oceanic crust

5 things I learnt from 2 months at sea with the International Ocean Discovery Program

Elliot Carter July 13, 2022

Photo of sunset behind the drilling vessel JOIDES resolution

Sunset over the South Atlantic behind the research vessel JOIDES Resolution during our transit back to port

This year I was lucky enough to be part of International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 390 – South Atlantic Transect I – aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution which spent two months, from April to June, out in the South Atlantic, drilling into and sampling the upper oceanic crust and sediments. I sailed as a petrologist and was responsible for describing how the basa ...[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]