Oceanography came to fruition in the 19th century, when scientists set out to survey the ocean -from surface to seafloor- and determine if and where life existed in the deep sea.
Active continental-scale transform faults create mountainous geography, microclimates, and biodiversity along tectonic plate boundaries. In the Transverse Ranges of southern California, the San Andreas Fault (SAF) accommodates motion between the Pacific and North American plates and is responsible for >100s km of horizontal displacement during faulting in the past 20 million years.
Abstract: This talk combines an overview of the newly established Center for Materials of the Universe at ASU with a glimpse into my current research in thermochemistry of ceramic, earth and planetary materials. The stunning abundance and diversity of planets frees us from narrow terrestrial thinking, and sets forth a remarkable “inverse problem” in materials science. Thermodynamics is essential to understanding planetary properties and evolution and to identifying new materials inspired by or useful in space.
This talk will focus on several projects conducted in terrestrial analog field settings to enable robotic and human planetary exploration. We work with interdisciplinary teams of scientists, technologists, and mission operations specialists focused on conducting field-based research to understand scientific processes on planetary bodies while simultaneously preparing for future human and robotic exploration of these destinations.
Exoplanets around other stars may provide the ultimate test of our understanding of biogeochemical cycles. These planets may be habitable, but our challenge for detecting life on these planets will be to distinguish (from first principles) the BIOgeochemical rates and fluxes of a living planet, from the strictly geochemical and physical processes of an abiotic planet.
In a world of cell phones, automobiles, and laptop computers, we demand our systems to be always working, always reliable, and always ready. Massive worldwide adoption has meant that miniaturized electronics are now readily available with high reliability. As we dive deeper into the oceans (and further into space), we have benefited from these commercial electronics, allowing us to reduce the size of our explorers.
Titan has shown itself to be one of the solar system's most intriguing objects for study, with a variety of unusual candidate materials on its surface, such as hydrocarbons. Titan is very geologically complex, and features found include large craters, cryovolcanoes, mountains, flowing channels, vast fields of dunes, and giant lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons. Titan is very Earth-like in its geology, despite the very different surface conditions and composition, and has become known as "the Earth of the outer solar system".
Analogs are destinations on Earth that allow researchers to approximate operational and/or physical conditions on other planetary bodies and within deep space. Over the past decade, select NASA teams have been conducting geobiological field science studies under simulated deep space and Mars mission conditions.
Most of the atomic matter in the Universe courses through the dark, vast spaces between galaxies. This diffuse gas cycles into and out of galaxies multiple times. It will form new stars and become swept up in violent stellar end-of-life processes. Astronomers believe that this gaseous cycle lies at the heart of galaxy evolution. Yet, it has been difficult to observe directly.
Recently the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration reported observing the shadow of a supermassive black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy called M87. But black holes are supposed to be so compact that light cannot escape from them. So how was it possible to observe radio waves coming from the vicinity of the black hole in M87? The answer lies in the dynamics of matter that is accreting into the black hole.