As someone who's spent an inordinate amount of time in Yellowstone geyser basins... you absolutely cannot stop the public from touching algae if they want to touch it. 😂

According to NWS, San Francisco just recorded the highest Summer water level on record. #KingTides

Ouch. Flood protection infrustructure is typically designed for a 1-in-50-year or 1-in-100-year flood. New study finds, “At nearly half of the 130 sites analyzed in the study, a flood expected once every 100 years in 1900 now occurs at least once per decade.” news.tulane.edu/pr/sea-level...

Planetary Research Jobs: A new job announcements platform for planetary science https://blog.planetary-research.org/2026/06/08/planetary-research-jobs-a-new-job-announcements-platform-for-planetary-science/

Rio Grande River at Albuquerque, upstream and downstream.

Oh look, NSF is sending out job ads to list servs in at least the Earth Sciences that are looking for Trump flunkies, more or less, to serve as program directors. This has gone out to multiple mailing lists from multiple NSF accounts.

This bowl of tea is dedicated to the Chicago Cubs.

This is something I have never seen before on satellite. Clouds perfectly outlining roads. Just incredibly neat imagery of Houston, Texas this morning. Massive shoutout to Ethan Mok who discovered it (on Twitter).

#DearDrMcNutt I have an idea for the boldest big challenge, we could do Mars Sample Return. Scientist priority for 3 decades, we now know enough to find ideal igneous rocks and even rocks capturing redox chemistry like that possibly associated with with life. Wait…I’m being told…oh dear, oh no…

No?

Today, the legendary JR begins her last journey to the shipwrecking yard. Home to many of us, she helped to understand plate tectonics, climate, deep biosphere, earthquakes/volcanoes, and was an integral part in international science and collaboration 🫡 www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/...

“The move signals the need for the White House to offer higher pay to attract skilled professionals for its efforts to track and obtain critical minerals and advanced materials needed for defense and other strategic industries.” And then doesn’t list geologists 🤦🏻‍♀️ www.mining.com/web/trump-is...

What powered the Moon's late-stage volcanism? 🌙🌋 Our experiments & modeling published in EPSL with Rajdeep Dasgupta show garnet in the young lunar mantle, pointing to deep fertile material by mantle overturn or prolonged mantle convection. @riceeeps.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ep...

A beautiful day! My life has been dominated for the last year by building the Deep Time Trail at Siccar Point to celebrate James Hutton's 300th birthday. Formal launch of the trail is today, it is looking great, and I'm mightily proud of what has been achieved. james-hutton.org/deep-time-tr...

Can we please not repeat the mistakes of Mayak? oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/05/21/r...

A sneak peek inside our new book, "Montana Rocks!" Author Robert C. Thomas features 60 geologic sites revealing how Montana’s landscape formed through deep time—from Beartooth Plateau to Billings. 📚Pre-order: Geosociety.co/MontanaRocks

I hope I don’t lose too many friends over this but…I wrote an essay about why Pluto isn’t a planet—and why it matters.

The 2003 masterpiece The Core, as always, innovates over its peers by having Stanley Tucci be an evil geologist

Why have SSTs in the Gulf of Mexico been warming over 2x faster than the global oceans since 2012? I cover the mystery in my post today: yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/05/some...

The most California thing I ever did during grad school: deployed a seismometer next to an In-N-Out burger

Slightly increase a band. Ben Folds 5.01

They did a pretty good version of a plunging anticline aerial view with this (maybe an elongated one/doubly-plunging shape). I wonder if something like Sheep Mountain in Wyoming was a spot they used a photo of while creating this.

Long shot but I follow lots of planetary people here so let's try: I'm looking for an expert on icy moons to comment for a news story about an experiment showing some awesome phyllo-dough like ice might form through cryovolcanism. Anyone up to comment? DM or email if so. Reposts appreciated.

Rivers versus fault. Carrizo Plain, California, USA.

"Fifteen Maps that Changed How We See the Ocean Floor" Based on his research for The Library of Lost Maps, James Cheshire of @ucl.ac.uk pulled together these seminal works of Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen! cc @seabed2030.bsky.social 🌊 ⚒️ 🌎 🌍 🌏 libraryoflostmaps.com/2026/05/06/f...

We have a new paper. This one is about generating highly differentiated, low F melts through a series of interconnected magma chambers, each undergoing only moderate crystallization (moderate F), with the effects compounding after each successive staging. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Beautiful slab of Roxbury Conglomerate (puddingstone) I picked up yesterday at the show. It’s going to be a great teaching tool on future field trips!

The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) is higher than at any point in at least the past one million years (according to evidence from paleoclimate records). More climate change indicators: zacklabe.com/climate-chan...

End of the semester ritual - updating the graphs in my climate change PowerPoint. ⚒️

While there weren’t a lot, it’s worth noting that basically all the academic jobs I saw last year were the standard “we pay you for 6 or 9 months and you raise the rest of your salary through grants” format, which no longer seems plausible.

🔭 Comet R3 PanSTARRS Behind Satellite Trails Image Credit & Copyright: Uli Fehr ap260427

Also here’s more fact sheets that include hybrid cars and wind turbines so you can also use other examples to change it up 🙂 mineralseducationcoalition.org/mining-miner...

Oh

Holy smokes. "...about half of global ethylene and polyethylene supplies are either offline or directly impacted...." "'These are unparalleled numbers,' she added, citing infrastructure damage, feedstock shortages and ongoing logistical disruptions." 🔌💡 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The world is warming. Every country is warming. www.ShowYourStripes.info #ShowYourStripes

Is anyone a CPG (certified professional geologist)?

Looking at the absolutely massive scars left by the Archimedes' screws on the old OMCO mining tool is a reminder of just how destructive commercial deep sea mining could have been if it started in the 80s and how much we still have left to learn before we can allow the industry to progress.

Spam journal email from Steven King at the journal "Quantitative Trails in Urology" is a solidly unusual combination for today.

Mud volcano islands off Azerbaijan are featured in today’s NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day! It was a great pleasure to contribute to this! science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-...

During literature research on the Minoan Eruption of Santorini I came across a study arguing for the eruption’s role in the emergence of the smallpox virus. The eruption caused local climatic changes and mammal migrations, aiding the virus' evolution. Wild! 🌋🦠 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Adding to what @drspacejunk.bsky.social has written: I keep noticing how much ice has melted between 1972 and 2026.

I have been thinking about this lately, so it’s nice to see an article about how fast tracking mineral projects in the US may end up actually slowing or stopping projects all together as mining companies risk their “social license to operate” www.mining.com/fast-trackin...

It’s April 18th, so time to repost some of my great-grandfather’s photos of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake

News: a leading NSF supported University of Oklahoma atmospheric science summer undergraduate research program that has mentored hundreds of top atmospheric scientists over two decades has been canceled for 2026 due to funding loss. (repost w/correct link) More: tinyurl.com/3zjzf7vu

It’s fleet week here, so jets have been overhead the last couple days, but I saw this one and um, is that a U-2???

This was a tough one to write, and I took a bit of a personal risk sharing my own career-long process of discovery from tentatively swayed by the potential for deep-sea mining to convinced that we are simply not ready.

This is your brain on #minerals A specimen of geyserite (a type of siliceous rock that forms around hot springs and geysers) from Fire Hole River, Yellowstone, USA

Anyone else think it is one of the dumbest, most ridiculous, most insane things ever that Perseverance's sample tubes have just been... abandoned on Mars? The science in those tubes could be revolutionary & they're just going to sit there, watching dust devils twirling across the skyline.