Ask HN: What are the important problems of your field? - tai_hn
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kleopullin
In geosciences, still many. Some leading ones: carbon sequestration, mineral
resources (mining and associated environmental and political risks), origin of
moon, earthquake prediction, age and Earth conditions of origin of life,
magnetic reversals, mechanisms and speed of recovery from mass extinctions.

In all of these, earth scientist are likely to work across diverse size
(diatom to outcrop to mountain range to solar system) and time (the lifetime
of an organism, a species, an ecosystem, a biome) scales gathering data to
create models. What do past carbon isotope ratios tell us, what's the size of
the atmosphere. X-ray crystallography, surface area of a large copper deposit.

Geologists' datasets may be small for creating complex models, and they often
are looking at unique processes, so they frequently write their own programs.

