📆 MASTER'S OPEN DAY | 8 October 2025 Are you looking for a Master's in Earth Science? We offers 4 different Masters to choose from. Join our upcoming Online Master's Open Day on the 8th of October to learn more about your options at Utrecht University. Sign up here ➡️ www.uu.nl/en/node/1189...

In Brussels, getting ready for our ERC Synergy grant interview! Bring it on! With Arwen Deuss, Janne Koornneef and Yamirka Rojas-Agramonte

And the prize for best title of the year goes to Fabrice Cordey 😂😂

Ik heb Maarten Keulemans vanmorgen van wat uitleg voorzien voor zijn artikel over de Afghanistanbevingen van vanmorgen: www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/w...

The 6.0 quake in Afghanistan of this morning occurred on a shallow thrust fault, within the pile of tectonic fragments that is the Pamir-Hindu Kush mountain belt. Basically, the western part of the Tibetan Plateau 1/n earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

So, some background for the start of @lavuelta.bsky.social…and oddly, the best way to do that is by telling you about the geology of Milano-San Remo 😃. The first days will be about the Po Plain and the Ligurian Alps! Enjoy! www.geo-sports.org/2024/geology...

Used AI again to develop a piece I wrote on piano into a song. Quite like it. suno.com/song/4d39640...

Ok, so I wasn’t a fan of AI, in many cases, it kills creativity and originality. But I’ll admit I like the applications to music. Since my teenage years, I’ve written songs, and recorded them with some band (e.g. Sans Gene). But I’m not a great singer, and play mediocre guitar and piano.

Two years ago, brilliant Utrecht University PhD student Gerrit Müller organized a workshop about the role of weathering in the CO2 cycle. He invited scientists from all over to debate the different parts of the cycle, and merged it jnto this review paper, published today in Nature Geoscience!

The Classica San Sebastian will race along the Basque North Coast! @vanhinsbergen.bsky.social made some clips about the beautiful geological goodies of the Basque Country! The trace fossils in the Black Flysch for instance! youtu.be/BWGPKmuo6Zw?...

The Tour de France Femmes is climbing the Alps! Did you know the Alps are made of cheese? @vanhinsbergen.bsky.social explains in this clip! youtu.be/7wkFVQaMdo8?...

The TdFF races through the Devonian of the northern Massif Central today. Marj and @vanhinsbergen.bsky.social imagined racing a Tour stage back then, 400 million years ago, in this ‘23 clip! 🐟 youtu.be/VFXoz3pSPec?...

Today's M8.8 (orange circle) and the 1952 M9.0 epicentral locations, separated by only 73 years. I wouldn't have thought that possible! Average recurrence intervals don't tell the full story. ⚒️

8.8 earthquake at the Kamchatka subduction zone caused a tsunami in Russia that is about to hit Hawai’i too. This is a quake that is close to the magnitude of the devastating Japan quake of 15 years ago. And the same tectonic cause. Doesn’t look good… earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Science Magazine has retracted this paper of Felisa Wolfe-Simon, and that is beyond rediculous, and a very dangerous move in this time of political interference in science. arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Racing through the Jura today! In ‘23 and ‘24 we made two clips about its geological wonders! Like dinosaur footprints! youtu.be/N7hmLLasZrk?...

And why is the Jura such a strange, croissant-shaped mountain belt in front of the Alps? Marj will tell you! youtu.be/CMeyN5AMGAU?...

L-tectonite. A metamorphic rock, in this case of magmatic origin, with a pure linear fabric. Loose pebble, derived from the Ivrea body’s magmatic crust, NW Italy.

Clearly, geology raised its ugly head again - literally - to make the Ventoux. And its structure has funny ways in influencing the race 🤓🤠

Pyrenees! Mine country! Time for the 2024 story of Metal & Rock! youtu.be/tImHaE0i9w4?...

5.2 Earthquake on the Spanish south coast. Alhama de Murcia fault I presume, a strike-slip fault (i.e., moving sideways). Serious shaking reported, no damage known yet. earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Two years ago, Marj Naudé made this clip for the TdFF about Puy Marie, the volcano along today’s TdF stage parcours ❤️

This was a lot of fun making 😃

"For the first time, scientists from Utrecht, the UK and the US have been able to determine how sea levels must have varied on thousand-year timescales during the last 540 million years." 🧪⚒️🌊 Paper:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X25003243

Press release! We have worked out sea level change over the last 540 million years in much greater detail. Check it out below! #Science #Scicomm @uugeo.bsky.social www.uu.nl/en/news/scie...

Really happy with this paper with my buddies Tom & Carl. Started with online discussions during Covid lockdowns and is now published in Tectonics: "Lithospheric Unzipping Explaining Hot Orogenesis During Continental Subduction" agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Another great global sea level paper by Douwe van der Meer and colleagues from @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social, Illinois USA, and Leeds UK. How short ice ages rapidly changed sea level during the cold periods in the last 540 million years! @uugeo.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A mantle of geodynamicists A wave of seismologists

OK, so we won't do a detailed GeoTdF this year, but we couldn't help ourselves...the geology of the Ventoux is quite clearly correlated with scenes during the climbs. For example, the famous 2016 incident that left Chris Froome running up with a broken bike - clearly geologically pre-determined.

Great, our ‘HOLMES’ ERC Synergy proposal made it to the interview stage! Brussels, here we come! 🥳 With Yamirka Rojas-Agramonte, Arwen Deuss, and Janne Koornneef

Top of Mont Aigoual with Roi🚴🚴

Good to be back in Le Pompidou for our first-year mapping fieldwork! #massifcentral #vivelafrance @uugeo.bsky.social

Are you a geophycisist/petrologist with a taste for numerical modeling and transdisciplinary collaboration? Apply now, and until June 10, for our vacant PhD position on Hadean Paleogeography, in context of the Origins Center's PRELIFE project! www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

The PRELIFE project of the Origins Center Netherlands has 15 PhD projects! Are you a MSc graduate in Physics, Earth Science, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, Maths, Education? Want to reconstruct the conditions on Earth when life originated in the Hadean? Come join us! www.originscenter.nl/prelife/

This is mind-blowing! I have never seen footage of the slip that occurs during an earthquake! Here you see the slip that occurred during the Myanmar earthquake. 🤯 www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ub...

This image cannot be shared enough. This is what our country would look like if we stop pumping water out of our polders. And in the meantime, we have closed all but one earth science departments, because it’s a little but more expensive than the average study. What could possibly go wrong.

I believe that the Precambrian geology community made a secret code among themselves to prevent any other geologist from understanding what they observed in the field. Instead, layers and layers of vague terminology were invented to confuse the crap out of everyone. 🤬

10 more days to apply to this great opportunity at Utrecht University: Come join us as a new Assistant Professor in Seismology! Spread the word :) www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

Common watersnake

Hornblende megacrystals? In metabasalt, Maryland eastcoast, Chesapeak Bay.

Geology of Liege-Bastogne-Liege! 🤠

One of the biggest earthquake hazards of Europe is in the sea of Marmara, the sea south of the major city of Istanbul. We've been expecting earthquakes there since the 1999 Izmit quake. Today's 6.2 Earthquake occurred on the edge of the fault zone making that sea. So far, no major damage reported.

More geology of the Amstel Gold Race!

Amstel Gold Race weekend! 🤗

Als een politicus een visie van verandering en openheid presenteert en daarmee 20 zetels wint, en daarna niets daarvan voor elkaar krijgt, onderwijs en wetenschap ernstig beschadigt, klimaatbeleid frustreert, en extreemrechts in het zadel helpt, heeft ie gefaald en zijn hand overspeeld.

A nice editorial in EOS from editor Thorsten Becker about Bram Vaes & my True Polar Wander paper. eos.org/editor-highl...

Check out our clip about hoe the Hell of the North broke loose!

The final chapter of my brilliant PhD student Bram Vaes is now out in AGU Advances! The paper shows how Earth has been tilting back and forth in the last 320 million years! Really cool stuff with implications for motions in the mantle! agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Visiting an old German iron mine. Really impressive. Mining of a tilted stratigraphic horizon of iron oolite.