Melbourne (II)

Highlights from Goldschmidt:

Watching A. Hoffman erupt, strombolian style, when C. Spandler presented his new olivine diffusion data, cutting orders of magnitude off the re-equilibration time of melt inclusions.

E. Hendy’s description of what happens to coral during a bleaching event, as determined by synchrotron tomography, personalized the pain of losing one’s autotrophic symbiotes in a way I’ve never experienced before. I don’t know how I’ll ever calcify without them.

S. Ader’s fifteen extra minutes of fame- due to a scheduling mishap, she got 20 minutes of question time instead of three, and the discussion and back-and-forth between her and other researchers working on correlated strata was awesome in its earnestness and spirit of co-operation and learning.

Names on papers are actually people: It turns out that Prof. Kirschvink, the guy who first introduced the snowball Earth hypothesis back in 1992, is a feisty Californian named Joe, who seems to suspect that we are all actually Martians. It can be kinda odd when a name that exists only in bibliographies suddenly turns into a human being.

Sponges! In the Cryogenian! If G. Love’s paper is as detailed as his talk, it will be a classic.

Xenon isotope people are seriously smart. I had no idea how S. Crowther transformed her isotopic ratios the way that she did, but it all made sense in the end.

There is such a thing as a stupid question. I should know. I asked far too many of them.