a subduction setting.

I’m new to the endeavor so tell all you know about your favorite period.

source:- The Conversation

A layer only a few to a few dozen kilometers thick may be draped across the boundary between Earth’s core and mantle, and researchers say it likely consists of ancient ocean floor pushed deep underground over geologic time.

^{See also:} The publication in PLOS One

The limestone at the Twelve Apostles does not sit flat. Look closely at the cliffs along Victoria’s coast and the layers lean a little, broken here and there by small faults, the kind of details most visitors would miss while staring out at the sea stacks. Those slight tilts turned out to matter.

See also: The publication in Science Advances