Mika McKinnonVerified account

@mikamckinnon

Field geophysicist, disaster researcher, scifi science consultant, science writer, public speaker, irrepressibly curious. she/her 🇨🇦🇺🇸

West Coast
about.me/mikamckinnon
Joined June 2009
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  1. Pinned Tweet
    10 Mar 2018

    Hi! I'm a disaster researcher (landslides in space with !), TV & movie science consultant, field geophysicist, & freelance science communicator. I'm usually somewhere along the West Coast of North America. Easiest way to contact me is

    Muddy Mika in high-vis gear on a landslide deposit.
    Mika fishing with a GoPro camera in the surf line of a beach.
    Mika looking only slightly evil while wearing a fancy dress giving a presentation.
    Mika on set of Stargate:Atlantis in the gateroom.
    56 replies 77 retweets 853 likes
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  2. 4 hours ago

    I’m suddenly understanding why halflings have a natural bonus in the sneaky skills.

    1 retweet 62 likes
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  3. 7 hours ago

    Ghost moons! They’re a bit tricky to find, and they might actually be several times the size of the Earth. That’s not unnerving at allll 🚀👻 🌑

    UPDATE TO THE UPDATE has now informed me we have two dusty space clouds, Kordylewski clouds, each the SIZE OF THE MOON and I'm now questioning our entire friendship. You too WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME
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    1 reply 2 retweets 43 likes
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  4. 10 hours ago

    Irregular reminder that landslides are more kin to fluids than solids. Clickthrough for vid. Nothing graphic that needs a content warning, still double-nested so you’re not ambushed by disaster footage in your feed. 💜

    Footage of the Highway 5 debris flow!
    2 replies 11 retweets 56 likes
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  5. Retweeted
    Nov 11

    Sylvite is a tragically well-kept secret. Sylvite is pretty much halite (salt) but with potassium instead of sodium to pair with chloride in pretty lil cubes. The result is a sour-bitter flavour, the geological equivalent of a lemon. Love it!

    Salt can’t be the only delicious rock. I’m going to eat rocks to find the good ones. I bet they’re trying to keep them from us
    21 replies 73 retweets 517 likes
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  6. Nov 11

    Sylvite is a tragically well-kept secret. Sylvite is pretty much halite (salt) but with potassium instead of sodium to pair with chloride in pretty lil cubes. The result is a sour-bitter flavour, the geological equivalent of a lemon. Love it!

    Salt can’t be the only delicious rock. I’m going to eat rocks to find the good ones. I bet they’re trying to keep them from us
    21 replies 73 retweets 517 likes
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  7. Nov 11

    Irregular reminder that we’re living on a gooey green planet with a wet shell & iron pit:

    What does the Earth's look like under , 25+km below our feet? Gorgeous, is the answer. The furthest humans have drilled is ~12 km, but we know because some bits of it got torn off & brought up with magma during some Auckland ! (scale: each tick is 1 mm)
    8 replies 59 retweets 268 likes
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  8. Nov 10

    I suspect we’re going to find a rock during a baby nap sometime soon. Any special requests for rock properties, geologic settings, or mineral components you’d like to explore?

    A scene from the animated Shrek movies with donkey standing on a grassy hillside looking down at a boulder saying “I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder.”
    At highly irregular intervals, and we go on an adventure of licking, petting, & smashing to figure it out. With 5,000+ official minerals (growing by a few dozen discoveries a year) & countless rocks combining those minerals, we have many adventures ahead of us.
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    8 replies 1 retweet 28 likes
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  9. Nov 10

    Meanwhile in Interplanetary Tea-Drinking news:

    Physicists say they’ve finally solved the teapot effect—for real this time. It's due to interplay of inertial, viscous, capillary forces—but gravity's less relevant. So the teapot effect would occur on the moon but not aboard the space station
    3 retweets 29 likes
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  10. Nov 10

    Epilogue for Canadians: Sign up for to help track respiratory disease in our communities: It’s a 2-question online form that takes under a minute to complete. I’m one of 12,000 weekly participants across Canada. Join me?

    1 retweet 11 likes
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  11. Nov 10

    Part of why I work in disasters is that it brings me comfort to know I’m making the world less bad. Getting a flu shot is so small, so simple, so fast, but it protects those around you. Small things like getting vaccinated add up, making the world just a little bit better.

    1 reply 2 retweets 43 likes
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  12. Nov 10

    It’s been a long, shitty pandemic that’s changed all of us. The fatigue is real. The burnout is real. The lure of submitting to defeat as it never fucking ends is real. But just like with climate change, nihilism is kin to denialism. It’s never too late to make things less bad.

    2 replies 12 retweets 48 likes
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  13. Nov 10

    I used to be lazy about getting my annual flu vaccine. I accepted getting sick each winter, during finals, or at conventions. Then a close friend got an organ transplant, another battled cancer, and others had kids. Suddenly, I understood why vaccination wasn’t about ME but them

    1 reply 7 retweets 49 likes
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  14. Nov 10

    I’m doing my part getting my baby every vaccine as close to on-time as I can wrangle in our overloaded healthcare system, minimizing our exposure, teaching hand-washing to an infant too young to reliably stand. But I need you to do your part. I need you vaccinated if you can be.

    1 reply 2 retweets 21 likes
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  15. Nov 10

    The inability to easily get baby flu shots in a year the paediatric ER is dominated with respiratory illnesses (especially flu, RSV, & COVID) is a small thing in a list of long things that’s made pandemic pregnancy & new parenting a new form of stress. Get your damn flu shot.

    4 replies 7 retweets 59 likes
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  16. Nov 10

    I solved our baby flu shot dilemma via a very good decade-long relationship with my (incredible) family doctor. But BC has a family doctor shortage, so many babies are limited to only 3/6/12-month well-check appointments or walk-in clinic care where they can’t get flu vaccines.

    1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
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  17. Nov 10

    Today in terrible logic puzzles: 1. All 3 baby-friendly flu clinics near run late October to end of November (5 weeks) & appointment slots are VERY high demand: 2. Babies need 2 flu shots 4 weeks apart. We got shot #1 on clinic week 3. As for shot #2? 🤷🏻‍♀️

    2 replies 3 retweets 13 likes
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  18. Nov 9

    x policy Advocating for Alaska, multiple potential office locations (DC, NYC, SF, LA…). Remember, don’t filter yourself out: if this is a job you’d want and think you’d be good at, apply even if you don’t hit every qualification.

    Job alert for - want to work on land preservation, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity issues with a focus on Alaska?
    2 retweets 6 likes
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  19. Retweeted
    Nov 9

    A volcanic 'waterfall' - tumbling incandescent blocks shed from a lava flow as it cascades over a precipice. Incredible.

    0:46
    Llega la lava a la playa de Los Guirres (La Palma).
    2 replies 87 retweets 263 likes
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  20. Nov 9

    Safe But Boring To Lick They should be very lovely to pet, however. Mica has a nice almost waxy texture even if you don’t want to peel off sheets (which you don’t ‘cause these pebbles are prettttttty)

    These are mica pseudomorphs (mica has replaced cordierlite & indialite crystals). They were found in Japan where they’re called sakura ishi - cherry blossom stones.
    6 replies 23 retweets 145 likes
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  21. Nov 7

    Things that make me happy:

    Photograph of a cluster of orange fungi and green moss on a log.
    Vascular plants with their flowers and roots are great and all, but we should thank nonvasculars for making us believe in faeries and tiny wonders. Cryptic diversity is important diversity.
    1 reply 1 retweet 57 likes
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