̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Simon Redfern

Using AI to avert ‘environmental catastrophe’

sc604 — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 16:09:19 +0000

Funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Centre for Doctoral Training in Application of Artificial Intelligence to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER) is one of 16 new Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) announced today. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Centre will be led by Professor Simon Redfern, Head of the Department of Earth Sciences.

Climate risk, environmental change and environmental hazards pose some of the most significant threats we face in the 21^st century. At the same time, we have increasingly larger datasets available to observe the planet, from the atomic scale all the way through to global satellite observations.

“These datasets represent a transformation in the way we can study and understand the Earth and environment, as we assess and find solutions to environmental risk,” said Redfern. “Such huge datasets pose their own challenges, however, and new methods need to be developed to tap their potential and to use this information to guide our path away from environmental catastrophe.”

̽��ֱ��new Centre brings computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers together with environmental and geoscientists to train the next generation of thought leaders in environmental data science. They will be equipped to apply AI to ever-increasing environmental data and understand and address the risks we face.

At the same time as human-induced climate change becomes increasingly apparent, urbanisation and the growth of megacities generate other risks, as society becomes potentially more fragile and vulnerable to geohazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and tsunamis. Alongside satellite data, autonomous sensors, drones, and networks of instruments provide increasingly detailed information about such risks and their potential impacts.

Examples of the projects we are already engaged in that apply AI methods to exploring environmental risk include the use of satellite observations to chart the distribution and pathways of whales through the oceans, large datasets to understand biodiversity changes in woodland habitats, machine learning to understand earthquake risk and the use of drones to monitor hazards at active volcanos.

Cambridge is a world leader in artificial intelligence and machine learning research, and many of our AI researchers work alongside world leaders in environmental monitoring and modelling, including from the British Antarctic Survey and elsewhere at the ̽��ֱ��.

̽��ֱ��new centre combines this work with the interests of dozens of external partners including Microsoft, DeepMind, ̽��ֱ��European Development Bank, Friends of the Earth, the European Space Agency, the Environment Agency, resource industry leaders and policy partners, to form an outstanding alliance focused on leading the next generation of environmental data science forward.

̽��ֱ��first cohort of PhD students will start their studies in October 2019.

̽��ֱ��new Centre is part of an overall £200 million funding announcement, which will support more than 1000 new research and business leaders in AI across the UK.

“Artificial intelligence has great potential to drive up productivity and enhance every industry throughout our economy, from more effective disease diagnosis to building smart homes,” said Business Secretary Greg Clark. “Today’s announcement is our modern Industrial Strategy in action, investing in skills and talent to drive high skilled jobs, growth and productivity across the UK.”

“ ̽��ֱ��UK is not only the birthplace to the father of artificial intelligence, Alan Turing, but we are leading the way on work to ensure AI innovation has ethics at its core,” said Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright. “We want to keep up this momentum and cement our reputation as pioneers in AI. Working with world-class academic institutions and industry we will be able to train the next generation of top-tier AI talent and maintain the UK’s reputation as a trailblazer in emerging technologies.”

A new Centre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will develop artificial intelligence techniques to help address some of the biggest threats facing the planet.

These datasets represent a transformation in the way we can study and understand the Earth and environment, as we assess and find solutions to environmental risk

Simon Redfern

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Opinion: Worthless mining waste could suck CO₂ out of the atmosphere and reverse emissions

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 16:06:39 +0000

̽��ֱ��Paris Agreement commits nations to limiting global warming to less than 2˚C by the end of the century. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that, to meet such a massive challenge, societies will need to do more than simply reduce and limit carbon emissions. It seems likely that large scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere may be called for: so-called “negative emissions”.

One possibility is to use waste material from mining to trap CO₂ into new minerals, locking it out of the atmosphere. ̽��ֱ��idea is to exploit and accelerate the same geological processes that have regulated Earth’s climate and surface environment over the 4.5 billion years of its existence.

Across the world, deep and open-pit mining operations have left behind huge piles of worthless rubble – the “overburden” of rock or soil that once lay above the useful coal or metal ore. Often, this rubble is stored in dumps alongside tiny fragments of mining waste – the “tailings” or “fines” left over after processing the ore. ̽��ֱ��fine-grained waste is particularly reactive, chemically, since more surface is exposed.

A lot of energy is spent on extracting and crushing all this waste. However, breaking rocks into smaller pieces exposes more fresh surfaces, which can react with CO₂. In this sense, energy used in mining could itself be harvested and used to reduce atmospheric carbon.

This is one of the four themes of a new £8.6m research programme launched by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council, which will investigate new ways to reverse emissions and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Spoil tips from current and historic mining operations, such as this gold mine in Kazakhstan, could provide new ways to draw CO₂ from the atmosphere. Photo Credit: Ainur Seitkan, Earth Sciences, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

̽��ֱ��process we want to speed up is the “carbonate-silicate cycle”, also known as the slow carbon cycle. Natural silicate rocks like granite and basalt, common at Earth’s surface, play a key part in regulating carbon in the atmosphere and oceans by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and turning it into carbonate rocks like chalk and limestone.

Atmospheric CO₂ and water can react with the silicate rocks to dissolve elements they contain like calcium and magnesium into the water, which also soaks up the CO₂ as bicarbonate. This weak solution is the natural river water that flows to the oceans, which hold more than 60 times more carbon than the atmosphere. It is here, in the oceans, that the calcium and bicarbonate can recombine, over millions of years, and crystallise as calcite or chalk, often instigated by marine organisms as they build their shells.

Today, rivers deliver hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon each year into the oceans, but this is still around 30 times less than the rate of carbon emission into the atmosphere due to fossil fuel burning. Given immense geological time scales, these processes would return atmospheric CO₂ to its normal steady state. But we don’t have time: the blip in CO₂ emissions from industrialisation easily unbalances nature’s best efforts.

̽��ֱ��natural process takes millions of years – but can we do it in decades? Scientists looking at accelerated mine waste dissolution will attempt to answer a number of pressing questions. ̽��ֱ��group at Cambridge which I lead will be investigating whether we can speed up the process of silicate minerals from pre-existing mine waste being dissolved into water. We may even be able to harness friendly microbes to enhance the reaction rates.

Another part of the same project, conducted by colleagues in Oxford, Southampton and Cardiff, will study how the calcium and magnesium released from the silicate mine waste can react back into minerals like calcite, to lock CO₂ back into solid minerals into the geological future.

Whether this can be done effectively without requiring further fossil fuel energy, and at a scale that is viable and effective, remains to be seen. But accelerating the reaction rates in mining wastes should help us move at least some way towards reaching our climate targets.

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Could waste material from mining be used to trap CO₂emissions? A new £8.6 million research programme will investigate the possibilities. Simon Redfern (Department of Earth Sciences) explains, in this article from ̽��ֱ��Conversation.

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Tagebau / Open cast mine

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Opinion: Geologists unveil how Britain first separated from Europe – and it was catastrophic

cjb250 — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 08:28:10 +0000

As Brexit looms, Earth scientists have uncovered evidence of Britain’s original split from mainland Europe. Almost half a million years ago, according to new data, water suddenly started cascading over the narrow strip of land that joined England and France – putting pressure on a chalk bridge.

Researchers show that, as a result, this ridge – a natural dam that separated the North Sea from the English Channel – was catastrophically ruptured hundreds of thousands of years later in a two-stage process, ultimately setting Britain’s insular environment in stone. Their results are reported in Nature Communications.

So where did all the water that caused this geological disaster come from? ̽��ֱ��scientists, from UK, Belgium and France, base their conclusions on a line of deep plunge pools (basins excavated by intense waterfalls) and a network of channels cut in the sea floor south-west of the ridge line. They deduce that these were first formed some 450,000 years ago as a lake of glacial melt water to the north-east in the North Sea basin (the depression where the north sea sits today, some of which was dry land back then) spilled over into what is today the English Channel.

Strait of Dover map. wikipedia, CC BY-SA

However, exactly why the glacial lake suddenly spilt over remains unknown. One possibility is that part of its ice sheet broke off, causing a surge that prompted the water to flow over. ̽��ֱ��33km long land bridge at Dover Strait formed part of an icy landscape at the time. According to the researchers, it looked “more like the frozen tundra in Siberia than the green environment we know today”.

3D view of the seafloor in the 33km wide Dover Strait showing a prominent valley in the central part. Imperial College London/Professor Sanjeev Gupta and Dr Jenny Collier

̽��ֱ��loose gravel that fills the seafloor plunge pools was first noticed 50 years ago. Indeed, the channel tunnel had to be rerouted to avoid them during its construction. There has long been speculation that they were associated with the remains of the land bridge that formed an ancient route between UK and Europe – and now we finally have some evidence to back this up.

̽��ֱ��plunge pools themselves are huge, drilling down some 100 metres into the solid bedrock and measuring several kilometres across. ̽��ֱ��waterfalls that formed them are estimated to have been 100 metres high, as we know the land bridge stood high above the surrounding landscape.

Second sudden destruction

It seems Dover Strait may have gone through two breaches. ̽��ֱ��first one, about 450,000 years ago, was rather modest and formed a smaller channel than the one we see today. But the authors suggest that a second, more catastrophic breach subsequently occurred – possibly hundreds of thousands of year later, irrevocably separating Britain from Europe.

3D view of an ancient large waterfall in a valley in the central part of Dover Strait. A plunge pool lies at its base. Imperial College London/Professor Sanjeev Gupta and Dr Jenny Collier

This final collapse of the land bridge is marked out by a larger seafloor channel named the Lobourg Channel, which cuts through the earlier structures. This appears to have been carved by a major cataclysmic flood from the North Sea into the English Channel. ̽��ֱ��timings of the two-stage erosion, including the final destruction of the connecting bridge, are uncertain, but mollusc shells found either side of the breach indicate that it was complete at least 100,000 years ago.

̽��ֱ��latest observations are the result of a broad marine geophysics campaign to tackle the problem. Ship-based seismic surveys of the floor of the English Channel have been combined with a type of sonar to provide an astoundingly detailed picture of the sea floor and its sub-surface. Uncertainty remains over the exact timings of each of the events, and researchers have set their sights on drilling into the sea floor to retrieve samples from the plunge pool sediments to determine their precise ages.

̽��ֱ��erosion of the land bridge hundreds of thousands of years ago set Britain on its path to becoming an island nation. Subsequent changes in sea level at the end of that ancient ice age further confirmed its insularity, and Britain’s connection to mainland Europe was lost.

Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Brexit won't be the first time Britain has left Europe, says Simon Redfern, professor in Earth Sciences at ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge writing for ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Almost half a million years ago we experienced a catastrophic separation.

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Dover White Cliffs

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Opinion: What Brexit means for UK science: a view from the coalface

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 12:45:07 +0000

Science, and geoscience in particular, is an international activity that benefits from cooperation and collaboration. ̽��ֱ��Brexit vote is a wake up call, not just for the UK but more widely, and it underlines how so many people feel isolated from the traditional political institutions and elites and feel threatened by globalisation.

Aside from that, however, it sadly sends an unfortunate signal that the UK is unwelcoming, despite the fact that almost half the voters took the opposite view. In areas with high numbers of graduates, like London, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU. This reflects the reality that UK geoscience labs remain welcoming international workplaces.

But Brexit introduces all sorts of uncertainties - will employees' families and friends be able to visit and travel as freely as they have in the past? Will the UK continue to attract the best minds into its universities from across the EU and elsewhere? Personally, although initially shocked and still heartbroken at the result, I remain optimistic that UK universities and geoscience employers will continue to offer a great environment in which to pursue science, to work, and to live. ̽��ֱ��current uncertainty raises fears, but our task now is to lobby to ensure that those imagined fears do not materialise into real problems.

̽��ֱ��bigger issue, perhaps, is access to EU research opportunities. ̽��ֱ��UK science minister, Jo Johnson (Boris Johnson’s brother), was firmly in favour of remaining in the EU, and sees the huge benefits of being part of an EU-wide network of funding and researchers. Now, the task will be to try and negotiate continued access to these funds, which deliver around £1bn a year of support to UK science as a whole.

If such access is not possible, then UK science will be arguing hard for national support of at least that level into the future. UK governments have, even in periods of austerity in recent years, recognised the benefit of science to the national economy and the science budget has fared better than those of other government departments. It is now up to the UK geoscience community to continue to argue for the fundamental investment in science that will drive the UK’s economy into the remainder of the 21st century and beyond, spearheading discovery and understanding of our planet and its neighbours, and addressing the pressing environmental issues that society now faces.

Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Simon Redfern (Department of Earth Sciences) discusses how Brexit may impact EU research opportunities and funding in the UK.

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Gone with the wind...

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Opinion: What science can tell us about the ‘world’s largest sapphire’

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 14:31:13 +0000

̽��ֱ��“Star of Adam”, recently found in a mine in Sri Lanka, is believed to be the biggest sapphire ever discovered. It weighs in at over 1,404 carats, that’s around 280g or just under ten ounces. But what do we know about the formation of this remarkable gemstone – and how could it grow so huge?

Sapphire is a bright blue gem mineral and a form of corundum (aluminium oxide), the hard gritty stuff used as an abrasive in emery paper. It is incredibly hard – a fact important in understanding its occurrence in places like the Sri Lankan mines.

Sapphire is a type of “dirty” corundum. If you add just a trace of iron and titanium to the mixture of aluminium and oxygen from which the corundum is growing, it forms as sapphire. (If you add chromium to the corundum as it grows then you will get a ruby – Sri Lanka is also famous for its rubies).

̽��ֱ��Star of Adam sapphire is an example of a “star sapphire”. When you look at it it appears to have a six-pointed star inside, which shines out from the gem and is due to reflections of light from tiny whisker-like crystals of rutile (a titanium-dioxide mineral) that were trapped within the sapphire crystal as it grew.

Ancient river sediments

̽��ֱ��stone was found in the Ratnapura mines in the south of the country, about 100km south-east of the capital, Colombo. Ratnapura is Singhalese for “gem town” and Sri Lanka has been known for its gem deposits for more than 2,000 years. It seems likely that Sinbad’s “Valley of Gems” in the Tales of the Arabian Nights is a reference to the Ratnapura area. In 1292, Marco Polo wrote: “ ̽��ֱ��Island of Ceylon is, for its size, the finest island in the world, and from its streams come rubies, sapphires, topaz, amethyst and garnet."

Ratnapura gem mine. hassage/Flickr, CC BY-SA

̽��ֱ��gems of Ratnapura are found in ancient river sediments – old river beds that are now covered with more layers of mud and sand in an area that is largely given over to paddy fields. ̽��ֱ��hard gem minerals, sapphires, rubies, spinels and garnets, were long ago weathered and eroded from the nearby highlands. Because of their hardness they survived as large pebbles and crystals, eroded out of the rocks where they first formed, and transported down the rivers which acted like a natural panning system. River-borne (alluvial) gold and diamonds are often sorted and concentrated in river sands by similar processes, elsewhere on the globe.

On their journey along the river the softer rocks from the highlands would have been worn down into mud and fine sand, but the harder minerals survive better, and retain their size and often their shape. ̽��ֱ��average annual rainfall for the island is more than 2,000mm, and the tropical weather means that the erosion and weathering of the highland mountains is even more accelerated.

Ratnapura is in the “wet zone” of the island. Its gem-bearing gravels have yielded a number of historic gemstones, possibly including a 400-carat red spinel given to Catherine the Great of Russia, and a giant oval-cut spinel, known as the “Black Prince Ruby” (it was mistakenly identified as a ruby), which features in the British Queen’s imperial state crown.

̽��ֱ��Star of Adam sapphire would originally have been created within rocks and granites of the Sri Lankan highlands. ̽��ֱ��granites, which form when molten magma cools and becomes solid, have been dated as almost two billion years old, and were subsequently squeezed and re-worked in a massive mountain-building episode due to tectonic churning of the Earth’s crust that happened more than 500m years ago.

Temperatures and pressures deep within the roots of these mountains would have reached more than 900˚C and over 9,000 atmospheres pressure during this event. ̽��ֱ��sapphire could have formed either within the granite, as part of a rock type called a pegmatite, or within the younger rock created by pressurisation and heating.

In either case the temperatures and pressures would have changed only very slowly over millions and millions of years, and this is how the crystal was able to grow so big. Once formed, the mountains that it sat within would have been eroded and uplifted, and so it was brought to the surface, picked out of the rock by the forces of rain and weathering, and transported down river to the gem sands of Ratnapura. Today it sits in the hands of a private owner.

Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Simon Redfern (Department of Earth Sciences) discusses how the "Star of Adam" sapphire was formed in the highlands of Sri Lanka.

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̽��ֱ��Star of Adam

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Earthquake rocks Afghanistan and Pakistan – an area prone to magnitude 7 quakes

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:35:31 +0000

A devastating earthquake struck the Hindu Kush region of north-east Afghanistan just after lunchtime on October 26, rocking communities as far away as Tajikistan, Pakistan and even India. A devastating earthquake struck the Hindu Kush region of north-east Afghanistan just after lunchtime on October 26, rocking communities as far away as Tajikistan, Pakistan and even India.

̽��ֱ��strong quake, estimated at magnitude 7.5 by the US Geological Survey (USGS), had its origins more than 200km deep beneath Earth’s surface, and was felt as strong shaking across a very wide area. Casualties have been reported from across the region, with widespread landslips causing potential further damage to infrastructure.

So far it has been reported that 150 people have died, but this number is likely to rise.

̽��ֱ��quake is the second large shake to hit the Alpine-Himalayan earthquake belt this year, following the one that devastated Nepal in April. A region stretching from the Mediterranean through Anatolia, Iran and Central Asia into the mountains of South-East Asia, the Alpine-Himalayan belt is the home of around a fifth of the world’s largest earthquakes.

Tectonic plates collide. LennyWikipedia~commonswiki, CC BY-SA

̽��ֱ��earthquake was driven by collision between the Eurasian tectonic plate to the north and the Indian plate to the south. ̽��ֱ��area marks the scar of the closure of an ancient ocean, the Thethys, which once separated the continents of Gondwana, including most of the landmasses in today’s southern hemisphere, and Laurasia, made up of most of the countries that are today in the northern hemisphere.

̽��ֱ��Hindu Kush has experienced many such earthquakes before today, and this latest appears to follow closely the pattern of those of the past. Preliminary analysis by the USGS indicates that it was caused by a deep fault in which rocks thrust past each other instantaneously. They point out that seven earthquakes of magnitude 7 or more have hit within 250km of the current earthquake over the past century. Most recently the magnitude 7.4 earthquake, some 20km west of the latest event, killed over 150 people in March 2002.

This type of deep fault, a near-vertical a thrust fault, is a process that has previously been associated with the tearing off of sections of ancient ocean floor sinking into the Earth’s mantle beneath today’s continent. Researchers have previously suggested that earthquakes in the Hindu Kush can be caused by the break off of strips of such slabs, stretching and tearing free, on geological time scales, as they fall deep into the mantle.

Whatever the geological triggers for the quake, grieving communities will now be gathering themselves together and guarding against the inevitable aftershocks. With increased understanding of the risks that Earth poses along this seismic belt, it is important to be aware and prepare for future large earthquakes. If buildings are not to be destroyed time and again, it is important to adopt and adhere to construction and planning codes. A key step in promoting legal enforcement is educating the community about the risks, as well as how to respond as safely as possible during an earthquake.

Efforts such as the “Earthquakes without Frontiers” continue to highlight the risks of earthquakes, and have drawn attention to the tectonic forces that stand poised to strike along Tethys’ former shores.

Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Professor Simon Redfern (Department of Earth Sciences) discusses the devastating earthquake that struck Afghanistan on October 26 and the geological triggers that caused it.

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Topography of Hindu Kush.

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Meteorite impact turns silica into stishovite in a billionth of a second

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 12:49:29 +0000

̽��ֱ��Barringer meteor crater is an iconic Arizona landmark, more than 1km wide and 170 metres deep, left behind by a massive 300,000 tonne meteorite that hit Earth 50,000 years ago with a force equivalent to a ten megaton nuclear bomb. ̽��ֱ��forces unleashed by such an impact are hard to comprehend, but a team of Stanford scientists has recreated the conditions experienced during the first billionths of a second as the meteor struck in order to reveal the effects it had on the rock underneath.

̽��ֱ��sandstone rocks of Arizona were, on that day of impact 50,000 years ago, pushed beyond their limits and momentarily – for the first few trillionths and billionths of a second – transformed into a new state. ̽��ֱ��Stanford scientists, in a study published in the journal Nature Materials, recreated the conditions as the impact shockwave passed through the ground through computer models of half a million atoms of silica. Blasted by fragments of an asteroid that fell to Earth at tens of kilometres a second, the silica quartz crystals in the sandstone rocks would have experienced pressures of hundreds of thousands of atmospheres, and temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius.

What the model reveals is that atoms form an immensely dense structure almost instantaneously as the shock wave hits at more than 7km/s. Within ten trillionths of a second the silica has reached temperatures of around 3,000℃ and pressures of more than half a million atmospheres. Then, within the next billionth of a second, the dense silica crystallises into a very rare mineral called stishovite.

̽��ֱ��results are particularly exciting because stishovite is exactly the mineral found in shocked rocks at the Barringer Crater and similar sites across the globe. Indeed, stishovite (named after a Russian high-pressure physics researcher) was first found at the Barringer Crater in 1962. ̽��ֱ��latest simulations give an insight into the birth of mineral grains in the first moments of meteorite impact.

Simulations show how crystals form in billionths of a second

̽��ֱ��size of the crystals that form in the impact event appears to be indicative of the size and nature of the impact. ̽��ֱ��simulations arrive at crystals of stishovite very similar to the range of sizes actually observed in geological samples of asteroid impacts.

Studying transformations of minerals such as quartz, the commonest mineral of Earth’s continental crust, under such extreme conditions of temperature and pressure is challenging. To measure what happens on such short timescales adds another degree of complexity to the problem.

These computer models point the way forward, and will guide experimentalists in the studies of shock events in the future. In the next few years we can expect to see these computer simulations backed up with further laboratory studies of impact events using the next generation of X-ray instruments, called X-ray free electron lasers, which have the potential to “see” materials transform under the same conditions and on the same sorts of timescales.

Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Inset image: Barringer meteor Crater, Arizona (NASA Earth Observatory).

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Simon Redfern from the Department of Earth Sciences discusses a study that has recreated the conditions experienced during the meteor strike that formed the Barringer Crater in Arizona.

United States Geological Survey/D. Roddy

Barringer Crater aerial photo

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Novel Thoughts #4: Simon Redfern on Chinghiz Aitmatov's Jamila

lw355 — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 10:54:10 +0000

As a mineral scientist, Professor Simon Redfern from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences travels widely, and likes his visits to be about more than just the rocks. A recent trip to Kazakhstan was enlivened by reading Jamila by Chinghiz Aitmatov, a novella set in post-war Soviet Kyrgyzstan, on the borders of Kazakhstan.

Here he talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at the ̽��ֱ�� of St Andrews by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

View the whole series: Novel Thoughts: What Cambridge scientists read.

Read about Novel Thoughts.

Is there a novel that has inspired you? Let us know! #novelthoughts

New film series Novel Thoughts reveals the reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists and peeks inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives. In the fourth film, Professor Simon Redfern talks about how Jamila by Chinghiz Aitmatov made his recent trip to Kazakhstan about more than just rocks.

Novel Thoughts #4: Simon Redfern on Chinghiz Aitmatov's Jamila

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Nick Saffell

Simon Redfern

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