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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · 12h

Pre-Steens rhyolites with the Alvord Desert in the background

Just for your eyes to feel better

Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · 1d

What is better than pet photos?

You know the answer is a praying mantis on a rock hammer

Columbia River Basalts in the background

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · 24d

Highly recommend this essay, which underscores the risks posed by under-the-radar volcanoes

Mike Cassidy @mikevolc.bsky.social · 24d

🌋 Excited to share my new essay in Aeon: one of the most underappreciated global risks isn’t an asteroid or supervolcano—it’s the eruptions we don’t see coming:

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 25d

The science of volcanoes and their relationship with the climate is hard to keep up with. Why do some volcanoes give us little warning before they blow? Are we ignoring the next big eruption?

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Sep 7

Photos or it didn’t happen!

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 28

The world has so much to learn from Norwegians about the critical importance of saunas.

(did you guess that I would end the sentence with that word?)

Here is a nice sauna overlooking the harbor in Storekorsnes. Spotted while waiting for a ferry transfer back to Alta.

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 23

These are cloudberries (with a gabbro intrusion cutting metasedimentary rocks in the background).

Cloudberries have a short Arctic growing season and have twice as much vitamin C as an orange by weight.

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 22

I will just put these photos here without much comment beyond wow this is a nice place

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 22

One way to judge how fresh a rock is: the sound it makes when the 4.5 kilo sledge lands on it

(Wielding the hammer: Ben Klein)

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 22

There were a lot of mosquitoes and biting flies in Siberia. But Norway may have Siberia beat for the sheer diversity of biters… a very heterogeneous mix of small biting flies, giant biting flies, and mosquitoes.

All living their best lives

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 21

We climbed through a remote Norwegian valley on a reindeer path, and you’ll never guess what we saw next…

It was a cliff of hornblendite and carbonatite!

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 20

We have been discussing the extent to which this place could be analogous to the plumbing system beneath that place (guessing you are thinking of Ol Doinyo Lengai?)

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 20

Yesterday we were working near a mine. We thought maybe mining the carbonatites because they are one of the major sources of rare earth elements.

But actually they were mining the nephrite syenite to make porcelain! Just a reminder that we use rocks for all kinds of things. Rocks->teacups

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 19

Tomorrow we will try a new way to reach the interior of the island and then meet the boat on the other side. There are some bugs… but the geology is very exciting!

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 19

First cell reception after two great field days! We are looking at an enormous magmatic system at 5-10 kbar pressure (mid to lower crust). Very volatile rich, including carbonatites (inaccesible today due to snow). Big thank you to @fredrhog.bsky.social for sharing some nice NGU maps of the area.

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 18

Quick run around Alta in the morning. Tons of wildflowers on the streets. Some old classic wooden houses…. Plus lots of buildings that feel like bunkers against the winter months

Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 17

Made it to Alta! Some photos from the flight in. It is 11 PM and the sunlight is golden.

Tomorrow we meet up with colleagues from Uni of Lausanne to take a boat out to the rocks

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 17

The compare/contrast between Denmark and Norway—photos taken just a few minutes apart across the Skagerrak strait—is stark. Sand vs rock. Next: the journey 1500 km north, to the Arctic

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 16

How do others feel about packing for field work? I don’t especially enjoy normal packing, but there is a pleasure in trying to imagine a future moment on an unknown mountain, and what you might wish for in that moment—and then later, with luck, being on the mountain and having just what you need

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 16

Leaving for field work tomorrow with a team heading to northern Norway to explore the exhumed remnants of a very large mafic magmatic system—possibly the lower crustal roots of an Ediacaran large igneous province! I don’t know if I will have any internet, but if so I will try to tweet along the way…

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 11

I see we are talking about ROSES-2025 and Mike Wong’s analysis (which implies a dismal 5% funding rate for solar system science).

I will say, as depressing as the NASA funding outlook is, I appreciate these nice visualizations of that depressing funding.

research.ssl.berkeley.edu/~mikewong/bl...

mikewong's astroblog

research.ssl.berkeley.edu

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Reposted by Ben Black

Benjamin Mills @bjwmills.bsky.social · Jul 8

Hi Goldschmidt! Catch my Berner Lecture at 2.30 today!

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jul 5

Some nice fresh looking tephra from Laki. Imagine these fragments quenching in fire fountains a kilometer high

Kenny Befus /“\ @kennethbefus.bsky.social · Jul 5

Iridescent Strombolian fall, reticulite, and the crew.

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Reposted by Ben Black

Benjamin Mills @bjwmills.bsky.social · Jul 2

Great to see this finally out today! We show that the collapse of tropical vegetation during the Permo-Triassic extinction is a key driver of the long-term super-greenhouse climate that followed it.

Read more at www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Figure from the paper showing our model results when considering the tropical vegetaiton collapse - a long-high temperature period following the PTME

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Ben Black @magmatist.bsky.social · Jun 27

If you are in Eastern Oregon today, stop by the C2C project’s booth at the Watershed Festival, where we explore how ancient volcanic eruptions have shaped climate and life.

Volcanoes, Lava, and Life—words to live by!

Featuring Leif Karlstrom, Lauren Adamo, &
@pedromonarrez.bsky.social

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Reposted by Ben Black

Christy Till @ctill.bsky.social · Jun 26

Shocked to learn this incredibly tragic news - we have lost one of the most influential volcano scientists of our times.

Andrew Alden @geology.bsky.social · Jun 25

RIP volcanologist Wes Hildreth, dead in a Nevada car crash south of Mina. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Hil...

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