The human mind; volcanoes and aerosols

It amazes me how complex the mind is.  I spent the better part of today and some of yesterday reading through GSA Today and Geology, and I found myself re-reading the same paragraph and paper over and over.  Now, it was not because I found it absolutely fascinating (though it was interesting).  No, it was because I forgot what on earth the terms within it meant!

A bit of background.  I am only two years out of my earth sciences program.  And, considering how much my mentors and teachers made sure I kept information in my head, I am sure they would be disappointed that it took me hours to remember definitions.

However, think about it.  Our brains process a huge amount of information every moment.  Much of that processing actually infers what things are, generating meaning from strings of variables and data.  As Randall at the webcomic xkcd so excellently pointed out in this comic on vision (by the way, the geology comic today was hilarious!), our brains keep track of what color everything should be.  Even just language.  Have you ever considered it?  We take strokes made by a writing instrument, assign sound to it, and then string series of strokes together to make something that actually means something to our brains.  Not only that, it means the same thing to others' brains (perhaps not exactly, as it brings up memories, which are never the same).

So, I guess it is not too surprising that I might forget terms that I have not heard in two years.  However, it does make me realize I need to read scientific papers more often.

In other news, I read the recent Weatherwise over the past week, and one of the mini articles at the front  of the magazine caught my attention.  It is titled "Major Volcanic Eruptions Might Squelch Big Atlantic Storms."  To me, it is great to see this sort of thing studied because it shows that people are looking at the interactions between earth systems.  The paper they were summarizing from the Journal of Geophysical Research explores how aerosols from two tropical volcanoes affects tropical systems in the Atlantic.  The researcher, Amato Evan from the University of Virginia, showed a decrease in frequency.  Great topic to look into!

Aerosols, by the way, are extremely tiny particles suspended in the air.  They can range from sea salt (ejected into the air as waves crash - when the water shows the white peaks, then it could be pushing sea salt into the air) to sulfates from volcanic eruptions, as two examples.  These aerosols could become cloud condensation nuclei.  Water vapor often needs a particle to adhere to as it condenses into clouds, and those particles are called cloud condensation nuclei.  A good way to learn about it would be to cut open a hailstone (or look one up on the web).  At the center of the hailstone, there is always something which started the whole process.  So, in that way, it is like a pearl in the ocean, where a bit of something aggravates an oyster, which responds by encasing it in calcium carbonate.  Calcium carbonate (CaCO3), by the way, is also what living organisms make shells out of, and is found in many rocks throughout the world.

Enjoy the start of the workweek (at least, here in the USA)!