The rock hard truth of mass extinctions
Paleobiologist and geologist Jon Payne discusses Earth’s previous mass extinctions including his work on the largest extinction in Earth’s history, how geologists define boundaries, our current...
View ArticleMassive changes under the Arctic ice
Polar oceanographer Kevin Arrigo discusses the often regarded-as-alien environment of the polar regions, the future of environmental awareness of the oceans, and a breaking discovery that may change...
View ArticleEarth’s Tipping Points & Abrupt Climate Change
Climate researcher and host of PBS’s Earth: The Operators’ Manual Richard Alley discusses abrupt climate variations in Earth’s history and what he defines as climate tipping points – leading to a...
View ArticleDateline Mars: First news from Curiosity
In 1968, the Saturn V rocket pushed the frontier 250,000 miles (400,000 km) to the moon. Now, in 2012, Curiosity has moved the frontier 1,000 times farther. Planetary geologist and member of the Mars...
View ArticleA cosmic twin study
Astrobiologist David Grinspoon takes the anthropocene off-planet to our nearest cosmic neighbor Venus and discusses what we learn about climate change here on Earth from Venus’ catastrophic green-house...
View ArticleMasters of the Anthropocene Boundary
It’s our 50th episode! To celebrate we sit down with four members of the Anthropocene Working Group: the scientists and experts who are deciding whether or not we formally adopt the Anthropocene into...
View ArticleExtremophiles of the Anthropocene
If we’re looking for how life will respond to rapid environmental changes, we should probably look to bacteria adapted to live in extreme environments – what scientists call extremophiles....
View ArticleThe (mad) science of geoengineering
Climate scientist Ken Caldeira begins with a discussion of ocean acidification, a term he helped coin. He follows with the story of how his name became attached to geoengineering, from his own...
View Article[ESSAY] The crazy history of 3 ridiculous geological theories
Science is constantly reinventing itself, revising past theories and proposing new ideas that hopefully further our understanding of the world. Copernicus proposed the heliocentric solar system,...
View ArticleBONUS: The Iron Islands – 2,000 Mya
On Earth, nearly all iron ore comes from specific rocks called banded iron formations, the vast majority of which originate around 2,000 million years ago (2,400-1,800 Mya to be more precise). At this...
View ArticleThe first mountains – 500 Mya
The Red Orogeny is the earliest piece of Westeros’ geologic history that we can infer with the available data. From our analysis of the Red Keep Sandstone and the Winterfell Limestone, we know that...
View ArticleThe sand ran red – 450 Mya
The scandalous wedding of young Robb Stark to Jeyne Westerling isn’t the only thing to have been stained red in the history of Westeros (spoiler!). The Red Keep, home to the Iron Throne in King’s...
View ArticleDiving the tropical reefs of Winterfell – 300 Mya
Long ago, the territory surrounding Winterfell was not prowled by direwolves, but rather by corals, fish, and perhaps the occasional reef shark. While we know that Winterfell’s protective walls are...
View ArticleAs the Moon rose, so did the Lannisters – 80-100 Mya
The rise of the Mountains of the Moon is perhaps the best-documented geologic event on Westeros, and is directly responsible for the tremendous wealth of the House Lannister. Similar to the Black...
View ArticleThe rise of the Black (Mountains) – 60-80 Mya
Determining the age of the various Westeros mountain ranges is problematic without geochemistry; the wildlings make sample collection difficult. However, we can infer ages based on the current shape,...
View ArticleLand of ice – 40 Mya
It was a land of ice indeed. Forty million years ago, a giant ice sheet, likely over a mile thick, covered nearly two-thirds of Westeros, and extended as far south as 40° north latitude, just shy of...
View ArticleWhen Dorne boiled – 30-40 Mya
The salt of the Salt Shore, almost certainly an evaporite deposit, suggests that the region south of the Red Mountains, known as Dorne, was once submerged beneath a shallow sea. Some time in the past,...
View ArticleThe Earth split Westeros from Essos – 25 Mya
Twenty-five million years ago (Mya), a line of fire and molten rock cut through the planet’s crust – like Wildfire cut through the ships at Blackwater Bay – and separated the previously joined...
View ArticleWesteros today, and the size of the Game of Thrones planet
From the texts, we know that the kingdoms have persisted for thousands of years, with many kings rising and falling as the tides (though we won’t concern ourselves with kings or kingdoms here). From...
View ArticleBuilding the geologic history of Game of Thrones
Ever wonder what Westeros looked like long before the Starks, Baratheons, Lannisters, or Targaryens roamed its surface? How far back can we really imagine the history of the Game of Thrones planet?...
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