Posts by Hannah Mark
The erstwhile king of Siluria
A planet shrinking over a few thousand years, wrinkling like an apple. Vast underground caverns filled with seawater that rises to the surface to form oceans. Volcanic eruptions powered by coal beds. All of those sound like ridiculous ideas in this day and age, but just a few hundred years ago, they represented some of…
Read MoreA brief history of the Wide Receiver Functions
Back in 2015, when my cousin set up a fantasy football league for my extended family, I named my first (and only) fantasy football team the “Wide Receiver Functions.” At the time I thought this was rather funny, but I was the only seismologist in the league, so instead of laughter I got confusion. Wide…
Read MoreHarry Potter and the 12-minute conference talk
One of my favorite podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, begins each episode with a segment called the “30 second recap”: Vanessa and Casper, the two hosts, get 30 seconds each to summarize everything that happened in a single chapter of a Harry Potter book*. They start out speaking normally, covering everything in detail,…
Read MoreHate construction noise? Turns out marine animals aren’t fond of it either.
Written by Ian Jones Across the globe, humans continue to hammer giant steel piles into the ocean floor. Why? Such piles are necessary to support docks, piers, and variety of offshore energy platforms, from oil rigs to offshore wind farms. This pile driving activity adds an incredible amount of noise to the marine environment. It’s…
Read MoreSCARF 2017: A modern-day transatlantic crossing
At 16:00 UTC (12 noon, EST) on October 8 2017, midway across the Atlantic Ocean, Earth’s magnetic field strength dropped to 0. Had we just made an exciting new discovery? Was this evidence of an imminent geomagnetic reversal? Was a mysterious lump of magnetite on the seafloor cancelling out the ambient field?…or did the magnetometer…
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