Science

It’s this year’s Earth Science Week - see the American Geosciences Institute
and Geological Society of London
sites). I have periodically attempted to join the celebrations with posts on
the “[Nine big ideas](https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2009/10/earth-
science-week—sand-and-the-nine-big-ideas.html)” and the [associated videos](https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2012/10/earth-
science-week-the-big-ideas-videos.html), [Earth Science Literacy](https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/10/earth-
science-week-and-earth-science-literacy.html), and the outstanding “[known unknowns](https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2014/10/earth-
science-week-2014.html)” of earth science - please have a re-visit.

These were largely ruminations on what geology is about, the “philosophy” of
the science, and a little advocacy for greater awareness. The question of
why geology, what makes it fascinating, were subtexts, so my attention this
year has been caught by a piece from September 2015 by Julia Turner, editor in
chief of Slate. Titled “Your World, Rocked: A good introduction to geology
course is actually a course in time,” it is an eloquent (and personal)
testimony to the value (sometimes not so obvious) of even a modest exposure to
how our home planet works. It is, of course from the perspective of US
education, but that matters not at all - its message is universal. The “rocks
for jocks” amusement in the introduction is purely American - and so true. I
taught Geology 101, otherwise known as “rocks for jocks” for several years,
with many rewards and frustrations. Chief amongst the latter were the many
kids who told me how much they enjoyed it, having had no idea at all about
geology, and regretted that they were too far down their academic path (having
left the science requirement until last) to pursue it further. I doubt that
problem has gone away - to the loss of the science. There were many kids who
were a joy to teach and interact with (although here I do not include the
young woman who entered my office, closed the door, and declared that
“Professor Welland, I’d do anything for an A”). But I digress…

In celebration of Earth Science Week, and in the hope that it might persuade
just one young person to take a geology class, I am taking the liberty of
reproducing in its entirety Julia Turner’s piece from
Slate:

A good introduction to geology course is actually a course in time.

By Julia Turner

Let me start by defending geology’s honor. Is there any other discipline
that a rhyme so easily reduces to ridicule? Nearly every campus has some
version of “rocks for jocks,” the intro geology course touted as the easiest
way for granite-brained humanities majors to fulfill their science
requirements without significant intrusion on their time or erosion of their
GPAs.

But you shouldn’t take geology because it’s easy. (It isn’t necessarily
easy—the geology class I took, from a bright-eyed elfin woman with the
pleasing, rocklike name of Jan Tullis, certainly wasn’t.) You should take
geology because it will fundamentally transform the way you see the world.

I mean this literally. Understanding geology gives you a new way to
interpret the visual data of the planet. Sometimes this can feel like X-ray
vision or a sixth sense. The color of the soil can tell you what it’s made
of. The lightning bolts of white across that cliff the highway blasted
through? Quartz veins, a sign of metamorphic activity, way back, when
fissures opened up in bending, cracking stone, and mineral-laden water
coursed through. Looking out of a plane window at the contours of a mountain
range, you can tell from shape alone whether the peaks are old or new—or
rather, which are very very old and which are just old. (It’s the opposite
of human aging: cragginess is a sign of relative youth, and smoothness comes
only with time.) And the words! Schist. Nickeliferous. Gneiss. Each one with
its own dense poetry.

Geology helps the land tell you stories. I remember flying once and noticing
funny little slab-like mountains, each one distinct from the next, lying in
parallel rows. Where once I would have seen only mystery, now I could
imagine how those mountains came to be—a sedimentary bed, layer upon flat
layer of different types of rock, broken and thrust upward by the movement
of the plates, revealing a cross section in which the softer rocks had
eventually eroded away, leaving only these orderly little slabs.

Geology is a gorgeous way to contemplate the abyss.

But geology does more than give you something to think about when you
examine pebbles on a beach or go swimming in a quarry. You should also take
geology because there is no better way to gain perspective on the
fleetingness of life. Any good intro geology course is actually a course in
time. You’ve heard the statistic: If the whole planet has been around for a
single 24-hour day, the dinosaurs showed up at 10:56 p.m. and we just before
11:59. But imagine spending hours holding that thought in your mind,
learning what happened during all the time that preceded us. Understanding,
in a real way, how long the planet has been around; how slow, patient, and
indifferent the movement of the rocks beneath us has been; how insignificant
in the scheme of things our fervid civilizations and wars and inventions
really are—this is a head trip better than any you’ll experience during the
concert at Spring Fling…

Taking geology actually had a funny side effect for me. I came into the
class an avid environmentalist. I was a child of the ’90s. I cared about
whales. I recycled. I spent a semester on a farm. I wanted to keep humans
from changing and destroying the planet. But geology complicated my
understanding of this desire. The planet has been changing for millennia.
It’s been destroyed and remade again and again. The temperature used to be
different. The continents were in different places. Different creatures
roamed the land. The environmentalist instinct to preserve the planet
exactly as it is began to seem not altruistic, but selfish. The planet is a
tough cookie. This pile of rocks doesn’t need saving. What we were trying to
save, it seemed, was the version of the planet that works best for
ourselves. And, sure, future generations and all the other species that
currently live here. Still a worthy goal, of course. Perhaps an even
worthier one, when you consider how unusual and unlikely Earth’s menagerie
is. But geology made me think about it in a new way.

College students often enter university with an outsized view of their own
significance. It’s good to study things that make you realize how
unimportant you are. As a history major, I took a lot of classes that helped
me understand how small my life is in the span of human existence. But there
are a few courses—geology, astronomy, perhaps particle physics—that force
students to confront true vastness, that make you consider the
insignificance not just of your life, but of your entire species. Geology is
a gorgeous way to contemplate the abyss.

This is valuable, in the end, because it both helps you care less and makes
you care more. What’s a bad day in the scheme of things? But then again, why
not make each one count? Something to consider, next time you contemplate
the contours of the land.

Indeed.

re the stunning image at the head of this post:

Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli (land surface,
shallow water, clouds). Enhancements by Robert Simmon (ocean color,
compositing, 3D globes, animation). Data and technical support: MODIS Land
Group; MODIS Science Data Support Team; MODIS Atmosphere Group; MODIS Ocean
Group Additional data: USGS EROS Data Center (topography); USGS Terrestrial
Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center (Antarctica); Defense Meteorological
Satellite Program (city lights)

This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of
the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations,
scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the
land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic
of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are
freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public.

Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-
sensing device-NASA’sModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer,
or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the
Terra
satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of
terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and
coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations
collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every
eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the
surface on any single day. Two different types of ocean data were used in
these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or
chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation
dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS
observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica
made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of
two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of
thermal infra-red imagery over the poles.

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/science/