Jupiter’s Moon Io—A Humans's Guide?
By Janne Blichert-Toft | December, 2022
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
The answer (of course!) is that they are all past winners of the annual mineralogical nerd fest known as the Mineral Cup (@ mineralcup)—a Twitter competition founded in 2017 by University of Hull geology professor Eddie Dempsey following a seemingly innocuous tweet of his claiming that “quartz is undeniably the greatest of all minerals.” (see link below for the full origins story). The resulting replies (largely questioning his life choices) led to the now annual event that runs throughout the month of September to identify the “best” mineral from a set of 32 candidates (chosen by an ever evolving set of community defined rules and judged on an idiosyncratic range of criteria, ranging from the soundly scientific to the utterly bizarre). I am writing this editorial just as the 2022 competition has come to a dramatic close with fluorite beating zircon convincingly in the final on the basis of its “cubic habit, octahedral cleavage, rainbow of colours, and of course its fluorescent glow…”.
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?