The joint ICTP-EAIFR-IUGG Workshop on Computational Geodynamics: Towards Building a New Expertise Across Africa is now open for registration and abstract submission! Katz is a speaker https://indico.ictp.it/event/10183/overview. The meeting will be held in Kigali at the Univ Rwanda.
It’s been a while #ScienceTwitter but check this video I made on small-scale convection beneath a mid-ocean ridge. Ridges are still surprising! @foa_lab @EGU_GD @OxUniEarthSci #Geodynamics #MagmaDynamics
Do faith-based extrapolations of olivine rheology from lab to mantle conditions concern you? Ever wondered why n=3.5? A new paper by Tom Breithaupt models the dislocation physics to parsimoniously explain olivine transient and steady creep, and more. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2203448120
Dismayed by recent developments at Twitter, FoaLab is now tooting from https://hachyderm.io/@foalab. Please join us there and help us to follow your science!
Three PhD projects are advertised for collaborative research in the FoaLab. For more information about Oxford graduate admissions please see https://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/teaching/graduates/graduate-admissions/. Contact Richard Katz with questions.
Catch the latest news of the ERC-funded FoaLab RIFT-O-MAT project on magma-assisted tectonics by watching Katz's seminar talk for students at the University of Rwanda, ICTP-East African Institute for Fundamental Research. @ERC_Research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhCc2Yk68cM
Clusters of subglacial seismicity are interpreted as evidence for 'sticky patches' at the ice–bed interface, even where subglacial water pressure is high. PhD student Hanwen Zhang has shown that sticky patches also promote and localise basal crevassing. https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2022.75
FoaLab excitedly welcomes Dr Hamish Hay @planetaryHam to Oxford for postdoctoral research on tidally driven porous flow in planetary bodies! Thanks to @LeverhulmeTrust for supporting this work.
Mid-ocean ridges have cross-axis asymmetry; explanations have been unsatisfactory. A new publication by @AdinaPusok et al. shows that chemical (density) fractionation by melt segregation can amplify convection, break symmetry and explain observations. https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggac309