I know Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr's 24/7 800 number. Also, try JEliz, she's a forensic astrophysicist on her days off from the dry cleaning gig.

Scribophile has a world building category. My Prunella novel didn't go over too well in that group, but I think you'll find some answers there if you can handle  WoW world wanna-be builders.

Or email Hawking. His replies take forever, but he's pretty sharp.

Last edited by maxkeanu (05-19-2012 02:44:00)

I had a course in geography and another in geology and have a small notion of plate tectonics. Metals vary in weight so they seek their own level (as it were) and aluminum tends to rise to the surface while lead tends to be lower down. Tectonics create shifts in the surface, so that basalt erupts through sedentary layers such as sandstone, shale, etc. and you may find a basalt intrusion appearing right in the middle of shale such as in the Holyoke Range in Massachusetts. The Palisades in New Jersey are another form of intrusion. Caves, mines, etc. tend to have crystalline formations due to tectonics. Iceland has a huge aluminum supply and Alcoa tears up the surface and pollutes all the rivers there. Silicates of aluminum make up the surface of the earth for the most part. The earth is a very unstable planet with all sorts of rattling going on all the time. The entire west coast of North & South America is an earthquake zone. You can probably read up on this on Wikipedia.

Nadine
amateur in most subjects

maxkeanu wrote:

Also, try JEliz, she's a forensic astrophysicist on her days off from the dry cleaning gig.

HAHA. Max, I love you. <3

To the original poster, I'm convinced that you'll be able to find 99% of the information you need for your story on the internet. Just start googling. Wikipedia is, believe it or not, a good place to start. The articles themselves might be fishy (though it's harder to edit the pages than you'd think; not "just anyone" can have their edits published), but if you scroll down there's always a list of citations that will bring you to other, vastly more authoritative sites.

One thing I have always done (and this is why I'm an enormous tool) is pick up cheap books at second-hand book stores on subjects I might write about someday. That's how I've managed to acquire a mountain of books on such delightful subjects as Irish folklore, medieval London and alcohol dependency. Just make sure that the books are relatively up-to-date (unless of course you're looking for outdated science; it has its merits) and you'll be good to go.