Geology Bites

Why do some volcanoes erupt almost all the time but others lie dormant for centuries, millennia, or even longer?  Steve Sparks has turned our ideas about volcanoes upside down.  Not quite literally, but by applying the physics of fluid motion to the rocks and magma below volcanoes, he discovered that magma forms at much greater depths than previously thought, eventually forming an unstab...

Why look to another planet to reveal something new about the Earth?  Dan McKenzie describes an ingenious way of using the data sent back from the Magellan Venus orbiter to discover that Venus is covered with an elastic plate about 30 kilometers thick.   Explaining this very unexpected result revealed something extraordinary about the Earth. For more on Geology Bites, go to geologybi...

In this episode, James Jackson explains what happens, geologically-speaking, during an earthquake, why they strike where they do, and why earthquake-prone places are such attractive places to live. For more on Geology Bites, go to geologybites.com , where you can also find diagrams and pictures that support the podcast.

Mike Searle applies the theory of plate tectonics to explain what causes mountains of all kinds to form.  They range from enormous mountain belts such as those that stretch from the Himalaya to the Alps, to mid-ocean volcanoes such as Hawaii. Mike Searle is Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford University.  For over 30 years he has been studying the Himalaya, Karakoram, and the Tibetan P...