Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

Fagradalsfjall 2021 versus 2022: similarity and differences

Elisabetta Billotta October 19, 2022

Fagradalsfjall 2022. Photo by Emanuele Caruso

The Icelandic eruptions of 2021 and 2022 originated in the Reykjanes peninsula, characterized by the Krýsuvík-Trölladyngja system, one of the five volcanic systems present along the peninsula. This peninsula is a leaky transform fault, characterized by episodic rifts and associated volcanism. The last two years have brought about some of the most momentous volcanic eruptions in recent history. The ...[Read More]

The strangest rock you’ve probably never heard of

Elliot Carter March 9, 2022

In this blog I’m going to talk a bit about one of my favourite rocks – the strangest rock you’ve probably never heard of – listvenite. Listvenite (sometimes spelt listwanite or listwaenite) is the product of a chemical reaction between peridotite and carbon dioxide, and it is truly strange! I first came across listvenites working on the Semail Ophiolite, Oman, during my PhD. The Semail Ophiolite i ...[Read More]

Drilling in the deep: Project Mohole and the underground space race

Elliot Carter July 28, 2021

The drilling derrick of the IODP ship DV Chikyu - winches are used to lift the drill string up section by section (Image credit: E. Carter)

The mantle makes up the bulk of Earth, extending from near the surface to the edge of the core 2900 km down. It constitutes 84% of Earth’s volume and has roughly 6 times the mass of Mars! Despite its impressive bulk, the mantle is almost everywhere covered by several km of crust. As a result we don’t have a lot of pieces of it that we can look at, hold or study. Those we have (e.g. xenoliths ...[Read More]

Are mantle melts heterogeneous on a centimeter scale?

Mike Jollands July 18, 2019

The mantle makes up the majority of the volume of the Earth, but there is still a lot about it that we don’t understand. This is because we can’t observe it directly – forget ‘Journey to the center of the Earth’ – even our deepest drill holes (about 12 km deep) are merely tickling the surface of the planet (about 6400 km to the center). Most of what we know abou ...[Read More]