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KSircombe

@ksircombe.bsky.social

98 followers 178 following 114 posts

A curious, innovative and always learning Geoscience Laboratory Director producing data for the public good. Opinions and long-winded nested verbs are all mine and nothing to do with my employer.

KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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If you see this you have to post a picture from your phone but don't explain it.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The working theory is that at some point in the last 60 Ma SE Australia saw a lot of rain perhaps to the point of being tropical, it was rugged and possibly way more tectonically active than we give it credit for. Find more about the mystery gravels in the linked paper...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The layer is >95% quartz cobbles which takes a *lot* of geological effort to produce by removing everything else. Modern fluvial flows get to 50% quartz on a good day. It’s broadly ‘Cenozoic’ because it’s difficult to directly date. And must have had steep gradients to move things along.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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More from a #geology ⚒️🧪 fieldtrip around Canberra…
I frequently drive by this outcrop but had never stopped. A steeply dipping fluvial quartz-dominated gravel. It’s a weird one, and similar outcrops in the region hint that this bit of Australia has seen some serious weathering and tectonism.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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And very well applied. It explains so, so much...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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It's going to be an exciting program. Maybe a few trips to Bunnings to get more clotheslines... 😁

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Some ⚒️🧪 #geology in the news - making #geoscience an important part of the energy transition.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The State Circle cutting used to be larger, but, because engineers, the top was levelled to make way for bridges on Federation Mall and to ensure the New Parliament House had a decent view of the Old Parliament House. It is now a protected geoheritage site.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The same unconformity also crops up *underneath* Parliament House. There are occasional tours for Science Week and similar events. Well worth it if you ever get a chance.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The Silurian ~420 million year ago was a wild time in eastern Australia with subduction, volcanoes and deep marine basins right next to shallow marine shelves. There were turbidite flows everywhere. Probably looked a bit like the Indonesian archipelago today.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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#geology ⚒️ highlights from a Canberra fieldtrip.
Only 350 metres from the front door of Parliament House, the State Circle cutting sees the Camp Hill Sandstone unconformably overlying the State Circle Shale. Both Silurian and marine, with a several million year gap indicating uplift and erosion.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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I get annual messages from a Uni where I briefly had emeritus status to enable access many years ago 'requesting' I send in a list of recent publications (which would have nothing to do with them) to add to their ranking report. Doesn't say much about ranking if it's based on that sort of data.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Some recent images of ⚒️🧪 #geology tourism around the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. Triassic aged Narrabeen Sandstone eroded to steep cliffs and gorges forming celebrated landmarks. Awesome stuff!

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Today's ⚒️🧪 #Lab adventure: rummaging in a forgotten storage bin. Want to guess what 'G18' means? There are 200+ samples like this, obviously carefully collected, but not a scrap of documentation found.
𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 is why grumpy lab managers like me insist on you uploading all that tiresome sample metadata.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The last few pages of this book scarred me for life.

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Reposted by KSircombe

Randall Munroe's avatar Randall Munroe @xkcd.com
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Earth Formation Site xkcd.com/2925

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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And not too far away there is this poetic horror...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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An Australian favourite of mine in the east of the State of Victoria. 'Goonmirk' just seems so random...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Does lickable mean it has to be solid? That would would change several from 'probably fine' to 'it's going to hurt'

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The worst part was his friend knew who I was and after a few attempts to change the subject gave up with a shrug and a wry smile and left him swinging in the breeze. I sometimes wonder where he ended up because with a lack of situational awareness like that hacking was never going to work out.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Much like a would-be hacker in a University computer lab I was supervising proclaiming loudly to his friend in detail how he was going to break the security on the computer so he could install a game. I let him rant, took notes and was updating the system live. He never got his game installed.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Meanwhile, back in the kids section of an Australian bookstore…

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Oh man, I feel for that person. I once left a conference poster behind in a hotel room on a stopover on the way to a GSA meeting. Realised in transit and it was the *worst* feeling (all that work lost in a moment of distraction...) Really hope they are able to get it back!

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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A medical friend once said it's complacent ignorance of the very real outcomes. He said that anyone seeing a baby critically ill struggling to breathe with whooping cough would be so horrified they would take all the vaccination needles they could grab and just inoculate everyone they could find.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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A 🌧️rainy weekend meant I had a chance to revisit an old electronics project - tinkering around with an Adafruit Monster M4sk (www.adafruit.com/product/4343) with a view to make some sort of animatronic. Will see if I get more rainy weekends to continue tinkering... 🤔

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Dr Izzy Jayasinghe 's avatar Dr Izzy Jayasinghe @ijayas.bsky.social
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A study on what many of us already know: over 75% of internal service work in academia is done by women. The bit that gets me:”The male associate professors in particular made it clear that they actively engaged in evasiveness and did not want to participate if it was not positive for their careers”

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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We live near a school that hosts a flock of ravens that seem to live off the inevitable food scraps - so many scraps that at least one of the ravens stashes surplus items in gaps under our roof ridge capping to eat later...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Another unsung bucket list gem is Burringurrah (Mt Augustus) on Wadjari country in Western Australia . Rises 860 metres from an otherwise perfectly flat plain so is spectacular to approach because you can see it a *long* way off. 1000 km north of Perth so needs very careful planning to visit.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Some Easter Monday geotourism ⚒️🧪 to the #Namadgi National Park south of #Canberra. A lovely walk through regenerating bush complete with mountains at the northern end of the Australian Alps, a balancing rock (granodiorite if you look closely 😁) and an old forestry hut.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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*Double take* hey! I think I might know that butchery/town… does the RSA still have a sign ‘No swearing aloud’ under a picture of Queen Elizabeth?

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Today's ⚒️🧪 Laboratory Adventure is pondering the likelihood that a parcel just happened to get accidentally damaged in transit in such a way that the item inside the box inside the padded envelope just happened to go missing... #NotHappyAusPost

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Don't forget the chalk around the pockets...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Definitely no donuts. The image of the Very Serious Person at my office door with a very-pissed-off-don't-mess-with-me-give-me-that-report-right-now expression is still vivid in my memory.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Many budget cycles ago a senior colleague wanted to show how senior they were by mentioning a certain document in a unclassified weekly report. This led to Very Serious People marching around the building to confiscate all copies of the report. They were not happy and we all got a Serious Lecture.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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A hell of a worry that postdoc support hasn't increased since I was there twenty-mumble years ago! All power to you! (Please tell me the payment delivery has improved, it was a quarterly cheque sent when someone in the Department remembered...)

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Well, from a ⚒️🧪planetary geology perspective perhaps it would only be fair to put the Moon back from where it came from...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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It reminds me I should get back to tinkering with picking zircon from 3D tomography of drill core...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The Grenville age marble cleansing procedure is a nice touch. Finding in-situ zircon is going to be a hell of a chore, maybe a lot of 3D x-ray tomography, a lot of thin sections and a lot of automated mineral characterisation...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Interesting stuff! I then wondered if the Iceland plume could be traced in a similar manner, and down a wonderful rabbit hole I discovered there are hot springs in Greenland! Something else for the bucket list, just need a gas sampling kit... 🤔

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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And while I'm stomping the soapbox... 😁 A 40 cm sea level rise is not trivial as many beachfront owners hope/deny. It will mean your lovely 1% gradient beach wants to head inland by 40 metres. It may take a few decades to do it, but it will do it.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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The other big takeaway was sand dunes are integral parts of the ocean. The ocean has parked the sand there for now, but it will take it away again next year, next decade or next century. There are so many cases where people forget that and then get all annoyed their properties are vanishing... 🤷

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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That is an awesome project, thanks for sharing!

My big takeaway from the course was coastal processes work on decadal+ timescales. There are no quick fixes.

⚒️🧪Geoscience Australia has a satellite image archive product tracking coastal changes which shows that www.dea.ga.gov.au/products/dea...

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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Mother Nature is really trying hard to tell you something when it only takes 3 days to move all sand away. I spent a big chunk of a semester in an oceanography course learning why beach remediation is usually futile because if the ocean wants to be there, it will be there.

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KSircombe's avatar KSircombe @ksircombe.bsky.social
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There was some rare seismic ⚒️🧪 excitement in Western Sydney last night. Just before 9 pm local time in the Blue Mountains southeast of Katoomba, magnitude 3.6 and a relatively shallow 8 km about 20 km south. 5000+ felt reports!
earthquakes.ga.gov.au/event/ga2024...

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Chris Rowan's avatar Chris Rowan @allochthonous.bsky.social
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⚒️🧪My quick thoughts on the #Anthropocene kerfuffle:

"The worry was always that the media would treat the refusal to draw a line in the sediment that officially says 'Anthropocene starts here' as a rejection of the idea that humanity's hands are now on the planetary steering wheel. And here we are."

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