In this episode, we answer a series of really excellent listener questions.   Mrs. White, a high school teacher, assigned our plate tectonics  episode to one of her A.P. classes and they came back with some great questions.  Here they are:1- how far have we drilled into the Earth and is there any hope of reading the mantle?  We have drilled about 12 km which is a tiny amount.  This took about 20 years to accomplish and the high temperatures inhibited drilling dee...

How We Know What's Inside of the Earth (and Other Listener Questions)!

A Geology and Earth Science Podcast. Join Chris, an award-winning geology teacher, and Jesse, a geoscience professor, in discussing the amazing features of our planet and their impact on your everyday life. No prior knowledge required. New episodes coming at you every week. Listen, subscribe, share with someone you know!

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Hardpan!  Where did this idea for an episode come from?  Chris has  been doing a ton of yard work lately and it’s not uncommon come across a layer when digging a hole that is next to impossible to penetrate. He has to bust out my pick axe to get through it.  It's  Called Hardpan.Really dense layer that often occurs below the topsoil.  Problems:Roots can’t penetrate into the hardpan (Hayden Valley in YNP).  Trees are easily blown over if they can even grow he...

Tough Soil - The Geology of Hardpan

Some Rocks You SHOULD Know - Metamorphism and Plate Tectonics

Today we really go into the weeds. Jesse and a colleague just published a paper in the journal Nature that proposes a new model for how continents became stable. Stable continents have all the granite at the surface, which contains all the heat producing elements like U and Th and K - elements that decay away. Today, we discuss that paper in detail, and along the way learn a bit about the early Earth, what we know and don't know! Here is a link to the paper, which is open access and can be do...

When Continents Became Stable

Today, Chris and Jesse get into a discussion about Earth’s oldest material.  Earth is 4.568 Billion years old.  First of all, that’s amazing the geochronologists have refined this down to 3 decimal places.  How do we know this?  The oldest grains ever found are 4.38 billion years old.  If that’s the case, then how do we know the Earth is significantly older than that?  Join us as we answer that and many other important questions about Earth’s oldest stuff.  ...

Earth's Oldest Stuff

In this episode, we tackle a listener question regarding planning a geology trip for students.  Both Chris and Jesse have quite a bit of experience in planning and executing field excursions for students.  We believe that seeing geology in the field is one of the most powerful learning opportunities for students of all levels.  In our discussion, we talk about the difficulties in convincing the higher-ups that this is actually a good idea.  We also get into some of the str...

How We Know What's Inside of the Earth (and Other Listener Questions)!

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