Don't Panic Geocast

Episode 5 - "We actually don't call it the Tertiary anymore"

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This week we discuss the geologic time scale, meteorites, and fitness trackers!

Pittsburgh Fireball Feb. 17, 2015

  • Video of meteor
  • Article with details of entry
  • Animation from meteor’s perspective
  • NASA Fireball Network

    • Geologic Time-it’s really big (and deep)

    • The geologic time scale
    • Despite all kinds of fun things to demo how vast it is…still hard to understand
    • Cosmic Calendar
    • Pneumonic devices for timescale-and why do we need to know it? (several examples)
    • We make all kinds of assumptions about rocks that span millions of years, but an outcrop can change over the course of just a few years/ten years
    • Example of things changing in days to hours
    • Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle

      • How do we begin to define Geologic time?

      • International Commission on Stratigraphy: “ International Geologic Time Scale; thus setting global standards for the fundamental scale for expressing the history of the Earth”
      • We have to have a baseline so that we can all talk about the “same” rocks across the world

        • Age-dating rocks

        • Many techniques, and the actual dates between our epochs change all the time as our age-dating techniques evolve
        • Many periods/eras/epochs are marked by “catastrophic” occurrences, hence making them natural boundaries, but the dates change.
        • 5 major extinction events

          • Time as an arrow v. time as a cycle

          • Catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism and gradualism
          • Constantly evolving and vastly interesting
          • Thinking about the definitions of time and how we as humans try to grasp the enormity of geologic time in particular is humbling.

            • Fun Paper Friday

            • In an attempt to prolong our time on Earth, we’ll talk about accuracy of fitness apps. (John wears a Fitbit Flex and uses the Fitbit Aria scale.)
            • “Accuracy of Smartphone Applications and Wearable Devices for Tracking Physical Activity Data”, Case et al., Feb 2015, Journal of the American Medical Association
              • ...more
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              Don't Panic GeocastBy John Leeman and Shannon Dulin
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