Iris and Menno have made fantastic science movie recommendations in the past couple of years – covering the base for bad-science movies. Since the AGU frenzy is finally over and the upcoming holidays beckon us, I went in a different direction and prepared a list of some of my feel-good holiday movies. 1. The Little Prince This is a fantasy movie based on a popular children’s book. The movie is cen ...[Read More]
Seismic discontinuities necessitates mechanisms that would generate them and therefore, help us better understand the internal structure of the Earth. This week, Martina Monaco talks about the mysterious X-discontinuity — observed under several hotspots at upper mantle depths of ~ 290 km —and how it relates to the rising plumes. According to the Oxford Dictionary, only 400 words in the English la ...[Read More]
You’ve come to the end of your PhD and after years and years of hard work, one last question remains: “Should I go to my PhD graduation?”. This week, we have one of our editors Kiran Chotalia sharing her two cents after she finally attended her in-person graduation this year after it was delayed by the pandemic (TLDR; definitely go!). In March 2020, after four and a half years of hard work, meetin ...[Read More]
For better or for worse, online seminars have stealthily become part of our routine. This week, Daniele Thallner from the University of Florida, “attracts” our attention to a seminar series on geomagnetism and geodynamo modeling — Mag-netZ! The 2022 season of the MagNetZ seminar series is live! The MagNetZ (Magnetic NetworkZ) online seminar series was started in early 2020 to serve as ...[Read More]
Mechanisms for stab stagnation are essential for understanding the mantle circulation patterns. This week, Diandian Peng, a graduate student from University of Illinois explores how dynamic pressure gradients can pull the slabs sideways stagnating them at the Mantle Transition Zone. Seismic imaging provides critical constraints on the structure and evolution of subducted slabs. Numerous tomographi ...[Read More]
The first hybrid AGU meeting has everything one expects from the AGU – a long line to the registration desk and, a mile walk between the two ends of the conference hall, a large exhibit hall with NASA and their most-desirable calendars at the nexus, and our favorite poster hall to “network” with others – but with an added confusion, palatable emptiness, and no beer in sight! This week is a short b ...[Read More]
As geodynamicists, we are sometimes oblivious on how we get the geophysical constraints in our numerical models. This week Molly Anderson, a PhD student at the University of Florida, takes us on a exciting dive to study the geochemical signatures of the East Pacific Ocean seafloor! People are often surprised to hear that the seafloor is covered with volcanoes, let alone that the most extensive cha ...[Read More]
This week, Dr. Eunseo Choi, a professor at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information, the University of Memphis, talks about tectonic modelling using DES3D. *Spoiler alert* read till the end for an exciting opportunity to work on it The advent of the open-source movement and the free public software repositories such as GitHub have drastically improved the way research codes are maintaine ...[Read More]
Most of us have been directly or indirectly involved in outreach activities, often relying on shiny rocks to capture people’s fascination. This week, Aaron Van Alstine, a member of the Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society, a passionate rockhounder, and moderator of the sub-reddit on radioactive rocks, shares his views on why all earth scientists need a rock collection and how to st ...[Read More]
Understanding the plate tectonics initiation can give us incredible opportunity to guess the physical state of the early Earth. This week, Hee Choi, a Ph.D. candidate, takes us on a journey on initiation of plate tectonics and how continental crustal growth is related to it. Our planet Earth is the only place where plate tectonics takes place. No other planet or rocky moon in our solar system has ...[Read More]