EPSS Colloquium - spring-2016
Geochemistry by Telescope
March 31, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- Ben Zuckerman - UCLA
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Seminar Description coming soon.
Stable Isoptope Evidence for Planetary Differentiation
April 14, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- Anat Shahar - Carnegie Institute - Geophysical Lab
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Stable Isoptope Evidence for Planetary Differentiation
Planetary differentiation is the largest scale physical process that a planetary body experiences and one which occurred very early in solar system history. The conditions surrounding this process will very much influence the outcome and thereby create a unique planet, moon or asteroid. In this talk, I will present experimental data that enable us to understand how isotopes partition between metal and silicate, and thereby predict the likely composition of planetary cores.
Workshop at UCLA
April 21, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
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Seminar Description coming soon.
Evolution of the Afro-Arabian Rift
April 28, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- Walter Mooney - USGS
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Evolution of the Afro-Arabian Rift
The Afro-Arabian rift includes the Red Sea and East African rift that extends from the Afar Triangle (Ethiopia) to Mozambique in southern Africa. Global tomographic models have revealed a profound seismic low-velocity anomaly originating in the deep mantle beneath Africa. A major breakthrough in studies of the Red Sea portion of the rift system has resulted from the installation, starting in 2009, of 180 broadband seismic stations in Saudi Arabia. The analysis of these seismic data, combined with GPS measurements of plate motions, provide new insights into the evolution of the Red Sea rift.
Ultrafast Eclogite Formation: When Pressure Doesn’t Correspond to Depth During Subduction
May 5, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- Jay Ague - YALE
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Ultrafast Eclogite Formation: When Pressure Doesn’t Correspond to Depth During Subduction
Thermal effects of impact bombardments on Noachian Mars
May 12, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- Steve Mojzsis - University of Colorado
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Thermal effects of impact bombardments on Noachian Mars
Stable Isotopes in Amino Acids as Ecological Tools and Biosignatures
May 19, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- Marilyn Fogel -
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Seminar Description coming soon.
Glacial Tillites and the Evolving Composition of the Upper Continental Crust
May 26, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- Roberta Rudnick - UCSB
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Glacial Tillites and the Evolving Composition of the Upper Continental Crust
The Pluto-Charon System: Geology, Geophysics, and Origins
June 2, 2016
4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Geology 3656
Presented By:
- William B. McKinnon - Washington University in St. Louis
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The Pluto-Charon System: Geology, Geophysics, and Origins
The New Horizons encounter with the Pluto-Charon (PC) system in July, 2015, provided many scientific surprises. Foremost was the diversity, complexity, and ongoing nature of Pluto’s geology. This includes evidence for present and past glacial activity, major young cryovolcanic constructs, and a most unusual solid state convective regime in a several-km-thick layer of solid N2 ice filling a major impact basin. Even Charon, half the size of Pluto, revealed itself to have had a spectacular geologic past. Pluto’s atmosphere is thinner and less distended, with an escape rate 2 orders of magnitude less, than had been assumed for decades – yet it is an atmosphere with extensive haze layers. And despite PC’s presumed “giant impact” origin, no hint of a fossil oblateness from Pluto’s post-impact spindown was detected. The orbital architecture of the Kuiper belt all but demands an epoch of unstable planetary migration. Do New Horizons results inform or constrain such models? Is a giant impact still implicated, or could the PC-system have formed by a different mechanism?