Geodynamics 101

Repurposing a research tectonic modeling code as a community service: The case of DES3D

Eunseo Choi and edited by Arushi Saxena October 6, 2021

Three-dimensional model for core complex formation created with DES3D by Eunseo and his research group. Accelerated on NVidia V100 graphics card.

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]

Simulating materials in the Earth’s interior using atoms

Leslie Insixiengmay and edited by Antoniette G. Grima September 29, 2021

This week UCLA PhD student Leslie Insixiengmay takes us on a microscopic journey to the Earth’s interior and tells us all about the atomic forces that shape the deep Earth behaviour! A question I get asked a lot is: “How do we know what’s inside of the Earth?” It’s a good and valid question considering that the deepest hole humans have dug only reaches about 12.2 km, which is about 0.2% of ...[Read More]

Plate tectonics from a perspective of continental crustal growth

Hee Choi and edited by Arushi Saxena July 28, 2021

An illustration of what we know about plate tectonics on Earth by Hee Choi.

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]

The geophysicist’s toybox

Adam Beall and edited by Jyotirmoy Paul July 14, 2021

Simplified models or toy models explain the complex Earth processes fairly well, even though they are far from reality. In this week’s Geodynamics 101, Adam Beall, Research Associate at Cardiff University, discusses some of his favourite geophysical toy models! I remember being excited to first hear about scientists doing Earth modelling and imagined impressive computer visualisations of tec ...[Read More]