Thursday, July 28, 2016

Geosonnet 45



When zircon needs to leave its life behind
Clastic witness protection can be used.
Trace element analysis can’t find
The host whose hospitality’s refused.
Once protolith identity is gone
Stool pigeon phase inclusions spill the beans.
When D value deductions can be drawn
In apatite or sphene, we have the means
To fingerprint magmatic strontium
Deducing silica at the same time
Then using cerium and yttrium
Included zircon’s fingered for its crimes.
  A river cruise while host weathers to dust:
  A sedimentary crime of hate, or lust?



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Thursday, July 21, 2016

Geosonnet 44


Antarctica’s a frozen realm of ice

Yet troglodytic hydrospheres remain
Radar reflectors, frozen lakes entice
Ice fishermen to see what they contain
Before the ice age, glacial domes were seas
Below sea sediments can still be found.
The lake is mostly glac’ers which unfreeze
Trapped ocean water seeps up from the ground.
The surface sediments are oxidized.
The sulfate in the brine is unreduced.
Lest oxygen at depth leave us surprised
Dissolved O2 in meltwater’s deduced.
   Alas, no fish were sampled by the drill
   Just microbes that an ice age couldn’t kill


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Sunday, July 17, 2016

Geosonnet 43



Marsupial invaders from the South
Make North America their newfound home.
Alpacas, llamas, spitting from the mouth
Run off to South America to roam.
The rocks in Panama suggest the land
Connected continents by Miocene.
Pliocene movement, on the other hand
Means radiative retardation’s seen.
A sea of trees, could rainforest impair
Migration of savannah-dwelling beast?
The ice age brought colder and drier air
And grasslands on which ungulates can feast.
   Tectonics may have built the bridge of land.
   Ten million years unused, we understand.



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