Issue 59 contents list: published December 2011
Rockwatch Travels and Rockstar 2011 winners
Highlights of Rockwatch events around the country to share with you and introducing the Rockstars of 2011.
ROCKSTARDOM
A wonderful collage of some of the Rockstar 2011 competition entries.
ROCKS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD
Read how Cathy Cole explores the sediments under the Arctic Ocean and finds a potential new energy source! She and her colleagues found huge stores of methane hydrate in these sediments, which could either be a much needed new energy source or a threat to our environment.
FROM CHILTERN CHALK TO INDIAN BASALT
Discover the connection between the basalt rocks of the Deccan Traps in India and the Chalk of the English Chilterns. Mick Oates recently went to work in India and had great fun working out a very original connection between these two very different Late Cretaceous rocks. Find out what he thinks.
ANTIQUE FOSSIL FINDS
Edwin Rose, whose article is a shortened version of his competition entry, explains how a book he found in a second hand bookshop alerted him to the very early classification of minerals and fossils. Richard Brookes, a country doctor, published his six volume System of Natural History in 1763. Brookes’ fossil classification led the way to many subsequent discoveries as Edwin explains.
EXPLORING MARS
Follow Jane Robb, Rockstar winner a number of times and now a geology graduate, as she explores the Martian surface and finds some extraordinary images. She muses on their formation and the role they may have played in the geological history of the planet.
SCULPTING MOUNTAINS OF GRANITE
In the Black Hills of South Dakota, USA, Peter Doyle visits two amazing sculptures cut into the granite rocks. Mount Rushmore, where the huge heads of four U. S. presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Jefferson form the first one carved out of the granite. And, these sculptures formed the backdrop to the climax of a famous Alfred Hitchcock film! The other, even bigger one, Crazy Horse, yet to be completed, is sited on a nearby granite mountain, selected by the elders of the Lakota Indians as a special memorial site to this famous Indian warrior.
HORSETAILS – REAL SURVIVORS
A Rockstar 2011 prize-winner and longtime Rockwatch member, Emily Frankish, explains how horsetails have survived through geological time since the Devonian period to the present day. Her article was part of the much longer version she submitted on evolution for the 2011 Rockstar competition.
