Deep Stuff (by sarah)
Last Wednesday I went to the first of the departmental research seminars it was by Lars Strixrude and was on an area I basically knew nothing about. It was called Minerals to Mantles: The Planetary Mosaic.
There was alot of stuff in this I didn't understand but it did manage to answer some of the more pressing questions I had come out of the Solar Physics lecture with - namely about what was actually being detected/repressented with all the Tomography stuff and so it was I feel a good job I went.
As far as I could tell he was extrapolating say mineral physics to the mantle as a whole and using a similar principle to those you use in transmitted light microscopy in that the direction of the mineral and type affects the way the waves are propogated. This means you would be able to tell alot about say the actual structure of the mantle and the internal workings of the earth - I sort of felt a vagueness that eutectic and peritectic stuff should make an appearance but as I can't really remember what that was all about the reality is probably very far away from my comprehension :/
I felt intreged by the topic and thought I understood what was going on at the time but now I come to write it up its all gone 🙁
But it really reminded me of second year ingneos petrology (at least I think thats what he was teaching) with Stephan Matthai - sometimes I wish my brain worked properlly :/
I had the vague feeling that this fitted into my general thing of wanting to treat things as systems rather than confined subjects but am not really sure - hmmm - not the best blog ever and probably completely round my neck :/
Sat 18th Oct 2008 3:11 pm 
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