SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences have published new details about the evolution of the East African Rift (EAR) Valley, one of the world's largest continental rift zones.
Christopher Scholz, professor of Earth sciences, and a team of students and research staff, have spent the past year processing and analyzing data acquired in 2015 from Lake Malawi, the result of a multinational research effort sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). By studying the interplay of sedimentation and tectonics, they have confirmed that rifting—the process by which the Earth's tectonic plates move apart—has occurred slowly in the lake's central basin over the past 1.3 million years, utilizing a series of faults many millions of years older.
Scholz says the nature of the tectonic activity is attributed to a strong, cold lithosphere and to strain localization on faults that occurred millions of years earlier, when the basin formed. The Earth's lithosphere includes the crust and uppermost mantle.
The team's findings are the subject of an article in the Journal of Structural Geology (Elsevier, 2016), which Scholz co-authored with lead author and Ph.D. candidate Tannis McCartney G'17.
"We collected data during a month-long research cruise aboard a converted container ship on Lake Malawi," says Scholz, a leader in sedimentary basin analysis of extensional systems. "For the first time, a crustal-scale seismic source was deployed on an African lake, revealing tantalizing, new details about the stratigraphic and structural evolution of the East African Rift System."
An abstract is available — full full article is pay-walled: Tannis McCartney et al. A 1.3 million year record of synchronous faulting in the hangingwall and border fault of a half-graben in the Malawi (Nyasa) Rift, Journal of Structural Geology (2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.jsg.2016.08.012
Can geology be a real science when their experiments aren't reproducible and their theories aren't falsifiable?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:55AM
I know quite a few geologists, and their work is absolutely reproducible. Like any science, some people practicing aren't doing the best work, but many are doing quality, robust studies. One assumes that if you decided to grab your own converted container ship and fund a repeat expedition, this would be reproducible.
Physicists also make loads of theories that aren't reproducible - at least not yet, see string theory. Making theories to color past the borders of current experimental data, then testing them, is basically the primary goal in every science.
In short, see no basis whatsoever for the implications in the last sentence.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:34PM
I don't know any geophysicists but I fully agree that they are doing real science.
i guess it's martyb who added that last sentence.
dear martyb,
continental drift can be measured with satellites.
densities and a couple of other physical properties of the different layers of "rock" we can't phyiscally reach can be tested with seismic sensors, and those experiments are certainly reproducible (you just get certain rocks in the lab and test their properties, or you can test the same layers at different seismic events, confirming/disproving previous results).
and so on.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:18PM
Physicists also make loads of theories that aren't reproducible - at least not yet, see string theory.
They are doing "real science" because they are clear in their admission that the lack of a testable hypothesis is a problem and that they are working on it. The geologists and evolutionary biologists have a similar problem, some of what they do is obviously "Science" but some of their explanations aren't testable and are barely above "just so" stories. The geologists at least have the ability to test how well their theories extend to other bodies in the solar system while we still lack a second biosphere to study.
I'm guessing that final snark line was aimed at the elephant in the Science class, Climatology. And you can use it as a razor to quickly divide actual cientists from the button sorters and bottle washers by whether they see the elephant.