I have a piece of the Moon! (by sarah)

Erm I think that I forgot to mention that even though I have not yet paid my top up fee and therefore do not have libary access etc... I have been given a small sliver of moon rock to blast with lasers 🙂

I have been staring at the moon lots since they gave it to me two weeks ago and am also petrofied I'll screw something up!

I got to take the carbon coat off of it and so have a quick peek under a reflected light microscope. It does seem to be an interesting sample - its from a lunar meteorite that fell to earth which is interesting in itself.

After my disappointment over the mini projects I was so startled to get this sample I have been sort of shell shock reading - I know very little about lunar geology so I am having to do some heavy reading. Fortunatly I seem to be able to apply stuff I learnt whilst doing the Carbonado essay and the moon formation essay last term.

I really feel I need to get to grips with this as it is such a blindingly fantastic sample (they have the meteorite as well) that I have jumped ship and will be doing this meteorite as my main project as well - this masters has just dragged on too long now and I don't want anything logistically complicated.

However I do still want to do the astrobiology - impact lithology stuff but when I was looking at it before I found huge issues in talking to microbiologist and isotope chemists who didn't understand one and other and having to translate stuff to each of them that I barely understood myself.

I was recommended to get my hands on some undergraduate texts for the micro-organism thing and the chem I'm picking up from the papers I'm reading and hopefully from the machines I'm going to be using. My origonal project was drawn up with the idea of it being a PhD anyway so this I think is the best course of action.

Stress (by sarah)

Well last week I had to go and tell college I didn't have enough money for the tuition fees and what actually was going on here - this wasn't pleasant but they said to carry on anyway for now and to sort out doing my minni project.

For this project I have to choose one of the listed subjects talk to the supervisor, keep a log book of meetings etc.... collect the data, learn about the analytical technic and then do a 7000 word write up (oh and background reading) and an oral presintation including a powerpoint presintation.

They handed out the topics before Christmas and said choose over christmas and talk to the supervisor after christmas or if you are really keen you can do it before Christmas. We handed in our second 3000 word essay (On carbonado diamonds in my case) pretty much on the last day of term.

I then wasn't sure if I was going to be allowed to stay and we only went back on Monday last week. I tried to go and see the supervisor last week but he wasn't in his office except when I was actually heading to the lecture - he wasn't in it before hand and he wasn't there afterwards.

So I came in early to see him today and the other girl from my course was in there with him - this was fine we had discuessed it and I knew she was going for the project too. I had even checked with the course coordinator that two people could do the same project.

The other girl only does planetary stuff and as it was the only planetary project I felt she should have first dibs at it.

So I had stealed myself for being told no, but thought there was a good chance of a yes as I had checked the previous week. What I wasn't expecting was to be told that its too late to be starting the projects and that they should have been started a month ago! Which would have actually been Christmas >:(

I was already feeling out of sorts and this was a blow. I went back to the classroom and one of the others asked me how I was - I couldn't speak I just shook my head.

Then Nesha asked me how it had gone and I told her what had just been said. She was upset that she'd pipped me to the post by 10 minutes but I told it was ok - turns out he told her off too :/ She gave me half her chocolate bar which was nice and made me feel alot better.

It was the being told off that I had issue with - I was prepared not to get the project and as a geologist I have more options open to me than her. (She did both moon essays).

Anyway I had just finished explaining what other project I would go for when one of the guys came in and said he'd had to change direction as the project he was going to do the data wouldn't be avaliable until just before the deadline. He'd chosen my second choice - I think an expletative left my lips but he said that he'd just checked with the course coordinator and she'd said that two on a project was fine - sigh.

I had had a stressful morning anyway with the fact that Barbara came in when we were trying to get out of the house (late as usual) and gave me information about a guy to use for scouts but she said II had to phone him before 12 as she said I would and it was 11 already adn I was trying to get to Stroud for my train.

Anyway I tried to phone and it was a wrong number :/

And I knew that it would all end up some how being my fualt that I hadn't contacted him before noon :/ I phoned Al and left an answer phone message and later on he tried to find Barbara but she was out.

This and money worries and the genrally feeling that the world is coming to an end and winter just isn't going away ment that during my actual lecture which was really interesting (Geochronology) I was asking my normal barral load of questions but with a difference.

My stutters back.

It was so bad the lecture was having to finish my sentances for me 🙁

I think it must be stress.

Returning to College (by sarah)

I wasn't looking forward to tonight I hadn't managed to contact anyone at the college about the money situation due to the internet issue so I had to go and find someone.

I tried the admin office first but unfortunatly it has a tendency to close slightly early and lo it was closed so I headed for the corse coordinator and almost cried whislt telling her and was to my horror shaking - she said we can try the hardship fund but it obviously depends how they actually assess weather you need it.

Plus I feel stupid - this is a compound error - first off I miss judged how much JEans nursery was going to cost becuase I listerned to the government hype about what they were doing with 3+ children and education and didn't read the fine print.

Then I lost my gaurnteed work etc....

Then I wasn't expecting to have to pay for this years tuition fees as I had payed up front before but unfortunatly due to the way that has all be hashed up I am now being asked to pay a resit fee of HALF the origonal - this makes me angry as I was sick and didn't just drop out.

I now can't register until I pay this resit fee and until I do that I still have no libary access or access to the online facilities.

And then the guy I wanted to talk to about my minni project wasn't there when I had finished talking to the corse coordinator but was when I walked passed to go to my lecture but wasn't when we went for a break nor when we had finished the lecture so I haven't got that sorted yet either.

On the plus side there was only two of us on the computers and I learnt how to try and make word do useful stuff and discovered I know more about how to make a page look on a website than I do in word :/

So far I am the only person who has attended every lecture - but I'm very worried about how I'm going to pull this one off. I have alot of work to do this term:

7000 words 5000 words 3000 words plus actual lab and meeting time plus background reading

I also need to finish off the business course stuff for the Prince's Trust whilst trying to build the business which is now more urgent than it was supposed to be :/

Lava Domes, Fracturing and Earthquakes (by sarah)

Last Tuesday I went to the Meet the Post Doc's semaniar at UCL there were two speakers the first one was Rosie Smith with Evidence for Seismogenic fracture of Erupting Silicic magma. This was interesting becuase it was looking at the fractures that occure like in the mouth of volcanos where the magma (hot rock) is pushing upwards. This means that the rocks are hotter than normal rocks that are being deformed by say mountian building events and so the fualts break and fracture and then some of them basically anneal shut again - the fracture heals its self or the rock sort of glues itself back together again.

Again these faults and their behaviours will affect the volcano-tectic earthquakes. It is also interesting to me from a structures point of view and the effects all this fracture and annealing will have on say the minerallogy and the structural integrity of the resulting rock.

However the bit that really intrested me was her talking about the apparatus she uses to simulate what is going on - they put the rocks in machines that squash them and heat them and there are obviously alot of constraints and alot of issues as to weather the sample has been treated to get rid of water and all the rest of it.

I like these types of machines and would love to use them - they can also test the aucostics of the sample so I assume they can basically hear the fractures occuring and then propergating through their samples. However you do not seem to be able to control all three axis of stress even though it is called a Tri-axial deformation apparatus - there is also an issue with thermal gradants through the samples if you are say heating it from just the bottom etc.... they are designing new equipement which sound fun too 🙂

Earthquakes and their Recurrance times (by sarah)

Last Monday I had a lecture on Fualting and Earthquake mechanics with Gerald Roberts - I'm not going to say I enjoyed this lecture becuase to be honest I found it mostly depressing.

I also both agreed and disagreed with the Gerald. Basically I will not be convinced that the apparent data skew as you back through Italy is a real data skew and not just people not recording or being in the right place to record the earthquakes - until I have seen a distrabution map of the monastrys and seen some sort of formulisation of how complete each monestries records is. Then I'd want to know what rock the monstries where standing on and therefore what sort of ground motion they would be expecting for each magnitude which I feel could dangerously biased the data - ie if they are on more ridged rock and modern towns aren't (I dont know if this is the case this is a 'suppose') then they may not have recorded the right sort of level of damage and there would be an underestermate for devastating earthquakes.

Having said all of this I do actually think he is right in the main points that he is putting across and as for those bits I doubt - I want to see the evidence and not just take his word for it - the same goes for his earthquake intensity diagram I think I understood how it was made but I don't think it was explain in a way that is going to get through to the poeple who need to listern to him.

Now the bit that I found very depressing is that earthquakes are assumed in all predictive models to have 475 yr reccurance - earthquakes can be produced by movement on a fualt now the strain builds up and up until the fualt shifts. But they are assuming that this happens at a steady rate but if you just think about snapping sticks in half this doesn't seem logical. They will break with a sort of concentrated judder. If this is happening with earthquakes then it means that you would expect a cluster or group of earthquakes to happen along a fualt one after another and then have a period of no activity whilst the strain builds up again.

Now Gerald has been measured slip rate which is I would of thought one of the first things they would have looked at with earthquake prediction - I remember doing the maths behind working the slip rates during my undergraduate so why has it been ignored? Plastic deformation ie mountian building, folding etc... is generally a precursor to the breaking of the rocks that is the fualting and thus the earthquake inducement and you measure this in strain rates which shows that for the middle of the 'crumple' zone or mountian ridge like the apanines in Italy the rate of deformation (how fast its folding up) is faster than that at the edges. So surely this means that the middle will have more earthquakes, larger and closer together.

But this is not mirrored exactly in the earthquake hazard maps produced currently as they assume this 475 yr reoccurance. This is for everywhere on the planet but they will be subject to different forces - why on earth did they get this sort of age from anyway?

Now his work shows that some fualts have longer re-occurence ages than the writen records we have - now Italy had the Romans so they have 3000yrs of records and they will still miss things - Gerald pointed this out himself. If you preject what he is saying to his risk maps then what you have is away of telling if a fault has shifted all its going to for this lot of earthquakes - this is where this become counter intuitive to poeple who haven't been looking at it in detial - areas that haven't had earthquakes for about 400 yrs are safe for thousands or at least hundreds of years rather than being about to blow (which the used maps suggest) and faults that shifted within the last century is going to go again anytime soon.

Now he showed us fualts that are behind where they should be - great you can warn those areas but then showed on the same map that there are fualts that are ahead for there earthquake quota so should be fine for ages.

This last point concerned me - if this is to be a useful tool it needs not to have faults that are ahead of themselves in the number of earthquakes they have had - the number you;ve predicted they should have had in that period of time - though over all the earthquake is expected as while the zone is active there will be strain and then slip but if there where unexpected earthquakes there then there will be when you actually project the technique into the future.

So this means you can say this area is going to have an earthquake soon but no where can actually be ruled out - now you could argue that they live in a tectonically active country they need to expect earthquakes and that is great but where should they prioritize their money for building reinforncement and the such like. Gerald thinks they should do all of it all at once but from a government perspective I doubt this will look feasible and would infact look unreasonable and there is no point in ramming facts about affects on economy of such big disastors as they are going to be getting that sort of statement from everyone about everything.

Yes I feel that as many of the buildings should be a safe as possible starting with the obvious infastructure buildings - anything new should be built properlly to begin with. Again this is heavily affected by the ground the buildings are on.

This was the bit that always makes me so depressed - he said that in Italy about 3 yrs ago there was a small mag 5 earthquake that hit a town and the only building that collapsed was the school, during the day killing about 50 kids - this sort of thing hurts me in physical scense. I don't know if it is becuase I was brought up with the nightmare shadow of the result of Aberfan where a slag heap berried a school in Wales - this happened to be where half my family where from (they were from Merthyr Tydfil to be precise though my nan was from somewhere even smaller). It was talked about with heart broken whispers when I was a child. My second cousin was involved with the rescue attempt.

I always get the guilty feeling that all this disastor management stuff or climate change stuff should be what I use my geology for but I would not be good at it - I would be doing it out of obligation and not passion. I feel I would be better off and more lickely to find something that will actually help people by researching something I am interested in and just talking to other geologist and scientists about their fields. The earthquake stuff is still depressing me though.