A new mineral discovered in the Mammoth-St. Anthony mine in Arizona has been named georgerobinsonite. The mineral is named after George W. Robinson, professor of mineralogy and curator of Michigan Tech’s A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum. It is a lead chromate—a salt of chromic acid—that occurs as minute, transparent, orange-red crystals on cerussite, another lead carbonate and secondary lead mineral.
Geology takes the long view. It is a field, after all, in which the pace of change spans billions of years. John Lyons, however, is interested in geological events that happen at a faster rate. So the recent graduate of Michigan Tech’s PhD program in geophysics has found a compromise: he studies volcanoes.
When National Geographic needed some explanation about the Albertine Rift, a geological formation in Africa, they came to a Michigan Technological University graduate student. Again.
Professor Blair Orr (SFRES) is stepping down as director of Michigan Tech’s Peace Corps Master’s International (PCMI) program, the nation’s largest. Orr will be replaced by Lecturer Kari Henquinet (SS).
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The faculty and students conducted research projects in several locations including the Bering Glacier, Vitus Lake, Midtimber Lake, and Seal River.
Acccording to Michigan Tech Associate Professor of Geological and Environmental Engineering John Gierke, “Due to glaciers being remote locations and the fact that they are hundreds of feet thick, we do not understand how they move very well and their interactions with the underlying rocks upon which they travel. Since we can not see what is happening, we are attempting to ‘hear’ the interactions and then deduce where and what is going on.”
“Our listening devices are seismometers, identical in principle to the ones that are used for monitoring earthquakes, and we deployed 3 on the Bering Glacier and 7 others on islands, peninsulas, and shores near the glacier edge, and they collected data that we hope will tell us when and where bedrock was being broken by the glacier moving and glacier ‘calving’ (breaking) events, but we have to remove a lot of uninteresting data too, like helicopter an