Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Geosonnet 35



The bluestone of which Melbourne is constructed
Is fresh basalt, from NVP derived
And yet no ocean slab is here subducted
No spreading ridge or hotspot has survived
With late Cretaceous Antarctic divorce
The margin should be passive, fires spent
And yet there must be an upwelling force
As mantle melting is quite evident.
Cratonic root plows through Asthenosphere
The slowest ship to ever voyage north
Yet models show convection will appear
So decompression melts can issue forth.
  Melb's gloomy architecture isn't fake
  The town's built from Australia's stony wake.



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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Geosonnet 34



Our bodies' carbon, oxygen derives
From hearts of stars, extinguished into dust
Life resurrects these molecules, and strives
For meaning, ere death follows, as it must.
The lifeless gardening of impact rocks
Makes dust of stones and boulders on the Moon.
Inevitable crumbling, by the clocks
Chonometrize the sands of time, so soon
The robot eyes, which scan the moon for heat
Will see long-dead ejecta cooling fast
But when time's millstone's work is incomplete
The radiating warmth of rock will last.
  While entropy will not release its hold
   Observing it lets history unfold

Geology 42 1059

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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Geosonnet 33



The swiftest planet, closest to the sun
Is roasted in the star's infernal gaze.
In polar craters, dawn has n'er begun
Eternal darkness freezes gasses there.
Though sunshine never penetrates the holes,
Reflected light creates a subtle gloam
night vision robot, orbiting the poles
While Earthly radar guides the cam'ra home.
Prokofiev hosts lightly colored frost
In other craters ice is black as char
A lag from which the water has been lost?
Organic/ sulfur condensate? Like tar?
   From springs? Or solar wind? A comet's blow?
   From whence this water comes we do not know.


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Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Geosonnet 32


Southwest from where Doc Livingstone was found
The grand conglomerate caps old black shales.
The rhenium, in micro-pyrite bound,
Can date when diamictite ice prevails.
The wild’s call, beyond the Yukon Gold
Hides ancient glaciation in the wilds.
To test the Snowball Earth, we ask, “How old”
These jigsaw continents, frozen or mild?
Just past the pleasure dome of Kublai Khan
Mongolia preserves more ancient rock
The age determination’s not forgone
We must assess the isotopic clock.
   For fifty million years, and then for five,
   The planet froze, yet somehow stayed alive.


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