Rapid Uplift

 A couple of good articles and a geology podcast. 1) “Spontaneous Revolutions” Darwin’s Diagrams of Plant Movement : Darwin's unbounded curiosity for nature led him down many unexpected ...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/10/darwins-house-plants-water-diviners.html

I came across this lovely evocative passage in Nick Lane's book Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death . "You are not completely spineless. You have a notochord: a flexible rod mad...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-garden-of-ediacara.html

My Guruji, Dr. V. V. Peshwa passed away on August 27, 2024. He was my thesis advisor during my Master's education in Pune. His career as a faculty with the Department of Geology, Pune University ...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/09/dr-vv-peshwa-geologist-extraordinaire.html

Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) was a social reformer from Maharashtra who worked for the emancipation of the lower castes and for improving the lives of peasant agriculturists. In Shetkaryacha Asud ...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/09/jyotirao-phule-on-watershed-management.html

I was hoping that this 1874 geological map of the Paris area was the inspiration behind the startling purple color theme for the recently concluded Paris Olympics. The map was shared on X (forme...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/08/map-paris-olympics-purple.html

Remotely India #14 Do you see anything striking (pun intended) about this geologic map of the Bundelkhand craton? Source: Sarada Mohanty 2023- Proterozoic Basins of the Bundelkhand Craton ...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/07/remotely-india-bundelkhand-mafic-dikes.html

Some readings over the past few weeks: 1) An Earthquake Changed the Course of the Ganges. Could It Happen Again?   Sediment load carried by big rivers like the Ganga often choke up channels an...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/07/ganga-earthquake-nile-deep-sea-habitats.html

My friend Emmanuel Theophilus, who spends a lot of time wandering in the high Kumaon Himalaya, sent me this photo of a feldspar rich gneiss., He observed this loose boulder near the small se...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/06/field-photo-unusual-himalaya.html

Some readings for you: 1) Mining the bottom of the sea : The deep sea bed is considered the last frontier on earth for mining. Large patches of the sea bed are littered with metallic lumps or n...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/06/deep-sea-mining-indian-ocean-infectious.html

Palaeontologist Niles Eldredge explains how one of the most famous papers on paleontology and evolution came to be published:  Steve was determined to be a part of Tom’s plan to do a GSA sym...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/05/evolution-through-punctuated.html

Remotely India #13 Did you know that the easternmost part of the Bengal delta is being compressed into folded hill ranges? These go by the name Chittagong Tripura Fold Belt (CTFB), also referre...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/05/remotely-india-chittagong-tripura-fold.html

Some readings I perused over the past couple of weeks. 1) Our picture of habitability on Europa, a top contender for hosting life, is changing . Jupiter's moon Europa has long been a contender ...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/04/links-europa-life-moon-geology-citizen.html

 Remotely India Series #12 Through the Proterozoic Eon, beginning around 2 billion years ago,  extensional forces acting on continental crust opened up several sedimentary basins across what i...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/03/geological-contacts-angular.html

Reading from the past few weeks-  1) How earthquake scientists solved the mystery of the last “Big One” in the Pacific Northwest . The American northwest is a tectonically active region. A...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/03/links-earthquake-detectives-origin-of.html

Charles Darwin famously called it an 'ábominable mystery'. He was referring to the sudden appearance and diversification of flowering plants in the Cretaceous fossil record. He noticed that thes...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/02/patterns-of-angiosperms-and-insect.html

My latest field geology video is about a small cave in the basalt lava near my house in Pune city. The location is Hanuman tekdi, also known as Fergusson College Hill. The cave is along the slope...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/01/is-it-lava-tube.html

This passage from Helen Czerski's Blue Machine: How The Ocean Shapes Our World gives us a glimpse of the wondrous undersea universe we are just beginning to explore. "We see upside-down waterf...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/01/deep-pacific-upside-down-waterfall.html

I have been experimenting with shooting videos of geological features with an accompanying commentary. Here are two of my recent efforts. Last month I visited Kenjalgad, a small fort near the t...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/01/kenjalgad-perched-aquifers.html

Committees are underappreciated.  xkcd comics . Happy New Year everyone! 

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-making-of-iceland.html

 These two books came highly recommended via friends and social media. I had really enjoyed his earlier book, The Vital Question. It was an exploration of energy constraints on the evolution ...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2023/12/books-transformer-blue-machine.html

One of  my favorite courses during graduate work in Pune was geological Remote Sensing. We focused a lot on visual interpretation of aerial photographs and satellite imagery. Lab work meant hour...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2023/12/geological-contact-sirohi-fold-belt-and.html

A couple of weeks ago Iceland awaited with much anxiety as magma made its way to the surface. A volcanic eruption seemed imminent. That danger seems to have passed for now. Seismicity has abated ...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2023/11/volcanic-versus-human-carbon-dioxide.html

 So near Pune, yet I had never been to this location near Bhor. It is popularly known as necklace point. The river Nira loops its way through the countryside forming a series of lovely mea...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2023/11/river-nira-meander.html

I came across this stunning image of a mineral filled vesicle on the September 2023 cover of Geology. The rock sample was collected from the Louisville Seamount Chain in SW Pacific Ocean. �...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2023/10/photomicrograph-mineral-filled-vesicle.html

Readings over the past few weeks. 1) Taking the First Steps Into a Newly Formed Volcanic Underworld : Maya Wei- Haas describes a fascinating landscape on the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocea...

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2023/10/links-volcanic-underworld-first.html