Editorials
NEW TOOLS, NEW VISIONS, NEW INSIGHTS
There’s some small irony that I’m Principal Editor for an Elements issue on luminescence, since I have partial but significant redgreen color blindness. Invisible to me is hypersthene’s faint pink pleochroism, I can’t say that actinolite is green in thin section and hornblende is brown, although the former looks paler and the latter darker, and a long-time coworker enjoys pointing out that I walk right past blue-green copper staining on some granitic rock faces. My color blindness, of course, had no influence on the excellent present issue. It was the Guest Editors, Lutz Nasdala, Emmanuel Fritsch, and Jens Götze, with the vision to propose an issue on luminescence and who did the serious work of wrangling authors and polishing their articles. Where my limited color vision does come in is in my appreciation for the article authors’ clear explanations of how to take luminescence beyond pretty pictures, employing spectroscopy and other measurements to quantify the emitted light, explain its causes, and share some of the rich insights that luminescence gives about geologic processes.
EARLY—AND FUTURE—PLANETARY ENVIRONMENTS
The topic of this newest Elements issue that you are about to embark on is par ticularly close to my heart because it is all about the early Earth, which is one of the main reasons I became a geologist and a geochemist in the first place and which has taken up a big part of my ensuing almost 40 year long research career. Becoming a geologist was a choice no one from the medical world I grew up in as an only child of two doctors, one a surgeon, expected I would make, especially given the poor prospect at the time (in Denmark) of ever being able to make a living out of it, at least compared with practicing medicine.
CELEBRATING THE CREATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF JAPANESE EARTH SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS
By Becky Lange | April, 2024
The first car I bought was a used 1978 Honda Accord hatchback. I don’t recall what I paid, but the car served me well, with no repairs required, for the five years I owned it as a graduate student. The only other make and model I considered was a used Toyota Corolla. At the time in the mid-1980s, I would not have touched a used American-made car with a 10-foot pole because of their gas-guzzling thirst and frequent need of repair, which stood in marked contrast to the fuel efficiency and reliability of available Japanese cars. The reasons for this contrast, in this era, are well explained in Ralph Nader’s 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, and in David Halberstam’s 1986 book, The Reckoning. In the latter, Halberstam compares two auto companies, Nissan in Japan and Ford in the United States, during the four decades following World War II.
NEW YEAR, BROADER PERSPECTIVE
By Sumit Chakraborty | February, 2024
As I write this editorial, festivities of the holiday season are in the air. Wishes of “Happy Holidays” are floating across continents, crossing religious and cultural boundaries. It is not just Christmas or Hannukah or Deepawali—there are people celebrating Lohri, or Ashura, or the Yalda night, or Kwanzaa, or Poush Parbon, or one of many other festivals. Different stories, different legends, some celebrations more prominent than others, but there is one common theme: the human ability to celebrate light at the darkest of times, to seek out and worship the Sun when it is least present (to the extent that these traditions all evolved in the Northern Hemisphere). That ability is called for more than ever this year. As I sit here nursing a warm cup in my palms, I feel grateful for the privilege of having experienced festivals of light in so many different forms—it gives context and perspective to much cultural diversity and difference.
MIGHT THE LEGACY OF THE MANHATTAN PROJECT INSPIRE HUMANKIND TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE?
By Janne Blichert-Toft | December, 2023
My personal shock aside, this kind of conversation is not unique, nor a recent phenomenon. It is one of the reasons why the European Association of Geochemistry, now over a decade ago, came up with the Geochemical Perspectives booklet series, written on invitation-only by the more senior scientists of our geochemistry community (so admittedly, but by definition, not DEI compliant), to ensure that we commit the history, players, and evolution of our field to paper while still in living memory so as to pass on the foundation of our discipline to our students and early-career scientists—many of whom today do not seem to realize that the field of isotope geochemistry is rooted in the WWII Manhattan Project.
MAKING TIME TO CULTIVATE OUR INTERDISCIPLINARY CURIOSITY
By Becky Lange | October, 2023
Interdisciplinary research is often extolled and celebrated, including within the Earth and environmental sciences, but not always practiced in our educational programs. Last summer, I was able to participate, albeit in a small way, in an interdisciplinary approach to my department’s capstone environmental field course. It is one of several courses taught each summer at the University of Michigan’s field station in Wyoming. Owing to a last-minute change in personnel, I found myself part of the faculty line-up. I was not an obvious substitute as my research interests place me squarely in the “hard-rock, solid-Earth” side of my department, and not the “hydrological, surficial processes, environmental science” side. It was a delightful experience as it gave me the opportunity to learn new things (e.g., hydrology and chemistry of stream waters, slope stability and landslide hazards, etc.) and add some new course content, in large part inspired by this issue of Elements, “Large Igneous Provinces: Versatile Drivers of Global Change.”
NAVIGATING THE GLOBAL PAPER CRISIS
By Esther Posner | August, 2023
Toilet paper hasn’t been the only paper shortage to wreak havoc worldwide in recent years, although it has certainly received the most press coverage. Looming lockdowns in early 2020 sprung consumers into a paranoid frenzy to stock up on essentials (and what could be more essential than toilet paper?!), while simultaneously igniting a major spike in online purchasing.1 I’ll admit, as an American living in Germany I did the same thing. But it wasn’t the panicbuying of toilet paper that led to its shortage. Rather, the paper and pulp industry—while facing staff shortages, transportation delays, and social distancing limitations—was forced to shift production toward paperboard (i.e., cardboard) to meet the skyrocketing demand for e-commerce shipping material. Picture that ever-growing pile of light brown paperboard boxes and envelopes in your house and the tightly packed, yet overflowing paper recycling bins down the road. That is where the toilet paper went: into your shipping boxes.
IN SEARCH OF MIND-BLOWING SCIENCE
By Richard Harrison | June, 2023
When was the last scientific talk you saw that totally blew your mind? You know, the kind of talk that you walk away from of thinking, “Wow—this changes EVERYTHING!” For me, I can clearly remember every detail of a talk I saw over 20 years ago in Strasbourg and the very moment I realised that my future research trajectory was going to change forever as a result of what was being presented. The talk in question was by Mihály Pósfai, who had been awarded the 1999 European Mineralogical Union Medal for Research Excellence and was presenting his work of applying the technique of electron holography to directly image the magnetic state of magnetite nanoparticles in bacteria. The impact on me was immediate for two reasons: not only would the opportunities afforded by this new technique completely revolutionise my own research, but I also discovered that one of the world experts in holography worked just across the street from me. (Indeed, I could write a whole other editorial on the subject of why we often have to travel to a conference halfway around the world to hear about the science that is happening just down the corridor.)
THE POWER OF THE COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION OF HOMO SAPIENS!
By Becky Lange | April, 2023
The last 100 years of Homo sapiens history, which dates back more than 200,000 years, have been remarkable by any objective measure. For one, our population quadrupled from ~2 billion to ~8 billion strong (and counting). This population surge occurred in parallel with an astonishingly high rate of scientific discoveries and technological feats, including our new-found ability to edit and modify our own genetic code (and that of our offspring). The environmental impact of our ever[1]increasing “footprint” is also accelerating, as we usher in Earth’s sixth mass extinction since the Cambrian. At a time when rapid and unprece[1]dented change looms, it is compelling to take a moment to reflect on our species’ origin. Where did we come from? How did we arise? What led to our migration out of our ancestral continent and rapid colonization of all other land masses? These questions cannot be answered simply or briefly. But in this issue of Elements, “Into the Rift: The Geology of Human Origins in Eastern Africa,” we are reminded that all 8 billion of us have a shared ancestry and thus a shared humanity.
A WONDROUS JOURNEY TO THE ENIGMATIC, INTRIGUING SALTY PLAINS, PECULIAR MINERALS, AND MYSTERIOUS MICROBIAL INHABITANTS OF ALKALINE LAKES—AND THE FUTURE OF OUR PLANET
By Janne Blichert-Toft | February, 2023
I am delighted to invite you with this issue of Elements on a stunning and fascinating expedition to one of Earth’s most extreme, remarkable, and puzzling environments: its alkaline lakes (Fig. 1), which find themselves at a multi-disciplinary interface between geology, geochemistry, mineralogy, biology, hydrology, and geomorphology. I thought I knew what alkaline lakes were all about—until I read the articles in this issue. Now, I know! I also now know not to confuse alkaline lakes with saline lakes, the former being a subset of the latter; a subtle distinction I had not quite appreciated before when using the two expressions interchangeably as if they were synonyms.
Jupiter’s Moon Io—A Humans's Guide?
Jupiter’s moon Io is a truly fascinating and unique world. Located just over 400,000 kilometers from the gas giant, it is the inner most of the four Galilean moons and the most volca nically active body in the solar system. Io’s surface is dotted with more than 150 active volcanoes, which spew out a variety of materials including sulfur, silicon, and methane. These eruptions have created vast plains of molten lava, as well as towering mountains and vast cal deras. The surface of Io is constantly changing due to these volcanic eruptions, making it one of the most dynamic and constantly evolving bodies in the solar system.
In the Shadow of War and Other Existential Challenges to Humankind
By Janne Blichert-Toft | October, 2022
When I was assigned this issue of Elements about a year ago to the date of writing this editorial, two things came to my mind straight away. First, the title. What a weird title, I thought, because concrete and cement are just two words for the same thing, right? Well… no! I found this out pretty quickly after talking to the Guest Editors and which you will learn too (if you did not know so already) by reading this issue. For those of you as ignorant as I was (but am not anymore!), the difference between cement and concrete, simply put, is that cement is a powder (the variable compositions of which you will learn if you read on) that, once mixed with water, sand, and gravel and poured into the rotating barrel of a truck, or cement mixer, becomes concrete!
Being Danish and having grown up in Denmark, the other thing that came to my mind when I was confronted with the word “concrete” was its place in history, which several of the articles in this issue also touch upon…
The Siren Call of Cascadia
National parks are surely one of the best ideas of the civilized world, right up there with the invention of writing and public education. Although the United States was the first country to create a national park (Yellowstone in 1872), it is far from having the largest number with its current count at 62. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s registered list, Australia leads the pack (685), followed by Thailand (147) and India (116) for the top three.
We urgently need these preserves now more than ever, not only to protect the biodiversity within them, but for our own sanity and wellbeing. Not surprisingly, the Cascadia subduction zone (the captivating subject of this issue of Elements) has more than its share of national parks per square kilometer.
One Mineral to Rule Them All
Your starter for ten: what is the connection between the minerals: olivine, garnet, ice, magnetite, and quetzal coatlite? Anyone?
Organic Geochemistry's Looming Test
If the Mars Sample Return program goes as planned, 11 years from now, a canister containing 40some samples of lake sediments and other rocks from the surface of Mars will land in Utah, and, after a (hope fully brief!) period of worrying about the imagined dangers of extraterrestrial microbes, these samples will be released for study in Earth’s laboratories. All sorts of scientists will approach these samples with all sorts of goals, but the question with arguably the biggest stakes, the broadest interest, and the greatest potential con sequences will be whether these rocks contain incontrovertible evidence of present or past life on Mars.
Beware the Bromides
With respect to Br, I was not meaningfully introduced to the term “bromide” until I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Not in chemistry lab, but rather in a Comparative Literature course. The term “bromide!” was scrawled in red, repeatedly, all over my essay on Moby Dick. Apparently, my deep, philosophical musings on Ahab’s obsessive quest were found to be “trite and unoriginal”. Oh dear! A wellearned, if stinging, instruction on how Br-bearing sedatives (no longer available due to their toxicity) entered the English lexicon to refer to boring and meaningless expressions, in large part due to Gelett Burgess’ 1906 essay, Are You a Bromide?