Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Geology From Above - Dr. Anji Shah

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Geology From Above - Dr. Anji Shah · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: All right.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, my little friend, Dr.
0:15
SPEAKER_02: Jesse Remick.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: How the heck are you?
0:17
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
0:18
SPEAKER_01: I I'm good, man.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm always excited.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm always like inspired after these talks with people.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: I I just yeah, I'm uh it's a good night.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: I am too.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: It's a good evening.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: That it is a good night.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: I gotta say though, I'm sick of you making me so nervous before these interviews start because you give me a lot of crap.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: You throw a lot of shade my way for my technological difficulties, but you are on a roll, my friend.
0:44
SPEAKER_02: Every time you're having technological difficulties.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm like two for two with big problems here.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: You know what I think you're more.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: Don't you restart your computer a lot though?
0:55
SPEAKER_02: Like you should.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: Do you do you not do that?
0:58
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: I rarely restart my computer.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: Do you ever restart your phone?
1:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh when it wants to update.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: That's about it.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, no, no, you need to do this like every few days.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: You need to shut your phone down, restart it.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Same thing with the computer.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: You need to do better with this.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this was a uh I loved this interview.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: I actually I learned a ton here.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: Um a large part of our conversation dealt with critical minerals and sand deposits.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: And those are really things that you would never, I don't think, anyway, like intuitively put together, right?
1:32
SPEAKER_02: I certainly haven't.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: I don't know about you.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: I found it very interesting, very exciting, actually.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: The prospect for this.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: And that was that was amazing.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: Question for you.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: I've been I've been teaching for you know a long time, right?
1:46
SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna put a number on it, but I've been teaching a long time.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: We don't we don't talk numbers here.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: No, we do not.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: Have I, Jesse?
1:53
SPEAKER_02: Tell me, have I been mispronouncing placer my entire career?
1:59
SPEAKER_01: Placer or placer?
2:00
SPEAKER_01: Or how do you how have you been saying placer or placer?
2:03
SPEAKER_02: Placer, placer.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I haven't seen placer.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: No, this is this this is like uh basalt basalt one.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: I it people say it different ways.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: I think it might be you know the Britishism of Placer, maybe a little bit.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: Well, so because it's spelled P-L-A-C-E-R.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: To me, that's placer.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: That's placer.
2:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's placer.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Just like it's P so A L T is ass fault or ash fault.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: Right.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: So I actually the so this came up in the interview.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I said placer, and Dr.
2:39
SPEAKER_02: Angie Shaw right away said it's placer right after that.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: And she didn't correct me, she just said the word her way.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, again and I'm like, oh crap, I've been saying it wrong all these years.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: I've been and this has been I actually made a note, Jesse, down below to ask you about this.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to forget, like I would have been mortified if you'd have said Chris.
2:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you've really been saying placer all these years.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, I've heard it either I've heard it both ways by very good geologists, geologists much much better than you and I.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's it can go with whichever one you want in the end.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Um Jesse.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: I don't give that up as easily as you do.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: Well okay.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't have much to say to that.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm just kidding.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: So we uh okay, just a little bit of uh Dr.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: Shaw and her expertise here.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: She's a PhD in geophysics, really, uh research geophysicist at the Geological Survey, the United States Geological Survey, the USGS, which we said.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: She is really an expert in these airborne geophysics data sets and has been looking at these, these, as we said, sort of heavy mineral sands in the coastal Carolina area in the southeast United States.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: She has an interesting backstory.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a bachelor's in math, and then a actually a master's in applied mathematics from New York University, and then eventually went on, as she describes, to get a PhD because she's kind of interested in the outdoors and stuff.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: So I think Chris had a really interesting take on education as well, and like, I don't know, interesting perspective that's again just one person's perspective, but particularly interesting and particularly unique, I think, as a path to get to where she's at, a very high level in the United States Geological Survey, kind of directing uh directing large portions of this MRI program.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I agree, Jesse.
4:23
SPEAKER_02: She had a very interesting path into where she is right now.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: You know, she didn't start off like, oh, I have this love for geoscience, that's the direction I'm going.
4:33
SPEAKER_02: She came about this in kind of a very roundabout way, kind of the way I entered teaching.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: It was not something I was doing.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: No, that's right.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: It was not on my flight plan either at all.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: No, that's right.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Hey, well, Chris, I'd say let's get to it here.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: This is Dr.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: Angie Shaw coming at you.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Cheers.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: All right.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, Dr.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: Shaw, thank you for joining us.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, and thanks for sorry for all the technical difficulties here and getting going, but thank you for joining us.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: We're really excited to talk to you here on Planet Geo.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's nice to be here.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, Dr.
5:05
SPEAKER_02: Shaw, is it okay if I can call you Angie, right?
5:08
SPEAKER_02: Is that okay?
5:09
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: Jesse doesn't allow me to do that, so I have to I I always feel like I have to ask, you know.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just to be polite.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: So if that's me too.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: So, Angie, we always start our interviews with this common question.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: And it's because I think both Jesse and I have a story of how and like our path into the geoscience world and the geoscience community.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk a little bit about that?
5:33
SPEAKER_02: Was there like this aha moment for you or something that happened that led you down this awesome pathway called the geoscience world?
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: So I think my pathway is a little bit less typical.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, I majored in math, and I was one of those nerdy types that always really liked math and physics, and that was a comfort zone.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And I had I struggled with things like biology where I had to memorize things.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: And I finished, I did a master's in it, and really wasn't finding it.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't finding it.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: And so I um I, you know, I was young and in my 20s, and I moved out from New York to the Bay Area, and just realized how much I loved the outdoors, and I loved spending time looking at the mountains, looking at water.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And the aha moment, I think, was when I suddenly found out that I could take all these math, I had math and computer skills that I could take those skills and apply them to earth science, and that I could actually do the quant stuff, but also get field work where I could be out on the ocean or where I could be hiking through the woods and I could do all this fun stuff while doing science.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty neat.
6:47
SPEAKER_02: So that's awesome.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: Angie, I want to put a pin in what you said about combining your math and physics with the geology world when we talk about getting into geology and careers, and we have a fair number of listeners that are very interested in that kind of pathway.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: And so I do want to make sure, Jesse, remind me, we got to come back to that for sure.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: I will uh I might we might be fighting over that question later on, Chris, because I'm really interested in your in your perspective on that, Angie.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: Because uh so you have a you have a master's, is that right?
7:18
SPEAKER_01: A master's in applied mathematics.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I have a master's in applied.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, but but that's not the final one.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: The later thing was the PhD in earth and environmental science.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: So that's what enables me to do geology.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me ask you what everybody asks all of us, you know, PhDs in geology.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: What does a master's in applied mathematics do?
7:40
SPEAKER_01: Like what was your thesis title, and then what was your PhD thesis on?
7:43
SPEAKER_01: And were they were they like linked?
7:46
SPEAKER_01: This is kind of a leading, I don't know.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: Like this is That's a good question.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: But were they linked in a direct way?
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Was there a direct line to them, or were you sort of like going out on a limb in your PhD?
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Gosh, well, okay, so so if if you get a degree in math, what I was finding is that I was basically kind of a high-end technician there to solve other people's problems.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: So that was why I went back to school and said, I need to know, get the foundation of the science so that I can learn what's the best way to apply some sort of math or physics to a problem.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: So my PhD was actually very quantitative.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: My advisor did numerical modeling of different plate tectonic phenomena.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: We were actually looking at mid-ocean ridge spreading centers, and we were trying to understand how the mountain ranges that you see at the bottom of the ocean, how do they form?
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Why is it some of them have a valley?
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Why is it some of them show a mountain?
8:47
SPEAKER_00: How big is the mountain?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Why is it that big?
8:50
SPEAKER_00: What are all the different characteristics?
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And we actually went to the laws of physics to try to understand the real processes, to say, okay, what is it that's driving this?
9:02
SPEAKER_00: What are the forces?
9:04
SPEAKER_00: What are the thermal conditions?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Because you've got volcanoes, you've got a certain heat distribution.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: So we were looking at all those technical aspects.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, I also had this opportunity to go out to sea and collect data and to do other things.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for about you could spend anywhere from 40 to 48 days out on the ocean in the middle of nowhere.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't get seasick, then you're luckier.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And if you do, there's a lot of medications.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Um and um, but that was, you know, and that was another thing.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: And I was lucky, my advisor um encouraged me to do this because I wasn't just doing the math and the computers, but I also got to get to see brand new data.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the bottom of the ocean, you have to measure things indirectly.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: You just can't walk there, it's not very easy.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: And so um we would look at the magnetic fields, changes in Earth's magnetic field, changes in gravity fields.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And then I was lucky I was on one cruise where they actually did have Alvin dives.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: So they had geologists dive down to the bottom and look at the geology and make those observations.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: And then grabbing samples of the seafloor with Alvin with the arms and stuff.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: Oh, totally cool.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: Did you ever get to go down in one of those?
10:26
SPEAKER_02: I got to go once.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: I did get to the Alvin.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's can you tell me about that a minute?
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, what was that like?
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was amazing.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it so at that point, I had been studying mid-ocean ridges for, I don't know, about four or five years, and they were very mysterious to me.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: And and yeah, it was just amazing.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, here you are.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: This is what it looks like.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: And um I think the best part, the best part about it though, is what I saw out of, you know, it's a tiny little window.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember it's something like eight inches in diameter or ten inches, something like that.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Then years later, I got to go to Hawaii to the big island where they have all the new flows, and and you realize that, oh, this is like what we're seeing on the seafloor.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: So it was kind of cool to make that connection and realize that there are these different exotic locations, but you see the same phenomena going on.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: So that was kind of fun.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: That is really cool.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's super cool.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay, Chris, I think maybe this is we should just dive right into the kind of the the sort of education style questions real quick because I'm curious, Angie, uh, because at Penn State, we have we have some geophysicists who do numerical simulations, and you know, the students who PhD students who start in in groups like that usually come from different backgrounds, um, astrophysics or different fields that come in and have a lot of computer sort of knowledge or or sort of uh physics knowledge, I suppose.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: And then I have students in my group who are like have biology degrees more or less, right?
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And so how did you find because Chris and I grew up in the geosciences, like academically, right?
11:58
SPEAKER_01: Like we were geology majors and undergrad, learned all the terms then, but you kind of came in as a highly educated person in a different field and you were kind of exposed to it later, like tangentially.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: How did you find?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what was the most surprising thing about geology, I guess, is kind of the question.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: And how or how easy was that transition for you?
12:16
SPEAKER_01: Because I think we get this question a lot from listeners who are thinking, you know, I have this passion for the kind of like yourself, outdoors or or geosciences, like being a volcanologist sounds really cool, but is it too late?
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Could I pursue this career still?
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Like, what was your experience like in that regard?
12:34
SPEAKER_00: I guess I think the most important thing is to be patient.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, I did come in with this math and computer background, and it took a bit of time to learn the geology.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: And it was lucky for me.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, I wouldn't say lucky, it was important for me to be in an educational institution where I had people who were willing to mentor me to help me bridge that gap.
12:59
SPEAKER_01: And uh it still did you find yourself Did you find yourself overwhelmed with the terminology for a while?
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Um because I'd imagine you started I did coming from a liberal I went to a liberal arts college and I went to a an institution for my PhD that had a it's Canada, like everybody, you know, geology majors in Canada have a ton of classes that I never took.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I think it takes a lot of time and I think it's important to just be around it a lot and to keep talking to people and um you start to realize it's like a language, but people are talking about very specific things, and then to always be ready to learn something new because there's always something you don't know.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that that's wise advice, yes.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: And and then remember that like everybody else doesn't know either or doesn't know different stuff.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: Like you have something to contribute.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: Your background is a strength in some ways, you know.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: The different yeah, your different approach is a strength in many ways.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: And and I will say that I think I was fortunate that I had faculty who were willing to take a risk with someone who didn't have as strong a geology background as some others, but at the same time, I I also think if you're gonna switch fields, it's very important to have something you can bring to the table.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: That way you're still contributing something.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: It sounds to me, Angie, as though you found a way to marry your passion for math and you know, geophysics is a perfect fit for that.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: Did that prepare you pretty well for making that transition?
14:28
SPEAKER_00: It helps, but I think there's still a lot to learn.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And and I can say that I started off my graduate work in Mid-Ocean Ridges, but when I was finishing my degree, I realized I wanted to do something much more applied.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: So I had to start from scratch again and now learn processes on the continents.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: And again, it was so my postdoc, I ended up taking these gravity and magnetic methods and I applied them to Chesapeake Bay.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: So I was getting a little bit closer to land, but that meant I had to learn more about sedimentary geology.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: And we also looked at an impact crater.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: So I learned about impact craters.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so every time, I mean, again, you always want to have something you bring to the table, but also be ready to learn and do new things and again try and get mentors who are experts to help you out.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: So maybe we could just finish that thread, Angie.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: So you this postdoc was at the Naval Research Lab, is that right?
15:26
SPEAKER_01: You went to the Naval Research Lab.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: And then you went and worked for Raytheon, and we've interviewed other people who have a defense who've worked in the defense industry as geologists and then have kind of come back in various ways.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: What was that path like?
15:39
SPEAKER_01: Going to work for Raytheon and then and then I think you started at the USGS after that.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, when I went to work for them, they weren't Raytheon, they were dynamics technology, and they were definitely much more on the research side, and they were doing um a lot of marine instrumentation.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: So that was a connection there, and they were looking at magnetics.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: One of the applications was to look for like seafloor um IEDs, that sort of thing.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: Um but I'll be honest, I I missed being able to do earth science, and I missed the more academic style of research.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: So when the USGS position opened up, I felt that was a perfect fit because um the work they do is very applied, but it's also very technical and it's also research as well.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I when I saw that open up, I jumped on it and I was lucky to get it.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: That's a perfect segue to the next thing I want to ask you about Angie is you work at the USGS.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: Can you just tell everybody what a day in the life of Angie is like?
16:44
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
16:47
SPEAKER_01: Let's maybe we should get that term out there.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: Geological survey, yeah.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: Good point.
16:52
SPEAKER_02: Good point.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: No, this is a good question, Chris.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm uh and I'm curious about this too.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: I I think this is it probably.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's no typical day.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: There really isn't.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Um it's all over the map.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, some days it's very rare, but some days I actually get I do technical stuff and I get to catch up on the literature.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's on the side.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, a lot of times I well, oh, how do I describe?
17:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, my my own position has evolved a lot over the years.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: I've been there about almost 17 years.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: So when I started off, I did more technical work.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm actually coordinating a lot more different.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: I I'm involved with a lot more different projects.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: So I'm involved with coordinating different groups of people, and we oversee, we have this new, well, it's not that new.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: It started a couple years ago.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: We've got this Earth Mapping Resources Initiative program, which uh started, and that's been a huge part of life now.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot going on there.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: I I I wish I could, I mean, it could be anywhere from writing proposals to writing emails to trying to catch up on the literature to mentoring younger scientists on various technical things to giving podcast interviews, anything.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the full gamut.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: That's perfect.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: Um the Earth MRI thing is super interesting.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: And this is this is actually how I mean, I saw you give a talk at SEG, and I can't Chris can attest to this.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: I went to the SEG conference in London.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an academic geologist, but I was like, I had some some funds from Penn State to kind of explore the critical minerals world a little bit.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: And so I said, okay, I'll go to London.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: Chris can attest to this.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: I was quite cranky uh just as a human being before that, and I came back all fired up about uh the critical minerals.
18:42
SPEAKER_02: And your talk was one of the reasons why because it was really You went to see her in London, Jesse?
18:48
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't I didn't know it, but I did see it.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I did see Angie give a great talk, and it was really exciting.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, you were talking about the coastal Carolinas and the you know, this geophysical, broadly geophysical surveys looking at heavy mineral sands, and and uh so I guess I want to talk about that specifically.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: Like what does the story there?
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Are there heavy mineral sands in Michigan?
19:09
SPEAKER_01: For instance, you know, all these kind of interesting questions.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: But can you maybe set the stage for the critical minerals mapping, the MRI, the Earth MRI thing, just broadly first for us?
19:20
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of interesting because there's starting to be more and more recognition about the importance of mineral resources, especially critical minerals.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: So well, somebody once phrased it this way everything that we use in our daily lives is either grown or mined.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: So that coffee mug, you can think about it, that comes from some clays.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Where's glass come from?
19:46
SPEAKER_00: The um computers have a lot much more complex array of minerals that go into them.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: If you've got some nice bamboo cutlery that was grown, that's a little different.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: But so much of what we use has to come from some material in the earth.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm looking at my desk right now, and you know, I'm seeing the wood of my desk, I'm seeing my monitor, I'm seeing the mouse, the keyboard, my mug of tea, and thinking about where all these things come from.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: So these things have been important for a long time.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: But now we're talking a lot more about critical minerals.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And what the definition of what a critical mineral is, is that this is a material that is so vital to our day-to-day lives.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: So you can think of something that goes into a computer or a cell phone or goes into an advanced defense system, like rare earth elements are a good example of that.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: They're so important, but our supply chain is at high risk, and rare earth elements are a really good example of that because we get most of our rare earths from a single country.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: So that single country has a lot of control.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: We get it used to be 100%, now we're up to about 95%.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: So if anything doesn't go well with that country, then our economy could really be impacted.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: And these minerals are becoming even more important as we're thinking about climate change and we're thinking about energy transitions and looking for alternatives to fossil fuels for energy.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: There's interest in doing that.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: I won't get into the debate about it, but in order to achieve that, you do need certain materials.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: For example, um, for solar panels, the material in the glass involves rare earth elements.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: For wind turbines, they have supermagnets in them that also come from neodymium.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: If you want an electric car, the battery, you need things like lithium and other materials for the battery.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of attention coming in in that direction as well.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: There's been a lot more recognition about the importance of critical minerals, and with that, Congress has put funding behind it.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: And so the big question is well, what are our domestic resources?
21:56
SPEAKER_00: We don't even have very good knowledge of what they are, we don't have the most.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: State of the art data.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: So what can we find out?
22:03
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of different levels.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, it happens from not only what are domestic resources, how are these things extracted, how can they be extracted safely without environmental harm or without harm to humans around any health harm?
22:17
SPEAKER_00: That's a big question.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: How can they be processed efficiently?
22:21
SPEAKER_00: How can you manage the waste?
22:22
SPEAKER_00: So there's so many different questions.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: The USGS, we come in kind of at the beginning of that stage of this multifaceted effort, which is just saying, what's our domestic geology?
22:36
SPEAKER_00: What are the mineral resources?
22:38
SPEAKER_00: So that's where the funding has come in to collect data to better understand what's in our country.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: But now I also want to bring up one thing.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: It's not only for critical minerals.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: Along with critical minerals, we can also learn things about earthquake hazards, or we can learn about orphaned wells, we can learn about mining waste, we can learn about groundwater resources.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And this comes from taking geology and applying it to so many, there's just so many different applications that are so important for our day-to-day lives.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: So critical minerals are really important, but natural hazards are important, water resources, and so on.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the motivation.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:19
SPEAKER_02: Angie, a follow-up question to what you just said.
23:23
SPEAKER_02: Are you saying that the data that you maybe collect or other geologists collect in search of critical minerals, that that data is used by other people to draw other conclusions that are important to society?
23:34
SPEAKER_02: Is that is that what you're saying basically?
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, um, that's the goal.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're in the first couple years of the data collection, so the research is really just starting to get underway.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: But for example, Jesse, that talk that you saw about Carolina Sands, that survey covered parts of Charleston, South Carolina.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, Charleston was also the site of a magnitude seven earthquake in 1886 that almost leveled the entire city.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: So everyone wants to know well, where's the causative fault?
24:06
SPEAKER_00: And more importantly, what's the risk of another earthquake like that?
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Should the building codes be adjusted?
24:12
SPEAKER_00: How much earthquake reinforcement do you need if you live in Charleston?
24:16
SPEAKER_00: It's a huge question.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: So those same data that we used to look at heavy mineral sands, we also use them to map deep faults buried one to two kilometers or three or four kilometers beneath the Earth's surface.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: And that informs us about earthquake hazards.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: So that's just one example, and there's a lot of other examples.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: So that's a great example.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: That is a really cool one.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: And I want to know more about the methods.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: But before we get to that, I have a just a more general question.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: Because I know Chris and I have talked about this and going through school in Michigan, and then um when I moved to Canada for my PhD, but especially like the early days and undergrad and stuff, having a geology degree was sort of like you were a little weird.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: You were what are you gonna do with that?
25:01
SPEAKER_01: People were kind of questioning what are you gonna do with your geology degree?
25:04
SPEAKER_01: And my sense is that right now that's not the case.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, uh just news articles.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seems like every week the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times has an article about critical minerals or about some mining geology's just in the news in a much bigger way.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Do you yeah, do you get that sense as well?
25:24
SPEAKER_01: And do you see that from your higher viewpoint at the in the in the governmental um geological?
25:29
SPEAKER_01: I think I do.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it is the case.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot, well, who knows?
25:35
SPEAKER_00: I I and I don't know the reasons why.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Um you know, it could be there's a lot more concern about climate and about technologies.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think in the news today there's a very large earthquake in China that did a lot of damage.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: It's very very tragic situation.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: The number of lives were lost there.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's it.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: I I I think it would be an exciting and promising time to be a burgeoning geologist, perhaps.
26:09
SPEAKER_02: Um I think Well, Jesse, that warms my heart that maybe maybe we don't get looked at like we have a horn grown out of our head when we say we're geologists anymore.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: You know, that's the whole point.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, Chris, that you'll just get looked at like you got a horn grown out of your head for other reasons.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: But um That's right.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay, Chris, should we focus?
26:27
SPEAKER_01: I want I'm I'm I want to get into the I do.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: I want to I want to shift directions.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: Can I take this?
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, go ahead.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: All right.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: So, Angie, you've alluded to it, and now I want to kind of dig into this aspect of the interview, which is the work that you're doing on these critical minerals, in particular with the heavy sands.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: Because I think when people think about critical minerals, they don't think about looking at sand.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: So tell us about this.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: What's what's going on?
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, you see this especially in the southeastern U.S.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: or really anywhere from southern New Jersey to northern Florida.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: If you ever walk along the beach, you'll notice sometimes some of the sands have these dark greens.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: And it turns out that at least in that part of the country, those dark greens actually contain minerals.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: They'll form these lines along the beach, kind of like you'll get a line of seaweed, and then sometimes you'll get some lines of sand.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: And so, how do they form?
27:24
SPEAKER_00: So you think about how sand forms, right?
27:27
SPEAKER_00: So you you've got rivers that will erode rocks, as rivers go along rocks, and they they erode the rocks and they pick up sediment and transport them.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Or in a place such as Maine, sometimes you'll have waves coming and crashing right on the rocks.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And as they do that, they erode sediments from the rocks.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been going on in the eastern US, for example, ever since the Atlantic Ocean was formed.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: And so those rocks are eroded by waves, sometimes by tides, sometimes by rivers, and they take all the that material.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Now, they also take a bunch of light sands, they get quartz.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: So you've got all this stuff that gets eroded, but then you keep reworking these sediments because the rivers transport them, tides move them around, waves move them around, and then you start sorting them.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: So I think a nice analogy is you're going to take um a box of raisin bran and then shake it up, and you notice how all the raisins are all collecting into one area, you're sorting them because the raisins are a different density from all the cereal around them.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And the more you you shake it, the more you're gonna sort them and concentrate them.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's how you start forming these concentrations within sand.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's there's a couple more parts to this, but I don't know if you want to ask a question.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: I was going to talk about what's in those concentrations because of the way these minerals form, it's very important in terms of mining.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna stop for a minute.
28:58
SPEAKER_02: So I I definitely do.
29:00
SPEAKER_02: I want to know one, what's in the sands?
29:03
SPEAKER_02: And two, I think I really am curious to see how you answer.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: Like, is there enough?
29:10
SPEAKER_02: Is this enough to to make a dent in our critical mineral needs?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so what's in the sands?
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, you can see these types of sand concentrations on many parts of the world.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: You'll see them up in Alaska, and I think there are places in Michigan too.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the content will depend on the rocks that they eroded.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: So now the southeastern US, this is an area that's has been mined for a couple decades, and it's actually actively mined.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: These sands are actively mined today.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: So the reason why there's three primary commodities that are in those sands.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: One is titanium, which uh is really important.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: So probably like I've heard a number like 70 to 80 percent of the white cars in the US, that pigment comes from titanium.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
30:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's very important pigment.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: And then you've got another place then?
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, every day.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Here's another one.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: You know anyone with an artificial hip or artificial knee?
30:14
SPEAKER_00: I do.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: I do actually Chris has four.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: He's got two hips.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: Chris has two hips and his foot.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: Yep, so so titanium, it's kind of inert and it's strong, and it's something it's because it doesn't interact with our the rest of our biology.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons people like using titanium for medical devices.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: They're also used for airplanes, for aircraft, for shipbuilding, because the metal so titanium is a huge one.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: So there's three big ones.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: Zirconium is another one that's been mined a lot, that's used a lot in ceramics.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of ovens, like certain types of ovens that can be heated up, that's zirconium.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: And then the third one, this is an interesting one, the rare earth elements.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: And you see those in the minerals monazite and xenotine.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's curious is now if you look at well, where do we get our rare earth elements?
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Prior to 1950, we used to get most of our rare earth elements from sands.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: But then in the 1950s, production started to shift to the mountain pass, the one in California, it's a carbonate type, and they're also shifting to China clays.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: These are clay-hosted.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: So the production just moved.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: It was trends, the number of reasons why it switched.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: But now, more recently, there's um a couple of companies that do heavy mineral sand mining are very interested in saying, you know, when we dig up all these sands for titanium and zirconium, we get all this monazite.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: And we want to process that and get the rare earths out of it.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Now it's a little bit tricky because that monazite has thorium in it.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Thorium is radioactive, so it has to be handled in a certain way, and that's an issue that they're working with.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: But they've got stockpiles of this stuff, and so they realize, hey, we can actually make a dent on critical mineral needs.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: So there is a very strong interest in doing that.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's come up just in the last couple years, year or two, really.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Angie, that is amazing to me.
32:21
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, are you shocked by this?
32:23
SPEAKER_02: That this is I'm still thinking about your like seriously.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm still thinking about your hip replacements that you've had, Chris, and how you how you still manage to walk after all the hip replacements.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: You're so happy.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: Angie, can you please just stick up for me every once in a while?
32:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm really pleased with that joke.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: I thought that was quite a funny joke.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: That was good.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: You're you're really happy with yourself.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm very pleased with you.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: Jesse, seriously though, are you surprised by this?
32:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: I have a couple follow-ups on this, Angie.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: So Okay, hold on.
32:49
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to leave the shot though.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: No, I'm Are you changing directions?
32:52
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: It's the same theme.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: So I wanna I wanna uh I'm guessing zirconium is in zircon.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: Like this, we we separate zircon in my lab at Penn State, and we separate monocyte too, density separate them.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: So like they're heavy, right?
33:06
SPEAKER_01: So monocyte rare earth, zirconium, probably zircon is the main source of that.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: Where's the titanium?
33:12
SPEAKER_00: The titanium, yeah.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: It's in um the key minerals are ilmenite and rutial, and then also leucosine.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Leucosine, which is altered ilmanite.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: And and they're all here's the key thing.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: They're they tend to be dark in color, but they're denser also.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: They're a lot denser.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: That's that's what how they concentrate, though.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's how they concentrate, exactly.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: So, like if you you can pan for it.
33:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: No, it's a little bit like a placer, then.
33:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is a placer.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
33:42
SPEAKER_02: That's what we're placering.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: My next my follow my follow-up to that is these minerals, at least I'm a geochrinologist, so we use zircon.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: Because it's so robust, and monocyte's much the same, like really robust.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: Is that a downside of mining these things?
34:06
SPEAKER_01: Because these minerals are just hard to dissolve, they're hard to break up, and maybe that's part of the reason why they're found in plaster deposits like gold and diamonds are.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: Is that a downside of extracting this stuff?
34:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess they're already extracting zirconium out of them.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: So, like, I mean, yeah, I mean, getting getting the elements out of the minerals is something you need to work with.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, rare earths is from monocyte is a is a tricky one, but there's been some recent developments.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: But here's the key thing, though, is that because these are in sand, you've got two stages.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: One is you've got to get the minerals out of the ground, and the other one is you've got to get the elements out of the minerals, right?
34:44
SPEAKER_00: And what you're saying is right, getting the elements out of the minerals, that is tricky.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be honest, I I don't know that stage as well.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: You're not a mine engineer or a material scientist for the can say this that getting them out of the ground is easier because it's all sand.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's different from certain types of mining where you have to use these noxious, kind of like you have to use, you know, cyanide and other things to get it out.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Here, they just take, they get the sand and they sift it, basically.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: They sift it, they use these spirals, they use magnets, they use electromagnetic fields.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: So that's the nice part.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: It's easier to get the sand out of the ground.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: And then your tailings are a bunch of quartz sand.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: So you put the quartz sand back in the topsoil, you put that aside and then put that on top.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Put that back when it's all done.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: So that's the nice part about it.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
35:39
SPEAKER_02: Angie, here in Michigan, we have these kind of black stripes that as you described them to.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people call them the black sands, but that's a little misleading because the beach isn't really black.
35:49
SPEAKER_02: It's just these really concentrated stripes.
35:52
SPEAKER_02: But here, if you drag a magnet through it, it's gonna come loaded with magnetite sand.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: Is that different from what you're describing, like in the Carolinas?
36:02
SPEAKER_02: A little bit.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: You've got to get a different composition?
36:04
SPEAKER_00: You've got different geology.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: I know in Michigan you've got some real iron-rich rocks there, a lot of volcanics.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: So I think you there you're eroding a lot of basalt.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, the stuff you see in the Carolinas, it's a bit older, it's been around longer.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the magnetic minerals, they've been around for hundred million years and they start to alter.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: They some of them can be magnetic, but not as many.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a really interesting thing.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: They're not as magnetic, but they can have a little bit.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: They can have a little bit of magnetism.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: These are really sands that have just been reworked since the opening of the Atlantic.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Like these things are just yeah, and then there's some new ones, because even today, you know, sands are getting eroded.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: If you go way upstream, um, they get eroded by rivers, and some of the rivers, if they go all the way from the hard rock out to the coast, like the Santee River in South Carolina, um, does that, then you can actually bring new minerals down to the coast also.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, in my really rudimentary understanding of like sedimentation and sedimentary working along a coastline, is all the light sand, like the quartz and stuff like that, is that all down in Florida then?
37:13
SPEAKER_01: Like has the longshore current just carried that down south and all the heavy stuff stays behind closer to the Piedmont rocks?
37:19
SPEAKER_01: Or is that too simplistic of a way to think about it?
37:22
SPEAKER_00: I I do think it's a little bit more complicated than that.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of the quartz does get transported down to Florida, but a lot of it stays behind.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: And it's complicated mechanisms, you know.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: So when a wave, it'll pick up a whole bunch of quartz and then leave heavies behind, but then when it comes back, it'll drop a whole bunch of quartz back on the beach.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: So it's this really complicated, it's complicated, yeah.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: Angie, a question related to this whole thing about the accumulation of these heavy sands.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: That's not really accessible though, is it?
38:00
SPEAKER_02: Because I mean, we're you're talking about beaches and that are probably already being used.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: And so you can't just go in and and take it.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: So where are you talking about?
38:11
SPEAKER_02: Are you talking about older sands that are not on the shoreline anymore?
38:16
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly it.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: So no one wants to see a beach get mined, right?
38:20
SPEAKER_00: We just kind of want to sit and enjoy the sun and you know, you know, have a nice cold beverage or something.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, no one wants to see that, yeah.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: So, but I like you talking about the beaches because it's a place where you can actually see the geology up front and close.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: You can look at it and you can see it.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: But the places that do get mined are much further inland.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times it tends to be on private land.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: So the mining company will make an agreement with the owner.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: So places like Roanoke Rapids was one.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: There's also areas south of Richmond, Virginia that have been mined.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: They tend to be inland, they tend to be areas that don't have those other types of uses like recreation.
39:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that makes sense.
39:04
SPEAKER_02: I'm really glad that I got clarification.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:08
SPEAKER_02: Struggle a little bit with the mental image.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh so Angie, um, how do you detect these things?
39:15
SPEAKER_01: And and how are you leveraging your geophysics in this way?
39:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this gets complicated, I think.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: So we probably need to stay out of the weeds, but at a high level.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at a high level.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: So I can tell you actually, the the first when I first got into this when I saw that that these sands had a very weak magnetic signature and I could pick them up with a magnetometer.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: But then I found that really worked best if I was near a beach or if I was offshore.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: If you go further inland, closer to where you'd actually want to mine, it actually turns out we have methods called radiometric methods.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the way this works, remember that monazite that I talked about that has the rare earth elements in it?
39:57
SPEAKER_00: It's also got that thorium.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: So radiometric methods do is they look at elements that have some amount of radioactivity.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: So it could be potassium.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Potassium, when it changes into argon, it releases a gamma ray.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: Thorium similarly releases gammas, and so does uranium.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: We have these sensors, they're actually made out of salt crystals, sodium iodide, I swear.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: And they can pick up, they can sense these gamma rays, and then they look at the energy spectrum of a gamma ray at each, every one of them.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: And then depending on what it is that decayed, it'll have a certain like a footprint or a fingerprint, maybe that's a better description.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: And then so we look at those fingerprints or footprints, and from that we back out.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: If I take this sensor over here, how much is there a lot of potassium there?
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Or is there a lot of thorium?
40:50
SPEAKER_00: Is there a lot of uranium?
40:52
SPEAKER_00: And we can put these sensors in airplanes, and then we fly them over the area.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: We sort of do like a mow the lawn kind of pattern and fly over these areas.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: And I should mention the footprint of the data gets pretty big when we're in in an airplane.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking several hundred feet for a pixel, if you will.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: But then we can find how high are you?
41:16
SPEAKER_00: If we can do it, we'll go 300 feet to 400 feet above ground, which is pretty low.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: It's very, very low.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: If it's a more populated area, they want us at a thousand feet, and that's just a safety consideration.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: Do you get diminishing returns when you have to go that much higher?
41:32
SPEAKER_00: You do, you do, because you can think about it.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to look at gammas coming out of the ground.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: So the further up you are, then the lower the probability that that gamma is going to hit your sensor.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: So it becomes a signal to noise kind of thing.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: So interesting.
41:48
SPEAKER_02: Do you have to be in the plane?
41:50
SPEAKER_00: No, in fact, I can't.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm not supposed to be in the airplane, and I wish I could.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: But why not?
41:55
SPEAKER_01: Why not?
41:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so these are special airplanes.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: What they do is they pull too much brain power, Chris.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: It's just too risky.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: To be honest, you know.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: So they would allow you on, Jesse.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: You and I could be like, no problem.
42:08
SPEAKER_01: We got we'd be ballast in the back, actually.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: Just go stand by.
42:11
SPEAKER_02: Jesse goes, sure.
42:12
SPEAKER_02: Chris, you can come on too.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: That's no problem.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: I gotta ask you this.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: How's your patience and how's your bladder?
42:18
SPEAKER_00: Because they're up there for six to eight hours at a time, and they're just going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is, they the inside of the airplane, they rip out all the seats because you need the electronics there, you need the equipment, you need the crystals are in there, so there's nowhere to sit.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: And then they just go back and forth and back and forth.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: So um the pilots, I mean you gotta admire them.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: That's not an easy job what they're doing.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, six to eight hour flights.
42:48
SPEAKER_02: Now, are they contracted by the USGS?
42:51
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: With there are a number of companies, it's a very specialized kind of field, um, very specialized skill set, but they have the instrumentation, they have the right kind of airplanes, they know how to post-process the data.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of um a lot that goes, a lot of technical stuff goes into these surveys.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have some of the best contractors out there.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: So you're getting these gamma rays, and I I must be, I must say, I just bought a gamma ray spectrometer for our lab.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: I hate one of those handheld ones you can take in the field, but I don't really fundamentally understand how it works yet.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: We've just been kind of playing with it, a bunch of petrologists playing with a gamma ray spectrometer.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: But uh, so you you fly these surveys and it's picking up well gamma rays that are different energies.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: So if I'm guessing uranium and thorium, it's picking up like different product nuclides, like in the somewhere in the decay chain, there's a bunch of gamma rays being released.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: Is that directional?
43:41
SPEAKER_01: Do you get like a direction if it's coming from the left side of the plane or the right side, or is it just aggregate all the gamma rays at one time from all over are coming in?
43:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's an interesting question.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: Your pixel size seems small for being a thousand feet in the air, to be honest.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: Um
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Say a couple hundred meters.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, a couple of things are happening.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: They are partly directional in that we have some of them are downward looking versus upward looking, and that's to correct for any radon or other things in the atmosphere.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: So there is that type of directionality.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: But what's happening is you're moving across an area and you're always aggregating what you've got.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: But as you're moving, the signals are changing.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: So with the right kind of processing, you can actually measure pretty well what the differences are.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: And I would say, you know, at least three, four hundred feet.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: I usually say a couple hundred meters.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: It's really a normal distribution dominated by what's immediately beneath you.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think we want to get into the complexities of that.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: But that's pretty weedy.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: So will then you follow up anything interesting with like handheld stuff on the ground, like boots on the ground measurement.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: There are times, yeah.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in fact, we did do that.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we did that up in Maine.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, that was kind of interesting.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw this spit.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: Um I bet.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, actually, uh in this article, you guys there was a big press release about or big article in science on this, I think, right?
45:13
SPEAKER_01: Was it a uh Chris?
45:14
SPEAKER_01: We talked about this, I think, like uh Yeah, we did.
45:16
SPEAKER_02: We did earlier in the spring.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: It was it was strange.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: We we were flying over Maine and we just noticed this anomaly in this one area.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: It was about 800 meters by a couple hundred meters wide.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I'd say about a kilometer by 800 meters to a kilometer long and a few hundred meters wide.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: It picked up on a couple of flight lines, and we said, What on earth is going on here?
45:41
SPEAKER_00: And so we were collaborating with a professor at the University of Maine, and he said, I'm gonna go look.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: And he went out and he brought his portable XRF, which is a way of looking at quickly looking at chemistry of the rocks.
45:55
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Okay, this is interesting.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: There's rare earth elements here.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: And so we said, okay, and so we went and we we did kind of a multifaceted study on it.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: He got a bunch of samples, we did proper laboratory measurements on them.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: We took a handheld gamma spectrometer, exactly like what you're talking about, and then we did a walking survey much closer to the ground.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: Because when you're closer to the ground, then your footprint is a lot smaller.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: It can be just, you know, a few feet at that point.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: And we looked at that and looking at the samples, it turned out that the rocks are very enriched in niobium and rare earth elements.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: And um, we kind of mapped out the spatial extent of it.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: What we don't know is how deep it is.
46:41
SPEAKER_02: But the spatial Yeah, this wasn't a placer, was it?
46:44
SPEAKER_02: No, this is hard rock.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's actually very fine-grained volcanic rock.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: So uh trachite is the name of it, and it's hard rock, and we don't know how deep it is, but the dimensions are very similar to a there's a deposit in Australia, and it's a known deposit because they've drilled into it.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: It's similar in spatial dimensions, and it's similar, it's also very fine-grained volcanic rock, it's similar, it's got rarus and niobium and zirconium.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: It's got all of those, and it's worth a lot.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: So we don't know if this one in Maine is worth that because we just again we don't know how deep it is, but it's intriguing.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's very interesting.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: Super interesting.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh go ahead, Chris.
47:30
SPEAKER_02: Okay, you described beautifully the radiometric methods for your airborne geophysics, if you will.
47:37
SPEAKER_02: How often do you use something like LIDAR to see through the canopy as well?
47:41
SPEAKER_02: Because you talked about flying through Maine.
47:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that Maine has a canopy of all canopies.
47:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I've seen some LIDAR and how it's used to maybe map out ancient mass wasting events and things like that.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: Do you use the same technology a lot?
47:57
SPEAKER_00: I do actually.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, it depends on the method.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: No, so I mentioned magnetic methods and radiometric methods.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: The radiometric methods measure very shallow sources, so like only a couple of feet.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: So if we do an overlay on LIDAR, it actually really provides us the context, the geologic context.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: So, for example, in the Carolinas, I can see where the floodplain is, or I can see if some sands, if they're from an ancient shoreline, or if it was once more like a tidal bay or an estuary.
48:33
SPEAKER_00: So that's a really nice way to use the lidar data.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to look deeper, though, like something with magnetics, it's a little bit trickier because now you've got a separation between what's at the surface and what's down deep.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: So you can kind of iterate between those two three methods, kind of depending on what you're after to get an integrated uh uh view.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: You published this map or the surveys from Maine, right?
48:57
SPEAKER_01: And then or maybe not published, but it's published in the Carolinas one as well.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, uh anything?
49:07
SPEAKER_01: Have you guys been are you working your way up towards us or even to Michigan to go map you know Chris's Chris's mineral sands there?
49:13
SPEAKER_00: You know?
49:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm asking what's next for Earth MRI?
49:16
SPEAKER_01: Like what's the next couple years look like?
49:18
SPEAKER_01: Are you guys just cranking through loads of surveys or what's yes?
49:22
SPEAKER_00: We are cranking through loads of surveys.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: There are tons of surveys, and um, and and I should mention all the data become public and they're available for free.
49:32
SPEAKER_00: If you just Google Earth MRI acquisitions, you can see what we're up to right now.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: And if you click on a data set, if it's complete and the data are out there, it'll give you a link to that.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: So you can always find the data.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: Yep, we recently had a survey covering parts of Pennsylvania.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh, is that right?
49:51
SPEAKER_00: Um we went, yeah, in between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
49:54
SPEAKER_00: We didn't go to out to the cities, but we were in the southern parts between them.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: Cool.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: Um we got, yeah, we got the Gettysburg Basin there.
50:01
SPEAKER_01: That's where I'm at right now.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, uh my wife, um I live in York, Pennsylvania, part of the time.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, so Southeast Pennsylvania, where there's like all this old iron mining, you little copper deposits everywhere, old iron furnaces and stuff like that.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: So kind of complicated Piedmont geology.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll be interested to see that.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: That'll be cool to look at once it uh comes up.
50:19
SPEAKER_00: And I think some of my colleagues have been looking at Michigan, but I don't know that area as well.
50:23
SPEAKER_02: What I'll expect you to give me a heads up on that and I'll know what's going on.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: Chris wants to go in the plane as balanced.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: He can join, he can join along.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, real quick, what I'm sure this is a hard question to answer, but what are you most excited about in the next like couple years?
50:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you're excited about all of it, but is there something that's like really kind of a passion project that you're super excited about?
50:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about what we're gonna find next because I just don't know.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just keep getting these surprises, like the stuff up in Maine, that was a surprise.
50:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, some of the stuff with the sands, we learned about some of the larger scale transport patterns, and I didn't know we were gonna be able to do that.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: We got that from the potassium, that was really cool.
51:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've got a survey coming up.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about this over the Cape Fear Arch.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: And I want to know what the Cape Fear Arch, yeah, in between the border on between North and South Carolina, and this is so interesting because you know, we think, okay, the Atlantic Ocean opened, and now everything is stable on the eastern seaboard, nothing's moving.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not true.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: It turns out that there's this area close to the border between the two Carolinas that seems to be uplifting.
51:39
SPEAKER_00: And people know this by looking at the sedimentary history, looking at the strata, because you'd expect, if nothing was moving, you'd expect it to look like a pile of pancakes, flat pancakes, and it's not what you see.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: Instead, you see all these angles, and we don't understand it.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: There's no good explanation for it.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: That's super interesting.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: I know I remember talking to a geophysicist about this, and they said that well, a seismologist rather, and they're they said that there's like a piece of the lithosphere missing, that the mantle, there's like a hundred kilometer by hundred kilometer part of the mantle route.
52:11
SPEAKER_01: It's I think it's a bit more north from there, but it's kind of like gone.
52:15
SPEAKER_01: And so they're like, oh, maybe it's related to this New England hotspot that passed through, but they use the phrase that passive margins are anything but passive was kind of the phrase, which I found really uh that was a good one.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: I like that one.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: Um that's cool.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know about the what the Cape Fear Arch?
52:31
SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're doing?
52:31
SPEAKER_01: Cape Fear.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: Cape Fear Arch.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay, very cool.
52:34
SPEAKER_00: Sort of like the movie, but with an arch.
52:36
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
52:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Cape Fear.
52:38
SPEAKER_02: That's an oldie.
52:39
SPEAKER_00: It's an oldie, showing my age.
52:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:44
SPEAKER_01: And one more thing.
52:46
SPEAKER_01: I I want to I just want to circle back real quick, Edgie, to the education stuff that we touched on initially.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: And I think your your sort of advice sounded like kind of be patient, right?
52:55
SPEAKER_01: From your seat, you must interact with a lot of kind of industry types, academic types.
53:00
SPEAKER_01: You kind of bridge this divide a little bit, and especially given your interest in the applied sciences.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: Are there I don't know, are there degrees that are more valuable?
53:09
SPEAKER_01: Like we always get, I and I think we as geologists sort of struggle with this innately.
53:13
SPEAKER_01: Volcanoes are cool, but there's only so many people who can be professional volcanologists, right?
53:19
SPEAKER_01: Like it's just not that many.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: So, my opinion is if you're interested in volcanoes, go study volcanoes for a grad degree, and you'll be able to use that petrology knowledge and that that chemistry knowledge or that geophysics knowledge in some other field if you don't want to be a professional volcanoologist working for one of the volcano observatories or something.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: There's other value in that.
53:40
SPEAKER_01: I I mean, would you agree with that, or would you you say, like, hey, if you go do applied science degrees, maybe?
53:48
SPEAKER_01: And just as this is just from your perspective, I'm not asking you to like advise everybody, but what what's the there's a tension there, I think, sometimes between like the passion-driven geologists and the practical side.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, I I I don't know if it's changing.
54:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I do I think a lot of it depends on the individual and what it is they want to do and how happy they'll be.
54:09
SPEAKER_00: And some people work best in doing pure research, and they're very interested in those questions, and they're willing to tolerate all the hoops you have to go through to get a research position and to get a faculty position and to get funding, which is it's a difficult route.
54:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a very competitive route, and a lot of people want to do it, and not everyone gets to do it, even if you do have that passion, it's it's hard.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: And on the other hand, you know, maybe you're interested in geoscience, but you don't feel the need to go into pure research, and maybe you want to do something else.
54:46
SPEAKER_00: One thing that you mentioned is you talked about, I think you alluded to skill sets.
54:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think having those skill sets is really important.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's important to study what you like and what you're interested in because you'll be motivated to work really hard.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: But if you have skill sets that are transferable, then your opportunities expand.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: You'll have a lot more doors open to you, and you'll have just more options in the end.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: And which skill sets are helpful?
55:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's petrology, maybe.
55:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, GIS is always a good one, Python programming's a good one.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: There's, you know, the skill sets that I had way back in the day, I knew Fortran.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, no, no one's no one's using that.
55:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:36
SPEAKER_01: We still we still have classes that teach Fortran, and all the students are very complaining about it because they're like, why aren't we learning Python here?
55:43
SPEAKER_00: We might have the same question.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a completely valid question.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I agree.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: That was a long time ago, and and yeah, I wouldn't recommend it now.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, MATLAB would still be.
55:55
SPEAKER_00: All right, Angie.
55:56
SPEAKER_02: So, Angie, let's quit skirting around the issue.
55:59
SPEAKER_02: Is it a good idea to get a geoscience degree or not?
56:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put you on the wall.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: I think it's well, the person, it depends on you, right?
56:07
SPEAKER_00: What are your interests?
56:09
SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
56:10
SPEAKER_00: What why are you going for it?
56:11
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to get out of it?
56:13
SPEAKER_00: And are there opportunities?
56:14
SPEAKER_00: I think there are.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: I'll be honest.
56:16
SPEAKER_00: I haven't looked through the ads, but I think I think there's a lot of opportunities.
56:21
SPEAKER_00: I know that for what we do for magnetics and gravity and radiometric methods.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: I wish there were more people graduating with that skill set.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: I would think so.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: That's but I okay.
56:33
SPEAKER_01: I really like the way you said that, Angie.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, go do something you're interested in because you'll work hard at it.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: And you'll be interested and you'll learn, you'll develop all those skill sets that if you aren't interested in what you're doing, you're not gonna go the extra mile to kind of learn Python because you kind of need it to solve this little niche problem in your master's or whatever.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna use that.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: That's I'm gonna steal that piece of advice and use it because that's a good one.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: I I think that's valuable for developing these like tangential skill sets.
57:00
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, okay, well, thank you for thank you for answering that very difficult and impossible to answer question for us.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: That's a wonderful question, Jesse.
57:08
SPEAKER_01: No, it's perfect, though.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: It's a good I mean, it's hard, it's a hard one, right?
57:11
SPEAKER_01: Because it's like it is a hard one.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: We all come from our own personal perspective, right?
57:15
SPEAKER_01: And and look outwards from that viewpoint.
57:19
SPEAKER_01: And but it but it's valuable.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: And this is something we've been trying to ask all of the people we've been interviewing recently who are you know successful senior scientists or senior researchers like yourself, what does it look like from your chair?
57:30
SPEAKER_01: Because we can only give Chris and I can only give advice from our own perspectives.
57:34
SPEAKER_01: And so it's value.
57:35
SPEAKER_01: We just try and get a get our listeners a summary of everybody's perspective here over time.
57:39
SPEAKER_01: So thank you for that.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: We appreciate that.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I might if I was 20 years younger, my answer might be different.
57:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
57:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes, but you know, thankfully you're not 20 years younger.
57:51
SPEAKER_01: So you can give advice from a from a seat a position of uh of you know higher level.
57:56
SPEAKER_01: So we appreciate that.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: All right, Chris.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I interrupted you there.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you uh why don't you take us out here?
58:02
SPEAKER_02: All right, Angie.
58:02
SPEAKER_02: So this is may it's I don't know.
58:04
SPEAKER_02: I have two favorite questions, and the it's the first and the last.
58:08
SPEAKER_02: And I really appreciated your answer about why you got into geoscience.
58:11
SPEAKER_02: So now let's talk about what's been your best day as a geoscientist.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
58:18
SPEAKER_00: There's been a few, you know.
58:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why this sticks in my head, but um I was I did uh oh god, I think it was in my twenties, and I did this, I was doing a little solo miniature road trip in the southwest.
58:33
SPEAKER_00: And it was getting near sunset, and I was looking at the horizon, and I was just looking at the mountains, and while I'm looking at them, I'm looking like that's a half grabin, you know, and it's this beautiful, beautiful sunset.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: And then looking at the mountains though, I guess because I I was new, I was still in graduate school.
58:52
SPEAKER_00: I had only been in grad school a couple of years, and I had a new appreciation for looking at mountains in a certain way and seeing the shape and then thinking about the processes that formed them.
59:07
SPEAKER_00: And it was something that back in the old days I would have thought of it, oh, that's pretty.
59:11
SPEAKER_00: But now I thought, oh, it's very pretty, and there's a story to go with it.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: And I could say the same thing with looking sometimes at sands on the beach, also.
59:20
SPEAKER_00: It's like I look at that and like, oh, there's a whole story here.
59:23
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
59:23
SPEAKER_02: I like that.
59:24
SPEAKER_02: Looking at the world through a little bit of a different lens and understanding our planet, that's such a good answer.
59:29
SPEAKER_02: It adds so much more, it adds a connectedness, right?
59:32
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of what you're saying.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, my even my aunt, she's not a geoscientist at all.
59:37
SPEAKER_00: She's not any kind of scientist.
59:39
SPEAKER_00: She, but she learned from a friend, she said, you know, every rock has a story, and and that's like I don't understand them, but they all have their stories.
59:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's a good one.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, that is a great spot to end on.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Angie.
59:53
SPEAKER_01: This has been such a pleasure.
59:54
SPEAKER_01: I've learned a ton, and I'm very interested in the sands now, too.
59:56
SPEAKER_01: This is very exciting stuff, and I'm looking forward to seeing some uh geophysics from from Pennsylvania too.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh we can investigate what's going on there.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_01: And if you need people to walk around and follow it up with a handheld gamma ray spectrometer, I guess we'll figure out how it works.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: We can we could walk down the road and point it at some rocks too.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Angie, absolutely.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_02: I second hand everything Jesse said.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_02: Learning about the critical minerals and the sands, I don't know.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_02: I didn't.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_02: That's exciting that this is, you know, it's it's more viable than I think I ever would have imagined.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_02: And and I think that's very exciting.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much for sharing that with us, and uh thanks for giving us your time.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we really appreciate it.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: We really appreciate it.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much, Angie.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: Hey, that's a wrap.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
1:00:44
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1:00:47
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1:00:52
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1:01:03
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1:01:10
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1:01:13
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1:01:24
SPEAKER_02: Well done, Jesse.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_02: Cheers.