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The Earth Story

@earthstory / earthstory.tumblr.com

This is the blog homepage of the Facebook group "The Earth Story" (Click here to visit our Facebook group). “The Earth Story” are group of volunteers with backgrounds throughout the Earth Sciences. We cover all Earth sciences - oceanography, climatology, geology, geophysics and much, much more. Our articles combine the latest research, stunning photography, and basic knowledge of geosciences, and are written for everyone!
We hope you find us to be a unique home for learning about the Earth sciences, and we hope you enjoy!
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The Sweet Smell of Rain

Most of you are probably familiar with the earthy smell that spring rains often release into the air, dubbed "petrichor" by Australian scientists in a 1964 Nature paper. At the time, it was thought that the smell came from accumulated oils in the soil that plants had secreted during arid conditions. When it rained, those oils were released. Recent research out of MIT and published in Nature Communications gives a new understanding on how those oils and other soil based compounds are released into the atmosphere. Using slow motion filming techniques, they discovered that when a raindrop falls on a porous surface it traps air bubbles underneath. These air bubbles shoot up through the water droplet, releasing aerosols that can be blown by the wind and spread. The paper suggests that these air bubbles not only carry the smell, but can also carry bacteria, such as E. Coli and other soil based compounds.

They started by testing the permeability of 28 types of surfaces (12 engineered materials and 16 soil samples) by timing how long it took for water to seep through long tubes filled with each material. Then, they made it rain; they tested rain at different intensities from varying heights and captured the results on film.

It has been known for some time that raindrops create aerosols when they fall on water, but this is the first time that this effect has been discovered on soil. The research also showed that the aerosol effect is greater when the rain is light, perhaps because there is more time for aerosols to form and float.

This is pretty exciting news; this particular mechanism might help explain why soil based compounds are often found floating high up in the atmosphere.

For further reading on the paper published in Nature in 1964 on plant oils, visit: https://www.nature.com/articles/201993a0

Picture Credit: www.tOrange.us

-Colter

Source: facebook.com
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reblogged

So part of my thesis focuses on paleomagnetism. Here’s some pictures from Joe Kirschvink’s lab at Caltech that I was fortunate to spend the weekend working in. (In case you didn’t know who Kirschvink is, he’s the one who was the original publisher of the snowball earth theory, and the one who invented all these machines and programs to process paleomag samples)

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earthstory

Joe also once had a fridge fail over a weekend. That freezer was holding human brains.

No I am not making this up.

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Surreal Fungoid (from Yith?)

Known to scientists as Clathrus ruber, this smelly mushroom is a member of the stinkhorn family, who imitate rotting corpses to attract spore dispersing flies. It lives on rotting wood or in soil throughout southern Europe, though its range is slowly shifting northwards as the world warms. They grow up to 15cm tall and are called latticed or basket stinkhonrs in old English parlance.

Loz

Image credit: Patricia Woods

http://bit.ly/1Nj9NM4

Source: facebook.com
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The Sweet Smell of Rain Most of you are probably familiar with the earthy smell that spring rains often release into the air, dubbed "petrichor" by Australian scientists in a 1964 Nature paper. At the time, it was thought that the smell came from accumulated oils in the soil that plants had secreted during arid conditions. When it rained, those oils were released. New research out of MIT and published in Nature Communications gives a new understanding on how those oils and other soil based compounds are released into the atmosphere. Using slow motion filming techniques, they discovered that when a raindrop falls on a porous surface it traps air bubbles underneath. These air bubbles shoot up through the water droplet, releasing aerosols that can be blown by the wind and spread. The paper suggests that these air bubbles not only carry the smell, but can also carry bacteria, such as E. Coli and other soil based compounds. They started by testing the permeability of 28 types of surfaces (12 engineered materials and 16 soil samples) by timing how long it took for water to seep through long tubes filled with each material. Then, they made it rain; they tested rain at different intensities from varying heights and captured the results on film.  It has been known for some time that raindrops create aerosols when they fall on water, but this is the first time that this effect has been discovered on soil. The research also showed that the aerosol effect is greater when the rain is light, perhaps because there is more time for aerosols to form and float. This is pretty exciting news; this particular mechanism might help explain why soil based compounds are often found floating high up in the atmosphere. For video of the aerosols in action, visit: http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-raindrops-releasing-aerosols-during-slow-motion-impact For further reading on the paper published in Nature in 1964 on plant oils, visit: http://chemport.cas.org/cgi-bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&action=reflink&origin=npg&version=1.0&coi=1%3ACAS%3A528%3ADyaF2cXnsVCmsg%3D%3D&pissn=0028-0836&pyear=1965&md5=e69431f269998ab0b70dd6759a53d72c For the new research from MIT, visit: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150114/ncomms7083/full/ncomms7083.html Picture Credit: www.tOrange.us -Colter 

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