Texas geologist Ellen Hanson's fieldwork requires quite a commute.
It's so far, in fact, that she's never actually been there -- and
neither has anyone else. Hanson does research on the planet Venus.
"I started out working on Earth and ended up on Venus," says Hanson.
It's a big leap to make, but Hanson says she wouldn't have it
any other way. With a few clicks of a mouse, Hanson can jump to a virtual
Venus to do some very real research.
"Venus is a wonderful planet to work on, even though I can't go to
it. Normally I'm a field geologist on Earth, so when I sit down in front
of a computer it's very much the same as fieldwork. I can map huge areas
of Venus really quickly, because I don't have to worry about whether
the helicopter is going to come and pick me up or not. It doesn't rain
in my office either!"
When Hanson sits down in front of her computer to study Venus, she looks
at images of the planet taken by a NASA satellite. "We have beautiful radar
imagery of 98 percent of the surface of Venus. I have these images programmed
into my computer so I can focus in on a particular area and examine it in
detail," says Hanson.
It might seem strange for a geologist, a person who studies the composition
and origins of Earth, to be researching an entirely different planet, but
Hanson believes it makes perfect sense. As a structural geologist -- a person
who studies how materials deform -- she feels she can learn a lot about Earth
from Venus.
"I still consider myself an Earth-bound geologist. I study Venus because
of what it can teach me about the Earth," she says. "Venus is a planet very
similar to Earth. It's our sister planet -- the same size, same composition,
formed at the same time and presumably the same heat budget."
Hanson studies plate tectonics, which is the movement of plates beneath
the Earth's surface. This is how the planet cools itself.
"We sweat; that's how we cool ourselves," Hanson explains. "The Earth
has plate tectonics."
Since it's widely accepted that Venus does not have plate tectonics,
and yet is still similar to Earth in many ways, Hanson believes Venus can
teach her about the way the Earth cooled itself before plate tectonics did
the job.
"What Venus allows us is an opportunity to come up with other theories
for how Earth might have cooled itself in the absence of plate tectonics,
because Venus doesn't have plate tectonics. That's very exciting
because it allows us to stretch our mind in a way that we couldn't have
without our view of Venus."
Hanson doesn't spend all her time in outer space. She's a geology
professor and a mother of two children, so she has a lot of responsibilities
right here on Earth. Hanson doesn't feel divided between Earth and space,
however. She says her research works well with teaching and family life.
"The [Venus] research came at a good time in my life, because it allows
me to do my fieldwork in my office, instead of away in a remote area. Also,
I get a lot of ideas for research from my teaching, and a lot of ideas for
my teaching in my research. The two complement each other."
Hanson says she enjoys teaching geology almost as much as she enjoys the
research, because it gives her the opportunity to introduce students to what
she believes is a misunderstood discipline.
"Most people never know geology exists as a career until it's too
late for them to choose that path. If they do know about it, they probably
think geologists just look at rocks, put them into piles and label them."
Hanson says she wouldn't have been involved in this field herself if
she hadn't stumbled into it by accident.
"I was initially a chemistry major," she says. "I've always enjoyed
scientific problems. I was at this college where the geology majors seemed
to be having a whole lot more fun than the chem majors, so a friend and I
took an introductory geology class. After that I was hooked, because geology
put together chemistry, physics, biology -- it was multidisciplinary. So I
just never looked back."
Hanson says her favorite thing about geology is that it gives her the opportunity
to use her imagination. While creativity isn't something we normally
associate with the sciences, Hanson believes the best ideas for geological
research are the most imaginative ones.
"Say, for example, we're looking at an image of Venus and trying to
come up with suggestions for how it might have formed. The person who's
going to come up with the best models for testing are the little kids who
look at that and say, 'Gosh, that looks just like my taffy I was pulling
apart.' You just have the imagination to make these mental leaps."
Hanson believes the older we get, the more we worry about what people will
think of our ideas, so we censor ourselves from suggesting the best and most
imaginative ones. "In fact, this image of Venus does look just like taffy,
and that's what I'm proposing in my theory -- that Venus's
crust is formed like pulling taffy. Imagination is really important."
Aside from its challenges and the opportunity it presents to explore the
creative side of oneself, geology gives students a chance to travel and work
outside in places they might not otherwise have seen.
"Geology is a great way to do science and do it outside. I have had some
neat times working in the Antarctic, the Yukon, Colorado and California that
I wouldn't have experienced in any other career. It's really been
a gift for me," says Hanson.
Petroleum geologist and university professor Ian Hutcheon would agree that
the geology field is a field on the move.
Sometimes geologists are required to accept positions in a different city
every few years. When a project is complete, they need to move on in order
to remain employed, he says.
"When the price of oil is high and people [companies] are willing to spend
a lot of money for employees, people will move. When the price of oil is low
and people [companies] are divesting themselves, as employees geologists have
to move," he says.
Hutcheon has never heard of any geologists being completely shut out of
work, but times do become lean. This is when their highly developed communication
skills come into play.
When a person is working for an oil company, they have to be able to communicate
very well. When the people with the purse strings want to know
why they should spend millions of dollars on a particular project, a geologist
better be able to back up their ideas, he says.
"They need to be able to convey an idea clearly so that someone else can
understand what that idea is."
Communication skills are not the only important skills for geologists.
"Math skills are very important. The closer a company gets to pulling a
pump out of the ground, the greater their math skills need to be," says Hutcheon.
"Oil in the ground isn't worth anything unless you can sell it for
a profit. The process of taking a discovery and evaluating its economic potential
is a fairly intensive, mathematical process," he says.
Geologists also need to be able to communicate with engineers and geophysicists.
And basically, what that means is, "if they [geologists] don't speak
math, you don't get to the table to talk," says Hutcheon.
So, according to geologists here on Earth, it doesn't matter which
area of geology you choose to study in or what planet you choose to study
about. The world of a geologist is a continued learning experience with excitement
rolled in.