LINKS A ND LINKS
By Georges Calas | December, 2013
On the way back from our Elements editorial meeting, held just prior to the Geological Society of America’s 125th-anniversary meeting in Denver, I realized that we lived wonderful moments at this special meeting. At the MSA awards ceremony, the Distinguished Public Service Medal was awarded to Pierrette Tremblay for making a dream a reality. This ceremony was a unique occasion to gather friends of Elements. The magazine is made by you—the authors and guest editors—in close cooperation with our supporting societies. Yes, Rod, you had the foresight to recognize the potential usefulness of a magazine without borders—a magazine linking members of the many societies in our scientific fields! I remember our discussions while walking around Notre Dame de Paris over 10 years ago, when you were explaining to me your vision of this challenge. But all our communities were not ready at that time. Now, 17 societies support Elements, and the link keeps growing.
SOME P ARTING THOUGHTS
By James I. Drever | October, 2013
This is my final editorial for Elements: it seems a good moment to look back on my experiences with the magazine. My first awareness of it came when Rod Ewing gave a presentation to the Geochemical Society Board of Directors (I was vice president at the time) at the Kurashiki Goldschmidt in 2003. I must admit I was not enthusiastic.
JOURNEY TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
By John W. Valley | August, 2013
Who isn’t fascinated by caves and volcanoes? They are windows to the interior of the Earth. We know more about places on the Moon, and now Mars, than what lies 100 km beneath our feet. Jules Verne (1864) captured this interest when he fantasized Prof. Lidenbrock’s journey to the center of the Earth. The professor, it seems, climbed down a lava tube on the stratovolcano Snaefellsjökull in Iceland and had a series of entertaining adventures with a vast subterranean ocean, an ichthyosaurus, giant diamonds, and prehistoric humans before he was somehow ejected by an eruption and emerged at Stromboli in Italy! The fiction of this account is humorous, but played off scientific advances of its time. Verne’s 1864 idea of an earlier primitive human race is said to have been inspired by Lyell (1863), who was influenced by Darwin (1859). The implications of preserved ancient worlds (or time travel?), a cliché today, were novel then. But it is the imaginatively strong rocks and lack of ductility implied by open voids at great depth that I want to discuss. What are the limits of this fiction? When it comes to high-pressure metamorphism, our imagination has sometimes been ductility-challenged.
TWIST AND SHOUT
By Trish ’n’ Chips at home in Virginia | June, 2013
It seems just yesterday that the first issue of Elements appeared in my mailbox at Virginia Tech. The year was 2005, and after much planning, a grand international experiment had begun. Founding editors Rod Ewing, Mike Hochella, Ian Parsons, and Pierrette Tremblay launched a new magazine that was dedicated to the advances and excitement of the mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry disciplines in the context of the wider Earth sciences. Elements has since grown to a print readership of more than 15,000 in 100 countries, in addition to the many thousands of electronic downloads.
VERSATILE SERPENTINE
By Georges Calas | April, 2013
It is always fascinating to see how much science has not only progressed but also diversified during the last few decades. Even focusing on a single mineral or rock allows us to visit many facets of the Earth and environmental sciences and related domains, such as materials science and cultural heritage. Indeed, I marvel how each time an issue of Elements is devoted to a single mineral, it reveals that specialization does not necessarily lead to a narrow vision but actually opens new doors. Here we see that research activity on one of the most classical minerals—used by man for millennia and investigated since the founding of geology and mineralogy— is now making a strong “comeback,” with scientists tackling the role of serpentine in present-day hot topics such as alternative energies and the origin of life.
TH E AGE OF THE EARTH
By John Valley | February, 2013
The “Age of the Earth” is one of the most common titles in the geological literature, and with good reason. The scientific and philosophical implications are immense. This issue of Elements is devoted to measuring geologic time on the 100th anniversary of a book with this title (Holmes 1913). The book is a good read—a clear historical account, with groundbreaking science that still stirs controversy today. It’s available free online.