Monday, May 30, 2011

Geochemical googling

Razib over at Gene Expression has recently pointed out a new Google tool, which allows one to look for correlated searches and the geographic breakdown of those searches. Surprisingly, he failed to apply it to geochemistry. So I shall.

Here is the distribution for “Geochronology”

The three top correlated words or phrases were:
0.9361 porphyry
0.9315 f 650 gs
0.9309 bmw f 650

Which suggests that the f-series beamer bikes have been around for a geologically significant time period. I suspect the correlation refers to percentage of total searches from each state. I am not particularly surprised that the rocky mountain west is more geochemical than the rest of the country.

Not surprisingly, Zircon has a fairly similar distribution.

The matched terms are also bizarre:
0.8794 high density foam
0.8757 garmin geko
0.8719 snowboard gear

Archean is interesting:

The main distribution maps fairly well with the Archean Wyoming craton, one of the two Archean cratons in the US. I don’t know why the residents of the Superior craton are so disinterested in their geology.

It matches up with:
0.8993 motocross tires
0.8921 were wolves
0.8907 proterozoic

And finally, for a bit of soft-rock affirmative action, I looked at the distribution for global warming.

This was much more widespread, and interestingly, was somewhat inversely correlated with the temperature anomaly for the last 90 days (from NOAA):
at

1 comment:

  1. Gaythia02 June, 2011 03:13

    This is a fun tool!

    Why on earth select the term "archean"? I would think that anything geological is of interest in Wyoming, even if what you are really interested in is avoiding the craton and hitting oil and gas instead. The overthrust belt comes into play here, I believe. Whereas I can think of no real reason to get all that excited about the Canadian shield. Solid, secure, but basically boring.

    Regarding global warming, I can only assume that the residents of Wyoming are searching for global warming for different reasons than residents of Vermont. I tried comparing "global warming" with "climate change". Here Wyoming drops back. Vermonters could be expected to use the more politically correct term, although it should be noted that there is a time shift, with global warming (the term) peaking in 2007 and climate change in 2010.

    Coloradans might be checking on their NCAR and NOAA reports. But that doesn't explain the other Rocky Mountain states, like Montana.

    ReplyDelete