When events such as the Aug 28 2016 Amatrice earthquake occur, we seismologists are asked to answer scientific questions and to give an immediate judgment of the situation. Such questions may be asked by media officers during formal interviews or by friends and family members in person or even on the social networks in informal settings (sometimes only a few seconds after the earthquake’s occurren ...[Read More]
A seismologist on vacation
Beginning of this month, I was travelling to Germany to visit family and friends. One week out of the office, without interpreting wiggles or creating synthetic seismograms. But I bet that most of you know that vacation from science does not really exist, especially if an awesome opportunity comes along… What do seismologists do during their vacation? I was visiting a friend in Göttingen. Ma ...[Read More]
Paper of the Month — Mapping the upper mantle
“MAPPING THE UPPER MANTLE: THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF EARTH STRUCTURE BY INVERSION OF SEISMIC WAVEFORMS” (Woodhouse & Dziewonski,1984) commented by Andrew Valentine. Here we are again with our Paper of the Month (PoM) series! Our guest writer is Andrew Valentine, who has chosen to comment one of the landmark papers in global seismic imaging: “Mapping the upper mantle: Thre ...[Read More]
The tough life of a seismologist in the field
I have just been asked: “do you shun field work as most seismologists do?” My answer was “Definitely not!”. I was trained as a geologist but my PhD in computational seismology kept me away from the field for a while. Yet, today I have a story to tell you as I am just back from my first seismological field trip. Two months ago my research group deployed a network of seismic stations in ...[Read More]