Geoscience News!

Jesse Reimink: Welcome to PlanetGeo the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works and why it matters to you.

Chris.

Chris Bolhuis: Hold on. I'm recording right now. Hold on. I just, I just started recording. Give me some gut, give me some time. You didn't.

 You did not like bring me in. Okay. You need to do

Jesse Reimink: Oh gosh. Seriously. Oh, I need to be nice to your emotions while we're turning. Well, we're hitting record on our computers now,

Chris Bolhuis: well, we were talking and all of a sudden you started, Hey, we're doing it. And I was not ready to go.

Jesse Reimink: man. I thought we were recording this whole time. I used all my good content there while I was just bullshitted with you and we weren't even recording.

Chris Bolhuis: You don't have good material. I know better. And then you,

Jesse Reimink: All my good jokes are gone.

Chris Bolhuis: they're gone. That's right. Hey, how are you doing

Jesse Reimink: Christopher Bolhuis. I'm great, man. What's going on with you?

Chris Bolhuis: not a lot. I'm really looking forward to this because I think it's kind of fun. This episode is all about news in geoscience, right.

Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I mean, first of all,

this is really important. I'm surprised it's taken us two years to really do this because there's so much geoscience news, an actual. You know, one of our main themes is, Hey, geoscience is important. Everybody should know about the planet. We spend a lot of time talking about basic stuff. We spent a lot of time interviewing really freaking, unbelievably talented geoscientists. And I'm not discounting any of that stuff, but we really, we should keep doing this. We should be talking about stuff that's in the news. That's relevant because it's everywhere and people just need to look for it. Right.

Chris Bolhuis: I had the same thought I think we did this one before. way like season one. I think we did, but actually interesting. You said this because picked a topic, but I wrote down three other topics that I want to run by. And I want you to know, I want, I want to ask you what topic I should have picked because there was a lot to go from. It was like, I love this stuff and it this is also a cool part of our job, right.

Jesse Reimink: I think this is a really important part of our, like you said, job for PlanetGeo, but also this is really something that I think you do, or at least really good educators do regularly is bring newsworthy stuff to your classroom. Right? Like you, I remember in class, uh, what I was taking your classes in high school, you know, you were always really good about that, about bringing in, you know, relevant stuff from the news and say, oh, this is so cool. You know, Mount St Helen's is kind of showing signs of rupture, candor, anything relevant to what we're talking about, bringing it into the classroom. It's a really important thing to do in the classroom. I think

Chris Bolhuis: think so too. let me walk back. 25 plus years ago, when I first started teaching, this is something I actually really struggled

Jesse Reimink: for 40 you mispronounced, you mispronounced at 45.

Chris Bolhuis: not, not funny. I really struggled to. Relevancy because we have always been the redheaded stepchild of, the science field, and to some extent we still are, which I struggled with. Why are we doing what we're doing and how is it important in terms of earth science, education, geoscience education. And I look back on that now, and I cannot believe that I actually had those feelings, but I did, because to me, I look at it and say, how can we not view this as really, really important? We only have our planet. There's no planet B. Everybody needs to know as much about it as we possibly can so we can take care of it.

Jesse Reimink: Geosciences has gone through this stratospheric launch into the public eye with climate change and sustainability and critical minerals, all sorts of stuff is, you really elevated us in the last several years, even the last decade, for sure.

Chris Bolhuis: and now we're struggling with the education problem is we don't have enough qualified people

Jesse Reimink: That's right.

Chris Bolhuis: We have this, all of a sudden it's been elevated to this new platform, but we don't have the people that are prepared to attack it and teach it and, and make it relevant to the masses.

Jesse Reimink: Totally.

Right.

so Chris, in this episode of planet geo, we have each brought one news article that the other person doesn't know about? And we're going to tell the other person about it. We're going to kind of get up on our soap box and lecture about it, right? No, I think we're going to bring it. We're going to have a discussion, right? I don't know what you're bringing. You don't know what I'm bringing.

Chris Bolhuis: I've no idea.

Jesse Reimink: do we play rock paper scissors to see who goes first year?

Chris Bolhuis: oh yeah. Okay. All right, here we go. Okay. You ready? We're going to go. 1, 2, 3, shoot.

Jesse Reimink: You're 1, 2, 3 shoot person. Okay.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, 1, 2, 3, shoot. Okay. All right. Ready? 1, 2, 3. You

Jesse Reimink: scissors

Chris Bolhuis: alright, here we go. Ready? 1, 2, 3, shoot. Oh my gosh. Both paper. We're going to have to edit this out. Here we go. 1, 2, 3, shoot.

Jesse Reimink: Oh,

Chris Bolhuis: You got me.

Jesse Reimink: Yes.

Chris Bolhuis: Rock over. Scissors are go. You smashed me.

Jesse Reimink: it's embarrassing that it took both of us three times for one of us. Did he

Chris Bolhuis: I know. Well, great

Jesse Reimink: Okay.

That's true.

All right, Chris. So the news article I'm going to bring, and we're going to link these in the show notes. So this will be the first link in the show. Notes is a recent paper that was published this week, published in the journal, nature communications earth. But the title is failed eruptions are at the origin of copper deposits and the title of the paper is super giant. Porphyry, copper deposits are failed, large eruptions. So

Chris Bolhuis: you would pick a topic like this. Oh my gosh.

Jesse Reimink: the idea here's here. Let me, let me give you, let me give you the pitch. Okay,

Chris Bolhuis: all right. Everybody else just fell asleep right now. I should have gone first. I really should've gone first.

Jesse Reimink: have, but let me pitch it to you. Let me explain the

Chris Bolhuis: okay. Yeah, but you don't have time because everybody right now is nodding off. You need to hurry.

Jesse Reimink: All right. Listen up, listen up really quick. Copper porphyry deposits.

Chris Bolhuis: You're talking fast

here.

Jesse Reimink: These pay attention, wake up people copper really important element for our entire society. All of our conductors run on copper, copper. Super important. 60% of the world's copper comes from these deposit types that sit above magma chambers. So they're formed above active magma chambers or ancient mega chambers, rather in the alteration zone above magma chamber. So magma comes into the crust, heats it up a bunch of fluids circulating around a bunch of coppers dumped off in there. The idea behind this paper is that super giant the really, really massive ones could have been really big volcanoes, but they didn't erupt in the reason that it's a big, giant copper deposit is because the magma did not erupt out to the surface. It sat there and cooked and here's the societal relevance. We are running out of big copper deposits that are exposed on the surface. So we're going to have to get better at identifying them underneath of the surface. And so knowing how these types of deposits form and this applies for copper and gold and all sorts of other things, basically as a society, we found all the easy ones. Now, all the ones sitting on the surface, we found, we know where they are. We need to get better at finding the ones that are below the surface. So we have to have a better understanding of how these big deposits actually formed the science behind the formation. Good pitch or, bad pitch, Chris

Chris Bolhuis: Well, well, okay.

Jesse Reimink: close. I almost convinced you.

Chris Bolhuis: both. no, actually I think this ties right back to what you originally said is relevancy. this is why we need to understand and learn about where our resources. Because if we know how they form, where they form, then we know where to look. And we also know that from this broader general public perspective, resources actually come from non-labor resources they're getting harder and harder to find. So I think that's my takeaway from your little pitch there.

Jesse Reimink: Yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: so give us all the rundown of the article. You got a couple of minutes here or a minute

Jesse Reimink: yeah. Oh, got one, one minute. So it's a relatively simple idea is that these magma systems, so we're talking about a subduction zone, magma systems. So, a volcanic chain sitting above a subduction zone system beneath those volcanoes are big

magma process. The cascades exactly. Andes sitting beneath the crust is this big, what's called a trans crustal magma system. So we've talked about before how magma chambers don't really exist. It's not a pure liquid form. Our interview with Dr. Dan and Roman. She talked a lot about this. It's a magma mush system. So it goes from 40 kilometers deep the cross mental boundary, and then all the way up to the surface. There's like these bits of melt all the way through this trans crustal system. And sometimes you get volcanoes above that, that erupt magma out the surface, it becomes lava. And sometimes you don't erupt for various reasons to do with the plumbing system or the type of magma. It won't erupt. It'll kind of get close to erupting but not quite erupt. The idea behind this paper is that they created a little model for magma chambers sort of fluxing through the crust and the amount of copper that comes out of the mantle the original stage you're producing the magma, how much that's kind of going through the crust and basically their calculations and some comparisons to natural data suggests that the really, really, really big copper deposits take a long time to form, which means that they had a lot of magma passing through, but they never really erupted. So basically you got to kind of cap

Chris Bolhuis: It was very slow transit.

Jesse Reimink: when a volcano is erupting, it's kind of losing all the heat, it's losing all the fluids and that means you can't really form this copper deposit. You got to let it cook for a while. That's kind of the idea of the paper.

Chris Bolhuis: question then, is it associated with more viscous, magma, like more silica, rich rhyolitic Or andesitic kind of magmas as opposed to basaltic because basaltic was not going to do that.

Right.

Jesse Reimink: that's true, Chris. And so. The idea behind the really big porphyry copper deposits is that they're failed large eruptions. So they could have been really, really monster eruptions because this is viscous magma, but the viscous magma got stuck in the magma chamber and kind of cooked it. you

wouldn't generate this.

Chris Bolhuis: That was my point. Like, is it associated with the magma? That's super sticky.

Jesse Reimink: Yep. For sure. that's something we kind of understand about normal porphyry copper deposits. So anyway, that's my, uh, news article of the week. All right, Chris, your

Chris Bolhuis: You ready? Okay. so I want to read, four different headlines. Okay.

Jesse Reimink: Okay.

Chris Bolhuis: you to guess

Jesse Reimink: guess which one you picked?

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.

Jesse Reimink: Okay. Alright. Alright. Alright.

Chris Bolhuis: lunar soil grows plants. That's super recent. From seawater to drinking water with the push of a button headline to. Lapilli offers further evidence of meteor impact 66 million years ago. And lastly, sea floor spreading, slowing down.

Jesse Reimink: Ooh. I I think, I think you picked either three or four. I'm going to go with number three. Lily and evidence

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. All right. I did not pick number three, but that was written by Dr. Maya way. Haas.

Jesse Reimink: Oh, Hey Maya. Great. We interviewed her. That was a great interview to go list.

Chris Bolhuis: And I loved the article. That's why, so I'm looking at these four and I love them all. So this was a very difficult decision for me actually. Like I labored over this a lot. Okay. I picked. From seawater to drink and water with the push of a button.

Jesse Reimink: Oh wow. I heard that headline. I thought now that's not, that's not Chris Bolhuis. Okay. Hit me.

Chris Bolhuis: okay. I'm going to, can I give you the story on this, the backstory in this? All right. So I love backpacking, Right.

Right. You know, the.

Jesse Reimink: heard,

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. so you're supposed to like say yes, Chris. Yes, you do like backpacking, so, yeah. Okay.

Jesse Reimink: know that. Yup.

Chris Bolhuis: Thank you for being a good podcast partner right there.

Um, so, so last summer we were in Yosemite. It was, My wife, Jenny, and then my daughter, Bella and her boyfriend, Brandon. And we had a very, very long day. we got up at two in the two o'clock in the morning and we summited a half dome and we had the mountain to ourselves. But on the way up, Bella's boyfriend dropped his water. And it cascaded down the mountain, like it's somewhere 5,000 feet down in Yosemite valley. It's down there somewhere. Right? Like it was like a rocket, it was gone. And I was so pissed for an instant because the night before he broke our water filter,

Jesse Reimink: Oh, no. Okay. I just, listen, I, I've met Brandon couple times. I feel for the guy, I mean, Dating into the Bolhuis family is an adventure. You have to be kind of a hearty soul to do this. And also to go on a backpacking trip with the Bolhuises you've got to really sort of grit your teeth and bear It I think a bunch I feel for the guy.

Chris Bolhuis: like getting thrown into the lion's den,

Jesse Reimink: Yeah, totally, totally.

Chris Bolhuis: it was for real

Jesse Reimink: It's an intense family. The Bolhuis family.

Chris Bolhuis: have, um, uh, so I bought. A water filter. It's MSR and it's called the guardian. it's way overkill for anything in the United States. Right. But they tested it in a, um, wastewater treatment plant. So they dropped this thing in and they, filtered it into a Nalgene bottle and send it off to get tested. And it was good to go like that. Um, I looked at this I'm like, I have to have that, like, that's amazing water. I think water filters, are there a

Jesse Reimink: All right, I'll write. Hey, Mr. Like get off piste here. Come on

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Yeah, you're at you're at. Okay. that's why I was drawn to the story, right. Is because I'm really interested in filtering water, but we have this water crisis and you know, this is something that's super important to me from a geo-science perspective. You know, we have enough water on the planet for 9 billion people. And we have seven and a half billion people right now, but we already have water issues in the world that are massive and major water issues. This is a crisis that is in the making and it's just going to get worse. So this is why this headline caught my attention

Jesse Reimink: good intro sales pitch there.

Chris Bolhuis: And so this is a way of filtering water. using electricity and no filter. No filters. It's the size of a briefcase and , by the way, when they were done, it surpassed the world health organization, quality standards. Now the filter that I talked about, the MSR guard. $350 way overkill that my daughter's boyfriend broke with his foot. Still pissed about that.

Jesse Reimink: don't hold grudges about that one year on.

Chris Bolhuis: so this device uses electrical power, electricity to remove charged particles from the wall. And so basically Jesse right, is loaded with ions and ions are charged particles. And so it uses that likes repel, likes, and opposites attract. It uses that technology to desalinate water. So we're talking about taking salt. And making it drinking water. Okay. That's what this is all about. and, you know, like the goal with this, the original goal with this project with this study was for, to like help people on cargo ships, small islands, like the Tonga eruption that we talked about in our Jewish short a long time ago, you know?

Jesse Reimink: is this like a standalone briefcase? That's got its own like battery pack in it and you just, you know,

Chris Bolhuis: Well, hold on. I'm going to get to that in a second. you know, drawback to using filters is that these filters are so hard to press water through them. Right. So it requires a lot of fuel to do this. And that's the drawback to this this thing, it relies upon a technology. And I'm going to just read this to you. Okay. Cause relies upon what's called ion concentration polarization or I C P basically water is a polar molecule. it has a lopsided charge. It behaves like it's an electrical substance, but it's really not, but it behaves like it is. And the ions that are dissolved in it do as well. Okay. Like sodium plus ions, chloride negative ions and so on. And so they began to study like 10 years ago. And what it does is this ICP or ion concentration, polarization applies an electrical field. To water flowing through a channel. And what they do is they repel positively or negatively charged particles, which includes get this right. It includes salt, like salt water, right. Bacteria and virus.

Jesse Reimink: Wow.

Chris Bolhuis: Like isn't that, isn't that crazy. Okay. So basically imagine a tube

that water's flowing through. And they're using this, electrically charged thing to affect positively and negatively charged particles, which include the three things that I talked about. and it pushes them into a discharge tube. So there's water running through the discharge tube that it pushes them through. And that goes out the water passing through is. This is absolutely fantastic. This is amazing, right? It uses less electricity than a phone charger to do this. Now they wanted to make this really user friendly. what was really important to them is like even a Jesse Reimink could use this. that's like a tall order, right?

Jesse Reimink: that's pretty user-friendly right there. That is an extremely user-friendly.

Chris Bolhuis: it's a one finger push thing. And they developed an app that you can use in your.

Jesse Reimink: I wonder what happens when I push this big red button right here.

Chris Bolhuis: This is exciting to me because to me, I look at this and say, this is the future. We need to take this knowledge and let's build it better. . That's why I picked this It's something I'm really passionate about. I love backpacking water filters obviously. And this kind of technology is it's just so exciting to me.

Jesse Reimink: It's a great one. And, uh, you know, if you're sitting there thinking, Hmm, Now that I'm thinking about saltwater, why are the oceans salty? You know, we've got a PlanetGeo episode about that one,

Chris Bolhuis: we do.

Jesse Reimink: but it is, that is one of these like really fundamental questions but it's, it's the type of thing that, you know, you don't often just ponder. Most people don't even think about that question. if you're thinking about, Hey, how do you sell out of water, but also why is there salt and water? Yeah, we've got an episode about that, but

Chris Bolhuis: hold on. Can I jump on this bandwagon a second then

also, while You listen to, why are the ocean salty then as a part of that episode, two is what is hard water?

Jesse Reimink: Oh, great question,

Chris Bolhuis: something that affects a lot of people and we should all know this.

Jesse Reimink: And that's going back. That's planted geo that's like, you know, retro planted geo early days. Forgive the sound quality, maybe. Um, Chris, that's a really interesting one. I like that news article.

Chris Bolhuis: did I, choose? well,

Jesse Reimink: I think so. I mean, I don't know what the other ones are, but you chose a really good one. I'm intrigued by that. And you know, the societal relevance water is such an important, thing. You know, I was just reading there's this bureau of labor statistics, , things that come out with geoscience and, the employment sector for hydrology or studying water or knowledge of water is expected to grow at more than the geosciences. And the geosciences are expected to grow larger than the background us economy over the next 10 years. So it's a really important field to, have an expertise in, in the future for employability. We need people. We need hydrologists, man. Anyway, Hey, this was fun. We should do this again and much more regularly. I think, uh, even though.

Chris Bolhuis: It's relevancy though. And I did like, not knowing what you were going to talk about at all until you talked about it.

Jesse Reimink: Not the foggiest clue. Oh man. Hey, that's a wrap. Follow us on all the social medias. We're at plated geo cast. send us an email planetgeocast at dot com. We've got a listener questions episode on the books coming up and we're putting together some questions. So if you've got a good one, throw it in there. We might throw it in the episode. Follow us, give us a like, and a subscribe and leave us a review and a rating. Those really help on your podcast platforms. Go to our website, planetgeocast.com

Chris Bolhuis: Share this with somebody that cares about our planet.

Jesse Reimink: yeah, So good. good.

There we go. Hey man, that's a wrap. See you next.

Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.