Winter 2023

Fridays at 12:00 PM
E&MS A340


January 13, 2023

Speaker: Diogo Louro Lourenco, ETH Zurich

Title: The thermo-chemical evolution of terrestrial planets: from magma ocean to present-day tectonics

Diego

Abstract: It is well accepted that the Earth and most rocky bodies in the Solar System went over a magma ocean stage during and immediately after their accretion. Based on this, it is generally assumed that magma oceans are common and widespread throughout the Universe, and that they exist throughout all the accretion stage of different bodies. However, how frequent magma oceans are, and how deep do they extend, is not well constrained. I’ll present results that aim to understand the factors that control the formation of magma oceans, and the conditions that lead to deep magma oceans. Understanding these questions is of extreme importance, as a magma ocean sets up the conditions for future mantle dynamics and tectonic activity, the composition of the atmosphere, and the possibility for the existence of oceans, and life.
Next, I will present results that aim at understanding the Earth’s viscosity structure and heat-producing elements concentrations. Finally, I will focus on the solid-state evolution and dynamics of rocky planets. A tectonic regime is the surface expression of interior dynamics in a planet. With the help of numerical models, different tectonic regimes have been proposed. Over time, a tectonic regime shapes the surface of a planet, including its surface topography. Using the numerical models we can compute the topographies associated with different tectonic regimes including spatial and temporal measures of variations. We compute statistics for the topography formed by different tectonic regimes in numerical models and compare with statistics of observed topography of different terrestrial planets, with the aim of linking a planet to a tectonic regime at present-day.


January 20, 2023

Speaker: Shujuan Mao, Stanford

Title: Space-Time Monitoring of Groundwater Fluctuations with Passive Seismic Interferometry

Shujuan


January 27, 2023 - Remote

Speaker: Siteng Fan, Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace

Title: Thermal tides in the Martian atmosphere

Siteng


February 3, 2023

Speaker: Harry Lisabeth, LBL

Title: The effect of stress on the physical properties of fractured rocks

Lisabeth


February 10, 2023

Speaker: Anton Ermakov, UC Berkeley

Title: Ganymede’s internal structure with Bayesian inference using Juno and Galileo data

 Anton


February 17, 2023

Speaker: Laura Schaefer, Stanford

Title: Mantle redox effect on atmosphere composition: from Earth and Mars to sub-Neptunes

Laura


February 23, 2023 - Special Seminar

Speaker: Malcom White, MIT

Title: Anatomy of a fault zone: Space-time-magnitude patterns of microseismicity in the San Jacinto Fault Zone, Southern California

Malcolm


March 10, 2023

Speaker: Sourav Kumar, UC Berkeley

Title: Long-term and continuous evaluation of hydro-geochemical changes in response to the earthquakes in Northeast India

kumar


March 17, 2023

Speaker: Donna Shillington, Northern Arizona Uniuversity

Title: Upper and lower plate controls on megathrust slip behavior in the Alaska-Aleutian subduction zone

Donna