Here’s the thing You know what Australia looks like. You would recognise it on a map: its general shape, the peninsulas, the great gulfs. You could draw it from memory, probably, and if you did, it might look something like this: Figure 1 That’s a pretty […]
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Early one summer’s evening in Exeter, having just dropped off a friend for his train at St David’s Station, I am returning to my car when I am hailed by an old acquaintance, Jack. Jack greets me effusively: Hi there. I’m glad I saw you. I just […]
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The camera and the interrogator Speak to exploration geologists and you will find two opposing views about what a geologist should do when observing outcrop or drill core in the field. Some seek merely to be unbiased objective recorders of what they see. Others observe the rock […]
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The Great Pandemic of 1889-1890 In the Northern winter of 1889 -1890, one of the deadliest pandemics since the Black Death of the mid 14th Century swept the world. Our forebears called it the Russian Flu. Where the Black Death took three years to spread from Constantinople […]
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The Copper Wars, called by some the Battle of Butte, took place from 1898 to 1906 between the Anaconda Copper Company and companies owned by Fredrick Augustus Heinze. One of the minor but significant players these wars was young Anaconda geologist Reno Sales (1876-1969). In his eighties, […]
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The definition of a geological fault, and why most dictionaries get it wrong One of the most important structures for any mineral explorer to understand are faults. What, exactly, is a fault? To geologists the answer seems so obvious that few of them (even the writers of many […]
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The fashion for fact checking I’m preachin’ dis sermon to show It ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa Ain’t necessarily so! (Porgy and Bess, 1935. Lyrics by Ira Gershwin) “Fact” and “Truth” are abstract ideals that you can seek, but never be certain to […]
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THE UNRAVELLING OF SCIENCE “Facts no longer made contact with the theory, which had risen above the facts on clouds of nonsense, rather like in a theological system. The point was not to believe the theory but to repeat it ritualistically and in such a way that […]
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Look after your drill core: it’s a resource that keeps on giving Diamond drilling is always undertaken for the needs of the moment. But fresh-cut rock, in most cases, will last hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Drill core is a resource which can keep on giving […]
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Aboriginal Heavy Mineral Separation Technology in the Pilbara of Western Australia More than 50 years ago I observed a heavy mineral separation technique being practiced by aboriginals in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The technique was simple, effective and probably unique. I have never seen it […]
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