This is my first post on the blog and I bid you welcome. I hope to use this blog frequently to share with you thoughts on the geosciences with focus on geology.

But other topics might arise like the climate, archaeology, politics, religion, philosophy and science fiction. I am a geek of the hominid type, and I am here to preach the Gospels of my entire geosphere. This blog will therefor combine both science and philosophy and I will try to make geology as fun and exciting for you as it already is for me. And by writing blog posts I will of course help my self in my studies by forcing myself to explore the facts before writing. That means this blog isnt just for you.

Please use the navigator menus above to explain any questions you might have about the basics. If you cant find it there then Wikipedia as an excellent collection of articles in the fields of geoscience. And please excuse my English since I am from Sweden, English isnt my primary language. Grammar and spelling might become "strange" at times. My geographical location will also limit most of my posts on geology to the geology of Sweden. But fear not ye easily bored - Sweden has everything from vulcanos to dinosaurs. The Earth is both big and more than 4500 million years old, so I doubt that I will run out of topics any time soon.

The picture below is the beautiful Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. They consist of over 40 000 basalt columns. Their age is somewhere in the Paleogene period. (That is between 65 and 23 millions years ago.). Basalt columns are formed when basalt (a lava flow) cools of  and contracts and forms cooling joints due to the contraction when the rock cracks (cold matter contracts compared to warm). The shape is simply caused by the effect this form (hexagonal in this case) being the most simple and easy solution for the rock to crack under contractive stress due to the jointing rules of that perticular rock (basalt). It is not a cristalline effect like one might think. But it sure looks strange. The basalt is highly resistant to erosion and therefor the shapes can be seen for millions of years. But one day it will become complety eroded.