EPSS Colloquium winter-2019

Geoscientists have long recognized the importance of generating extreme pressures and temperatures to reproduce in laboratory settings the conditions present in planetary interiors. Such experiments provide the basis for understanding the nature and mechanisms of dynamic processes taking place within deep interiors of Earth and other planetary bodies. Since early 1960s, mineral physics has rapidly emerged and been recognized as an important interdisciplinary field in Earth sciences, providing an essential link between laboratory measurements of the physical and chemical properties of minerals and rocks under extreme conditions and the geophysical and geochemical observations of the Earth’s interiors. Advanced high-pressure and synchrotron X-ray techniques have permitted experimental mineral physicists to probe the micro-scale properties of planetary materials that govern macro-scale behaviors of the complex planetary systems. Here, I will briefly describe the past, present, and future of the field, followed by recent research on the viscoelastic properties of iron-carbon liquids, elastic and thermal transport properties of high-pressure ices, and the implications on the internal structure and dynamics of planetary interiors.