Category Archives: (U-Th)/He

He Thermochronology Reading List

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Thermochronic

I was always jealous of geoscientists who started their education in the 70’s; for them, there was only a 10 year backlog of plate tectonics relevant geoscience literature to catch up with. Even under sane circumstances it gets harder and harder … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, geochronology, thermochronology | Leave a comment

The Partial Retention Zone

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Thermochronic

One of the most important concepts in thermochronology is the Partial Retention Zone (PRZ for short, referred to as the Partial Annealing Zone in the fission-track world). The term PRZ is used to refer to a variety of things, all … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, dealing with data, geochronology, Primers, thermochronology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Geochronology Short Course at GSA 2014

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Thermochronic

As a graduate student in 2005 I was lucky enough to attend a Thermochronology Short Course sponsored by the Mineralogical Society of America. It was a 2 day event at Snowbird, a ski resort outside of Salt Lake City, just … Continue reading →

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Thermochronology

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Thermochronic

This morning I was looking for a post I thought I’d written years ago to help explain the fundamentals of thermochronology. Although I have posts on 40Ar/39Ar and (U-Th)/He thermochronology, turns out I’ve never written a more basic post on the … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, geochronology, thermochronology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Thermochronology blowin’ up all over the internet

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Thermochronic

In case you missed it, Ars Technica recently featured a science story filled with apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronology. The article is about recent work that uses thermochronology to look at the long term (Phanerozoic) history of Canada. It incorporates thermochronology, kimberlites, … Continue reading →

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Picking Apatites for (U-Th)/He Thermochronology

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Thermochronic

Since its reintroduction in the mid 1990’s, apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronology has become a widely used and reliable method for understanding upper crustal thermal histories. The technique has been used on a wide range of lithologies to help understand an enormous … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, geochronology, thermochronology, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Thermo 2014 – Chamonix

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Thermochronic

I went to my first International Conference on Thermochronology in 2008, when the meeting was held in Anchorage. This was during the waning days of my first blogging attempt, but I managed to publish four write-ups, and lots of pictures. … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, Academia, geochronology, thermochronology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

FT2008 – Alaska chapter 4 and a big thanks

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Thermochronic

Before I write any more about FT2008, the International Conference on Thermochronometry, I need to take care of one blog related item. Last week I was named a “blog of note” on blogger.com, and have since seen a drastic increase … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, earth science, geochronology, impending thermochronocracy, pictures, thermochronology | 17 Comments

FT2008 – Alaska chapter 2

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Thermochronic

As I mentioned in my last post, the scientific program at FT2008 (The International Conference on Thermochronometry in Anchorage) was overall pretty impressive. I thought I’d highlight a few of the presentations that I found most interesting. As a side … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, dealing with data, earth science, geochronology, impending thermochronocracy, pictures, thermochronology | 21 Comments

Thermochronologic Sampling

Posted on May 3, 2008 by Thermochronic

I’ve posted about thermochronology and mineral separations (twice), but I realized that I haven’t yet gone over the field work aspect of thermochronology. Now, I’ll admit up front that the field work I do is not very hard core. There … Continue reading →

Posted in (U-Th)/He, earth science, geochronology, impending thermochronocracy, thermochronology | 6 Comments