1

Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Re: Just how rare is true blue quartz?

« on: 23/11/2022 00:08:43 »

Donno bout Blue Quartz...
But You do seem to Own quite a Few Strange & Weird Stones..
Hence you RocK!

P.S. - I Wonder where you go Treasure digging.
🤔

2

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Was Mars once a oxygen rich planet?

« on: 22/08/2021 19:45:59 »

Hi.

I read that Mars gets its red color from all of the iron oxide that covers it.

   Yes, seems reasonable.  Plenty of references exist for that.

I have also read that when iron oxide lacks oxygen it shows up as a greenish color and that it only turns red when in the present of oxygen.

   Also OK.    We want Iron in a valency state of III  (+3 written in Roman numerals) to give us a red colour, meanwhile Iron(II) would tend to give us greenish compounds.  Exactly as you have stated, Ion(II) does tend to oxidise further and produce Iron(III) compounds when there is a surplus of Oxygen but the phrase "surplus" just means that there is some additional Oxygen available and not that there is loads of Oxygen.  Given enough time, Iron(II) Oxide will become Iron(III) Oxide even if the Oxygen concentration is very low.
   Additionally, Oxygen is not the only thing that Iron can react with to form reddish iron(III) compounds.  However, on Mars we do think that it is mainly Iron(III) Oxide that is giving the surface it's reddish colour.

Is the iron oxide on Mars red because it was once rich with oxygen or is there another process that can make iron oxide red without the presents of oxygen?

     It's not really that there was some Iron(II) oxide already there and later it was further oxidised to Iron(III) Oxide.   We tend to look upon the overall change from elemental Iron to a compound that would be Iron(III) Oxide.  Alancalverd mentioned this in his earlier post.  We think a lot of elemental Iron would have started on the planet of Mars.  Now there probably was a little iron(II) oxide there as well but that doesn't matter too much.  All we need to focus on is that we want some oxygen.  Regardless of whether the Iron was present as elemental Iron or Iron(II) Oxide all of this will tend to form Iron(III) Oxide (and give us the red colour we observe) in the presence of Oxygen.
    Obviously, the Oxygen atoms had to come from somewhere.  However, it isn't necessary for there to be a high concentration of free oxygen  (O₂ ) in the atmosphere.   We think there was Water  (H₂O)  on the surface of Mars about 4 billion years ago.   One reasonable source of the oxygen atoms we need would be from this water.  There are mechanisms suggested where energetic particles and radiation from the sun would rip water molecules apart.  Some free Oxygen and free Hydrogen probably would get into the atmosphere.  The Hydrogen is light and would tend to drift away from the planet but the Oxygen is heavier and the gravity of Mars and would tend to keep it in the atmosphere for a short time.  Although this would only provide a low concentration of Oxygen, there is plenty of time and over that time the Iron on the surface of Mars will react with the Oxygen and form Iron(III) Oxide.
    Anyway, the atmosphere of Mars never needed to have a high concentration of Oxygen, it's more likely there was just a little oxygen and plenty of time for the Iron to react.

Best Wishes.

3

Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Re: Can anyone explain these insect fossils?

« on: 18/08/2021 15:50:56 »

From the photos, I see what appear to be two spiders, a whole wasp, and a wasp's head. It is entirely possible that you are looking at a discarded bug collection, and this could be confirmed if the coating is clearly anthropogenic (like epoxy or acrylic).

Getting an FT-IR (Fourier transform infrared) spectrum with and ATR (attenuated total reflectance) detector would be a non-destructive way to shed light on or even positively identify the substance they are coated with. Most universities would have at least one of these instruments available (at least in the US, Western Europe, and East Asia... I don't know where you are).

It would be quite easy to distinguish amber, epoxy, acrylic, glass, chitin (bug shell), etc. (one can even distinguish between types of amber and types epoxy resin using these methods):

https://www.persee.fr/doc/anata_1018-1946_2012_num_20_1_1325
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/FTIR-spectrum-of-the-epoxy-resin_fig2_227327777

4

Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Re: Why are there so few paleo entomologist?

« on: 31/07/2021 22:37:36 »

If someone discovers a new species, do they get to name it?

There are a lot of rules and hoops to jump through. See https://slate.com/technology/2016/01/how-newly-discovered-species-get-names-from-taxonomists.html

By the way, I think your paleo entomologists are hidden. Most just call themselves entomologists or palaeontologists, or as @chiralSPO says paleobiologists. Might be worth talking to your local Natural History Museum.

5

Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Re: Why are there so few paleo entomologist?

« on: 31/07/2021 15:37:24 »

If you do a search for paleo entomologist

I did.
Then, at Google's suggestion, I took the space out of it.
That led me to a wiki redirect page which took me here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_insects

And that page has 79 references.
I'm guessing that those have about 100 authors.

And that suggests that there are more paleo entomologists than members of a typical jazz audience.
It's certainly more than the OP'S assertion about
" you might come up with 3-4 names"

6

Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Re: What's the oldest mummified lifeform

« on: 05/08/2020 12:03:50 »

I agree that there are spectacular fossils embedded in amber. With the introduction of CAT scanning, even more are being revealed in samples of opaque amber.

Limestone is a mummified creature - the original coral has been preserved (but the normally-invisible organic polyps are lost).

The oldest, at 1 billion years are probably stromatolites, where you can see the layers of silt built up by cyanobacteria into a dome. The normally-invisible organic algae are no longer present.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite#Fossil_record

But if you are looking for something that retains the organic content, coal is a mummified lifeform: the original carbon is retained, as are remains of some of the chemicals that made up the original plants. A lot of coal deposits date from the Carboniferous era, around 300 million years ago (before land animals came along to eat the plants).
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

You may need to define "mummified" more closely.

7

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Can planets form without a star?

« on: 17/01/2020 08:45:15 »

I don't see any reason planets couldn't form under these conditions.

There are plenty of brown dwarf "failed stars" that are essentially large gas giant planets that never quite got big enough to ignite and turn into stars.

There are thought to be many starless "orphan" planets, but they are essentially impossible to detect with current methods (most of which detect the planets indirectly through measurements of their host stars). But even if the universe is teeming with orphan planets, it is still unknown what proportion of them were born in interstellar space, and what proportion were born near stars, and then tossed out through interaction with some more massive bodies.

8

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is everything in the universe in motion?

« on: 12/12/2019 21:23:23 »

It is said that our solar system is orbiting the galaxy and the galaxies are orbiting each other.. When we look out into space it seems as if everything is stationary but that is clearly not the case.

The Solar system has a motion relative to the center of the galaxy. The galaxy has a motion relative to the barycenter of the local group.     If we look out at a distant galaxy, it has a motion relative to us.   The key word in all of these statements is "relative".   Motion can only be measured with respect to a reference, and that reference can be arbitrary.  When we look at that distant galaxy, and claim that it moves relative to our galaxy, we could just as easily claim that is our galaxy moving relative to it.   We generally say the former because it is the most convenient.   Thus is the case for any reference frame, we simply choose the one that is convenient for our needs.    There is no absolute reference against which we can measure motion.