Earth Sciences

John Guest (1938-2012) was a pioneer in planetary science, contributing to the first geological map of Mercury, as well as the first comprehensive map of the eastern equatorial region of Mars. He participated in the Mariner 10 and Viking missions to Mars, and the Magellan mission to Venus. Primarily though, John was a volcanologist, happiest when he was in the field, especially at Mt. Etna in Sicily, for which he led the UK contribution to the Anglo-Italian collaboration that in 1979 produced the modern geological map of the volcano - the first for more than a hundred years.

Towards sustainable and risk free gas production from an unconventional source.

The Department of Earth Sciences invites candidates to apply for a fully funded, cross-disciplinary, four-year PhD studentship.This project aims to address the challenges to sustainable, environmentally acceptable and risk free production of shale gas using sedimentological and geochemical methods. 

The last few weeks have seen an unprecedented number of our PhD students successfully completing their studies. Congratulations go out to the following students - well done to all:

The Department of Earth Sciences invites applications for two professorial posts and two lectureship posts from 1st October 2012.

After nearly two years of analysing data generated by the CryoSat mission, the first map of Arctic sea-ice seasonal variability, generated by Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling (CPOM), was presented at the Royal Society meeting in London. The map, using data from ESA's Cryosat-2, shows the changes in sea-ice thickness over the period October 2010 to March 2011.

Experiments to determine the properties of the Earth’s outer core are reported by Monica Pozzo and colleagues in Nature this week.

Tuff has been extensively used as a building material in volcanically and tectonically active areas over many centuries, despite its inherent low strength. A common and unfortunate secondary hazard accompanying both major volcanic eruptions and tectonic earthquakes is the initiation of catastrophic fires.

This year’s UCL Earth Sciences Alumni Careers Forum was very well attended – over 60 undergraduate and postgraduate students turned up and listened to the inspiring talks from four UCL Earth Sciences Alumni and one UCL Earth Sciences friend.

Titan’s internal structure appears to differ from other icy solar system objects of similar dimensions.

Dominic Fortes, in his recent paper addresses the long-standing mystery of the structure of Titan’s interior and its relationship to the strikingly Earth-like range of geologic features seen on the surface. Fortes constructed an array of models (annotated model)of Titan’s interior and compared these with newly acquired data from Cassini’s radio science experiment. Titan’s observed moment of inertia strongly indicates that the satellite’s rocky core is of a lower density than expected, either as a result of being highly hydrated, or due to a significant admixture of ice. Both cases constrain the interior to be much cooler than previously anticipated, which calls into question the interpretation of Titan’s endogenic surface activity. A cool partially differentiated interior is no impediment to the existence of a subsurface ocean.

Katharine Giles and colleagues have discovered that the freshwater stored in the western Arctic Ocean has increased by 8000 km3 between the 1990s and 2010 by looking at changes in the sea surface height measured by the European Space Agency Satellites ERS-2 and Envisat.