There are no stupid questions. How many times have we heard that from colleagues and in classrooms? Obviously an exceedingly sizeable chunk of our community does not receive stupid questions often enough. Even silly questions have their merits though, and obviously they deserve an answer, at least to avoid them being asked in the future. …[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 tomographic …[Read More]
Angela is one to stress out just a wee bit every time a conference is right around the corner. It’s almost like she consistently doesn’t prepare in time. Ever so slightly concerned, her office mate asks: How last minute is too last minute when preparing for a conference? Dear Angela, Just take a breather and …[Read More]
Eivind Straume a Postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Geological Sciences within the Jackson School of Geosciences explores how the opening and closing ocean gateways have influenced the Earth’s climate in the past. Changes in Earth’s geography due to tectonic plate motions and mantle convection influence climate evolution on geological timescales. Over millions of …[Read More]
`Segmentation fault’. One of the most annoying things ever to appear on our screens. Right up there with `fftw.h not found’. Compilation errors are the (rock-hard) bread and (rancid) butter of any of us that need to debug write codes. Tahina is deeply down the rabbit hole and asks: Why does my code not compile? …[Read More]
The Indian Ocean Geoid Low is an enigmatic phenomenon in geodynamics. Many brain-storming hypotheses have been proposed in the last few decades to explain this geoid low. One popular idea argues that the high density lower mantle slabs contribute to this geoid low. Recent discoveries have shown that low-density anomalies from the African LLSVP region …[Read More]
Enzo submitted his manuscript for review at one of those well-known, Earth science-niche journals. However, shortly thereafter he received an email by his editor that it was rejected. Reason being that not enough research was added in the manuscript. Furious, he bellows: When is my research open enough to be published? Dear Enzo, I know, …[Read More]
GeoLchat: A Bilingual Science Communication Experiment of Three Colombian Geoscientists Una de las cosas más importantes que se les enseña en la academia a los estudiantes de ciencia alrededor del mundo es aprender a usar el lenguaje científico. Sin embargo, nunca se les enseña a hablar acerca de ciencia en un lenguaje sencillo, y tampoco …[Read More]
To leave or not to leave (academia)? If I had a penny for every time I heard the various declinations of this question…I would have left academia. Gisele has thoughts about a specific aspect of this topic and joins the choir: How do you leave academia without feeling like a failure? Dear Gisele, You cannot. …[Read More]
On January 19th and 20th, ASPECT had it’s annual virtual user workshop. With more than 60 participants, the virtual workshop has grown quite a bit since it started in 2020. This two day world-wide virtual event was full of great developments and showing exiting new applications in which ASPECT is being used. I will give …[Read More]
