Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

The Return of Asteroid Itokawa

Via BBC:

... The mission visited the asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and acquired some stunning up-close imagery and remote-sensing data. It also made an attempt to grab samples off the potato-shaped object's surface. The capsule containing those rocky fragments is now hurtling home...

Student Perceptions of Science Professions

Via Geology.com:

Hundreds of college students were surveyed to learn about their perceptions and attitudes toward different science professions. The felt that geology was a low prestige profession with low pay. This Geoscience Currents summarizes the study and contrasts it with facts.

The Real Science Gap

Via Miller McCune:

It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.

Peak Wood and the Collapse

Via Miller McCune:

... Despite such modern-sounding strategies, it was too little too late, and Bronze Age metallurgists could not sustain the high level of production of the previous two centuries. Copper production peaked around 1200 B.C. and the last copper furnaces were shut down in 1050 B.C. The collapse had nothing to do with the lack of raw copper feedstock. A thousand years later, after the woods had grown back following the abandonment of copper production and reserves set up by local kings, the Romans reopened the mines and produced more copper than ever before....

Illinois Minerality Index

Rocks and Minerals Magazine has published the Illinois Minerality Index

New World Settled Twice

Via PhysOrg:

Two distinct groups from Asia settled in the New World and not one single migration as suggested by previous genetic studies, experts said Monday after comparing the skulls of early Americans...

Online Fossil Club

Just came upon this online fossil group... The Fossil Forum. I don't know much about it, but thought some may want to check it out.

Young Geologists Club in the UK

Rockwatch is a club for young geologists in the UK.

Doubt on Younger Dryas

Via the American Geophysical Union:

... New findings challenge a theory that a meteor explosion or impact thousands of years ago caused catastrophic fires over much of North America and Europe and triggered an abrupt global cooling period, called the Younger Dryas. Whereas proponents of the theory have offered “carbonaceous spherules” and nanodiamonds—both of which they claimed were formed by intense heat—as evidence of the impact, a new study concludes that those supposed clues are nothing more than fossilized balls of fungus, charcoal, and fecal pellets...