̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - earth science

̽��ֱ��coral whisperer

lkm37 — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 09:41:11 +0000

Duygu Sevilgen has built a coral lab in the basement of an old Zoology building. Here, 10 experimental tanks host multicoloured miniature forests, with each tank representing a different marine environment. Duygu uses extremely small sensors to record the fine details of coral skeletons and listen to their dialogue with algae. In doing so, she determines how much change corals can bear, and improves our chances of saving them in the wild.

Carbon-omics and global health

plc32 — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:05:53 +0000

Cambridge Zero to host two research symposia to discuss critical climate change challenges

Lava from 2021 Icelandic eruption gives rare view of deep churnings beneath volcano

cmm201 — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 14:30:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��study, published in the journal Nature and led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Iceland, reports that the eruption was unusual because it was supplied by a particularly deep reservoir of magma originating around 15 kilometres beneath the surface, at the base of Earth’s crust.

Their results also show that volcanoes like this can be fed by complex plumbing systems, where different batches of magma can mix and travel to the surface in just a matter of days or weeks.

̽��ֱ��researchers took measurements of lava and volcanic gases during the first 50 days of the eruption — giving them a near-real time report on the changing magma supply.

“I never expected to see the chemical composition of erupting lava change this quickly, showing us just how fast things can change in the depths beneath volcanoes,” said Simon Matthews from the ̽��ֱ�� of Iceland.

̽��ֱ��chemical fingerprint of lavas and the crystals inside them — together with the volcanic gases erupted — helped the researchers decode where the magma originated from and its journey to the surface. Until now, there has been a lack of information about the deepest parts of magmatic systems.

̽��ֱ��results showed that, during the initial phases of the eruption, the lava was predominately coming from around the boundary between the crust and underlying mantle – the thick, rocky layer that makes up most of Earth’s interior. But over the following weeks, the composition of the lava changed, indicating the eruption was directly tapping magma from greater depths.

“Ever since Enlightenment thinkers started writing about volcanoes, scientists have drawn cross-sections to visualise how they might work below ground,” said co-author Professor Clive Oppenheimer from Cambridge’s Department of Geography. “This study draws together different strands of information from monitoring the chemistry of lava and gas emissions to describe what is happening up to 20 kilometres down.”

They used indicators including the magnesium contents of the lava and carbon dioxide levels in the volcanic gases as barometers to gauge how hot and deep the magma feeding the eruption was. They suggest that, for the magma to come from 15 kilometres below the surface, the eruption was fed by something like a high-speed train direct to the mantle.

“We’ve known for a while that magma coming from the mantle is variable,” said co-author Professor John Maclennan from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, “But we’ve had to work hard to find clues as to how this complex mixing happens.”

̽��ֱ��authors point out that it has long been argued that different kinds of magma can mix deep in magmatic systems before an eruption. ̽��ֱ��new research shows that new magma can flow into a deep reservoir and mix with existing magma rapidly, in as little as 20 days.

Normally scientists use lavas erupted from old or extinct volcanoes to get a below ground view of volcanoes. But these samples are often too old to unravel processes happening over the course of a few days, “I’ve looked at hundreds of samples from dead volcanoes, but never had the chance to observe such a spectacular example of magma mixing in real-time,” said Maclennan.

Magma mixing has been shown to be an important process in triggering volcanic eruptions, so the study findings could have implications for understanding what drove the eruption and for future monitoring of volcanic activity in Iceland and at similar volcanoes.

Reference:
Sæmundur A. Halldórsson et al. ‘Rapid shifting of a deep magmatic source at Fagradalsfjall volcano, Iceland.’ Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04981-x.

After centuries without volcanic activity, Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula sprang to life in 2021 when lava erupted from the Fagradalsfjall volcano. New research involving the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge helps us see what is going on deep beneath the volcano by reading the chemistry of lavas and volcanic gases almost as they were erupted.

I’ve looked at hundreds of samples from dead volcanoes, but never had the chance to observe such a spectacular example of magma mixing in real-time

John Maclennan

Fagradalsfjall volcano

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Earth's interior is swallowing up more carbon than thought

cmm201 — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 09:59:43 +0000

They found that the carbon drawn into Earth’s interior at subduction zones - where tectonic plates collide and dive into Earth’s interior - tends to stay locked away at depth, rather than resurfacing in the form of volcanic emissions.

Their findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that only about a third of the carbon recycled beneath volcanic chains returns to the surface via recycling, in contrast to previous theories that what goes down mostly comes back up.

One of the solutions to tackle climate change is to find ways to reduce the amount of CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere. By studying how carbon behaves in the deep Earth, which houses the majority of our planet’s carbon, scientists can better understand the entire lifecycle of carbon on Earth, and how it flows between the atmosphere, oceans and life at the surface.

̽��ֱ��best-understood parts of the carbon cycle are at or near Earth’s surface, but deep carbon stores play a key role in maintaining the habitability of our planet by regulating atmospheric CO₂ levels. “We currently have a relatively good understanding of the surface reservoirs of carbon and the fluxes between them, but know much less about Earth’s interior carbon stores, which cycle carbon over millions of years,” said lead author Stefan Farsang, who conducted the research while a PhD student at Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences.

There are a number of ways for carbon to be released back to the atmosphere (as CO₂) but there is only one path in which it can return to the Earth’s interior: via plate subduction. Here, surface carbon, for instance in the form of seashells and micro-organisms which have locked atmospheric CO₂ into their shells, is channelled into Earth’s interior. Scientists had thought that much of this carbon was then returned to the atmosphere as CO₂ via emissions from volcanoes. But the new study reveals that chemical reactions taking place in rocks swallowed up at subduction zones trap carbon and send it deeper into Earth’s interior - stopping some of it coming back to Earth’s surface.

̽��ֱ��team conducted a series of experiments at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, “ ̽��ֱ��ESRF has world-leading facilities and the expertise that we needed to get our results,” said co-author Simon Redfern, Dean of the College of Science at NTU Singapore, “ ̽��ֱ��facility can measure very low concentrations of these metals at the high pressure and temperature conditions of interest to us.” To replicate the high pressures and temperatures of subductions zones, they used a heated ‘diamond anvil’, in which extreme pressures are achieved by pressing two tiny diamond anvils against the sample.

̽��ֱ��work supports growing evidence that carbonate rocks, which have the same chemical makeup as chalk, become less calcium-rich and more magnesium-rich when channelled deeper into the mantle. This chemical transformation makes carbonate less soluble – meaning it doesn’t get drawn into the fluids that supply volcanoes. Instead, the majority of the carbonate sinks deeper into the mantle where it may eventually become diamond.

“There is still a lot of research to be done in this field,” said Farsang. “In the future, we aim to refine our estimates by studying carbonate solubility in a wider temperature, pressure range and in several fluid compositions.”

̽��ֱ��findings are also important for understanding the role of carbonate formation in our climate system more generally. “Our results show that these minerals are very stable and can certainly lock up CO₂ from the atmosphere into solid mineral forms that could result in negative emissions,” said Redfern. ̽��ֱ��team have been looking into the use of similar methods for carbon capture, which moves atmospheric CO₂ into storage in rocks and the oceans.

“These results will also help us understand better ways to lock carbon into the solid Earth, out of the atmosphere. If we can accelerate this process faster than nature handles it, it could prove a route to help solve the climate crisis,” said Redfern.

Reference:
Farsang, S, Louvel, M, Zhao, C et al. Deep carbon cycle constrained by carbonate solubility. Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24533-7

Adapted from a news release by the ESRF

Scientists from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and NTU Singapore have found that slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates drag more carbon into Earth’s interior than previously thought.

We currently have a relatively good understanding of the surface reservoirs of carbon and the fluxes between them, but know much less about Earth’s interior carbon stores, which cycle carbon over millions of years

Stefan Farsang

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Alaska’s Pavlof Volcano: NASA’s View from Space

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Rock crystals from the deep give microscopic clues to earthquake ground movements

cmm201 — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 10:27:18 +0000

̽��ֱ��stresses resulting from these defects – which are small enough to disrupt the atomic building blocks of a crystal – can transform how hot rocks beneath Earth’s crust move and in turn transfer stress back to Earth’s surface, starting the countdown to the next earthquake.

̽��ֱ��new study, published in Nature Communications, is the first to map out the crystal defects and surrounding force fields in detail. “They’re so tiny that we’ve only been able to observe them with the latest microscopy techniques,” said lead author Dr David Wallis from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences, “But it’s clear that they can significantly influence how deep rocks move, and even govern when and where the next earthquake will happen.”

By understanding how these crystal defects influence rocks in the Earth’s upper mantle, scientists can better interpret measurements of ground motions following earthquakes, which give vital information on where stress is building up - and in turn where future earthquakes may occur.

Earthquakes happen when pieces of Earth’s crust suddenly slip past each other along fault lines, releasing stored-up energy which propagates through the Earth and causes it to shake. This movement is generally a response to the build-up of tectonic forces in the Earth’s crust, causing the surface to buckle and eventually rupture in the form of an earthquake.

Their work reveals that the way Earth’s surface settles after an earthquake, and stores stress prior to a repeat event, can ultimately be traced to tiny defects in rock crystals from the deep.

“If you can understand how fast these deep rocks can flow, and how long it will take to transfer stress between different areas across a fault zone, then we might be able to get better predictions of when and where the next earthquake will strike,” said Wallis.

̽��ֱ��team subjected olivine crystals – the most common component of the upper mantle -- to a range of pressures and temperatures in order to replicate conditions of up to 100 km beneath Earth’s surface, where the rocks are so hot (roughly 1250^oC) they move like syrup.

Wallis likens their experiments to a blacksmith working with hot metal – at the highest temperatures, their samples were glowing white-hot and pliable.

They observed the distorted crystal structures using a high-resolution form of electron microscopy, called electron backscatter diffraction, which Wallis has pioneered on geological materials.

Their results shed light on how hot rocks in the upper mantle can mysteriously morph from flowing almost like syrup immediately after an earthquake to becoming thick and sluggish as time passes.

This change in thickness -- or viscosity – transfers stress back to the cold and brittle rocks in the crust above, where it builds up – until the next earthquake strikes.

̽��ֱ��reason for this switch in behaviour has remained an open question, “We’ve known that microscale processes are a key factor controlling earthquakes for a while, but it’s been difficult to observe these tiny features in enough detail,” said Wallis. “Thanks to a state-of-the-art microscopy technique, we’ve been able to look into the crystal framework of hot, deep rocks and track down how important these miniscule defects really are”.

Wallis and co-authors show that irregularities in the crystals become increasingly tangled over time; jostling for space due to their competing force fields – and it’s this process that causes the rocks to become more viscous.

Until now it had been thought that this increase in viscosity was because of the competing push and pull of crystals against each other, rather than being caused by microscopic defects and their stress fields inside the crystals themselves.

̽��ֱ��team hope to apply their work to improving seismic hazard maps, which are often used in tectonically active areas like southern California to estimate where the next earthquake will occur. Current models, which are usually based on where earthquakes have struck in the past, and where stress must therefore be building up, only take into account the more immediate changes across a fault zone and do not consider gradual stress changes in rocks flowing deep within the Earth.

Working with colleagues at Utrecht ̽��ֱ��, Wallis also plans to apply their new lab constraints to models of ground movements following the hazardous 2004 earthquake which struck Indonesia, and the 2011 Japan quake – both of which triggered tsunamis and lead to the loss of tens of thousands of lives.

Reference:
David Wallis et al. 'Dislocation interactions in olivine control postseismic creep of the upper mantle.' Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23633-8

Microscopic imperfections in rock crystals deep beneath Earth’s surface play a deciding factor in how the ground slowly moves and resets in the aftermath of major earthquakes, says new research involving the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

James St John

Chunks of exotic green rocks from the mantle erupted from the San Carlos Volcanic Field, Arizona

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Scientists track veil of toxic metals carried in Kīlauea’s gas plumes, revealing hidden dangers of volcanic pollution

cmm201 — Tue, 25 May 2021 16:53:48 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, published in two companion papers in Nature Communications Earth and Environment, is the most extensive survey of metal release from any volcano to date – helping scientists understand the spread of metal-rich volcanic fumes and the exposure of communities to volcanic air pollution around Hawai’i.

̽��ֱ��2018 eruption of Kīlauea was the largest in centuries, flooding the eastern edge of the island with roughly a cubic kilometres of lava. Over a thousand people lost their homes and many more suffered from noxious volcanic gases.

Understanding how volcanic metals are released to the environment is critical from a public health perspective, “We don’t know much about these metal emissions at all, so this work is a key step to understanding the significant, yet underestimated, chemical risks of volcanoes,” said Emily Mason, PhD student at Cambridge Earth Sciences and lead author of one of the papers.

When volcanoes erupt they exhale a cocktail of gases – mostly steam, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide – laced with evaporated heavy metals, including lead and arsenic. To the communities living alongside volcanoes, these gases are often a considerable source of air pollution and the volatile metals they carry may have long-lasting impacts on both health and environment.

Volcanologists have been measuring volatile metal emissions from volcanoes for decades, but how these elements are dispersed in the atmosphere following an eruption, to later rain down on the landscape and be taken up in the environment through soils and water bodies, has remained poorly understood.

̽��ֱ��team, including researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, report higher concentrations of airborne heavy metals within a 40 km radius of Kīlauea, meaning that communities living closer to the volcano were disproportionally exposed to metal pollution during the 2018 eruption.

They believe that the strong trade winds at the time of the eruption, combined with the topography of the local area, caused higher rainfall and, therefore metal deposition, closer to the vent. This could mean that an eruption in winter, when wind patterns are reversed, might result in a different distribution of metal deposition.

Their results could help delineate environmental monitoring strategies during and following eruptions – including the targeted testing of community water supplies in at-risk areas – as well as helping planners decide where to build safely around volcanoes.

Emily Mason was one of an all-female team of scientists from the Universities of Cambridge and Leeds that headed out to take gas measurements when Kīlauea erupted. Mason, together with then first-year PhD students Penny Wieser and Rachel Whitty, and early career scientists Evgenia Ilyinskaya and Emma Liu, arrived when the eruption was in full flow and some of their study area was already cut off by lava, “We had to fly in to one location via helicopter. I remember descending through a dense haze of volcanic gas…the acidic air actually stung our skin.” said Mason.

“We tend to think of the more immediate volcanic hazards like ash fall, pyroclastic flows, lava,” said Dr Evgenia Ilyinskaya, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Leeds, who led the research on downwind metal dispersal, “But metal emissions, just like air pollution, are an insidious and often underestimated volcanic hazard – potentially impacting health over long periods.”

During the first few weeks of the eruption, the main air quality concern was volcanic smog, or ‘vog’, which contains mostly sulfur dioxide with traces of heavy metals and volcanic ash. But when molten lava reached the ocean and reacted with seawater it triggered new health warnings, as billowing white clouds of lava haze or ‘laze’ were released; carrying hydrochloric acid and toxic metals.

Working with collaborators from the USGS, the team took measurements of gases inside the laze and dry vog plumes from both the ground and the air, using specially-fitted drones. They even developed a back frame for their air filters, so they could move equipment quickly through areas where the air was thick with sulphur dioxide.

Mason and co-authors discovered that the two types of gas plume had a very different chemistry, “What really surprised us was the large amounts of copper in the laze plume…the impact of lava-seawater interactions on the biosphere may be significantly underestimated. It’s interesting to note that this type of plume was probably a common feature of the massive outpourings of lava throughout geological history – some of which have been linked to mass extinctions.”

Their long-term goal is to produce pollution hazard maps for volcanoes, showing at-risk areas for metal pollution, a method already used to communicate areas that might be at risk of other volcanic hazards, like lava flows, “Our research is just one part of the puzzle – the idea would be to understand all of these hazards in tandem”.

They aim to apply this method worldwide, but Mason cautions that local atmospheric conditions significantly influence metal dispersal and deposition. Now they want to know how the transport of volcanic metals might differ in cooler, drier environments like the Antarctic – or even in different areas of Hawai’i where rainfall is lower.

Ilyinskaya, Evgenia, et al. "Rapid metal pollutant deposition from the volcanic plume of Kīlauea, Hawai’i." Communications Earth & Environment 2.1 (2021): 1-15.

Mason, Emily, et al. "Volatile metal emissions from volcanic degassing and lava–seawater interactions at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai’i." Communications Earth & Environment 2.1 (2021): 1-16.

A team of volcanologists who observed the colossal 2018 eruption of Kīlauea, Hawai’i, have tracked how potentially toxic metals carried in its gas plumes were transported away from the volcano to be deposited on the landscape.

This work is a key step to understanding the significant, yet underestimated, chemical risks of volcanoes

Emily Mason

Emily Mason/USGS

Golden Hour at Kīlauea

Yes

Traces of Earth’s early magma ocean identified in Greenland rocks

cmm201 — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 19:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��study, published in the journal Science Advances, yields information on an important period in our planet’s formation, when a deep sea of incandescent magma stretched across Earth’s surface and extended hundreds of kilometres into its interior.

It is the gradual cooling and crystallisation of this ‘magma ocean’ that set the chemistry of Earth’s interior – a defining stage in the assembly of our planet’s structure and the formation of our early atmosphere.

Scientists know that catastrophic impacts during the formation of the Earth and Moon would have generated enough energy to melt our planet's interior. But we don’t know much about this distant and fiery phase of Earth’s history because tectonic processes have recycled almost all rocks older than 4 billion years.

Now researchers have found the chemical remnants of the magma ocean in 3.6-billion-year-old rocks from southwestern Greenland.

̽��ֱ��findings support the long-held theory that Earth was once almost entirely molten and provide a window into a time when the planet started to solidify and develop the chemistry that now governs its internal structure. ̽��ֱ��research suggests that other rocks on Earth’s surface may also preserve evidence of ancient magma oceans.

“There are few opportunities to get geological constraints on the events in the first billion years of Earth’s history. It’s astonishing that we can even hold these rocks in our hands – let alone get so much detail about the early history of our planet,” said lead author Dr Helen Williams, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

̽��ֱ��study brings forensic chemical analysis together with thermodynamic modelling in search of the primeval origins of the Greenland rocks, and how they got to the surface.

At first glance, the rocks that makeup Greenland’s Isua supracrustal belt look just like any modern basalt you’d find on the seafloor. But this outcrop, which was first described in the 1960s, is the oldest exposure of rocks on Earth. It is known to contain the earliest evidence of microbial life and plate tectonics.

̽��ֱ��new research shows that the Isua rocks also preserve rare evidence which even predates plate tectonics – the residues of some of the crystals left behind as that magma ocean cooled.

“It was a combination of some new chemical analyses we did and the previously published data that flagged to us that the Isua rocks might contain traces of ancient material. ̽��ֱ��hafnium and neodymium isotopes were really tantalizing, because those isotope systems are very hard to modify – so we had to look at their chemistry in more detail,” said co-author Dr Hanika Rizo, from Carleton ̽��ֱ��.

Iron isotopic systematics confirmed to Williams and the team that the Isua rocks were derived from parts of the Earth’s interior that formed as a consequence of magma ocean crystallisation.

Most of this primeval rock has been mixed up by convection in the mantle, but scientists think that some isolated zones deep at the mantle-core boundary – ancient crystal graveyards – may have remained undisturbed for billions of years.

It’s the relics of these crystal graveyards that Williams and her colleagues observed in the Isua rock chemistry. “Those samples with the iron fingerprint also have a tungsten anomaly – a signature of Earth’s formation – which makes us think that their origin can be traced back to these primeval crystals,” said Williams.

But how did these signals from the deep mantle find their way up to the surface? Their isotopic makeup shows they were not just funnelled up from melting at the core-mantle boundary. Their journey was more circuitous, involving several stages of crystallization and remelting – a kind of distillation process. ̽��ֱ��mix of ancient crystals and magma would have first migrated to the upper mantle, where it was churned up to create a ‘marble cake’ of rocks from different depths. Later melting of that hybrid of rocks is what produced the magma which fed this part of Greenland.

̽��ֱ��team’s findings suggest that modern hotspot volcanoes, which are thought to have formed relatively recently, may actually be influenced by ancient processes. “ ̽��ֱ��geochemical signals we report in the Greenland rocks bear similarities to rocks erupted from hotspot volcanoes like Hawaii – something we are interested in is whether they might also be tapping into the depths and accessing regions of the interior usually beyond our reach,” said Dr Oliver Shorttle who is jointly based at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Institute of Astronomy.

̽��ֱ��team’s findings came out of a project funded by Deep Volatiles, a NERC-funded 5-year research programme. They now plan to continue their quest to understand the magma ocean by widening their search for clues in ancient rocks and experimentally modelling isotopic fractionation in the lower mantle.

“We’ve been able to unpick what one part of our planet’s interior was doing billions of years ago, but to fill in the picture further we must keep searching for more chemical clues in ancient rocks,” said co-author Dr Simon Matthews from the ̽��ֱ�� of Iceland.

Scientists have often been reluctant to look for chemical evidence of these ancient events. “ ̽��ֱ��evidence is often altered by the course of time. But the fact we found what we did suggests that the chemistry of other ancient rocks may yield further insights into the Earth’s formation and evolution - and that’s immensely exciting,” said Williams.

Reference:
Helen M. Williams et al. ‘Iron isotopes trace primordial magma ocean cumulates melting in Earth’s upper mantle.’ Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc7394

New research led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has found rare evidence – preserved in the chemistry of ancient rocks from Greenland - which tells of a time when Earth was almost entirely molten.

It’s astonishing that we can even hold these rocks in our hands – let alone get so much detail about the early history of our planet

Helen Williams

Hanika Rizo

Isua in Greenland

Yes

Women in STEM: Professor Marian Holness

sc604 — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 07:00:00 +0000

I was educated at state schools in Southampton before coming to Cambridge, where I gained my BA and PhD. I spent six years as a Postdoc at the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh, and have been a ̽��ֱ�� Teaching Officer at Cambridge for the last 22 years.

I am interested in processes that happen during the solidification of partially molten rock. It's these processes, happening in batches of magma trapped under volcanoes, that ultimately control the explosivity of volcanic eruptions. ̽��ֱ��roots of volcanoes can be accessed if their tops have been eroded away, so I look at ancient volcanic regions, mainly in East Greenland and Scotland, where the rocks at the surface were originally buried several kilometres deep, so I can see what went on in the crust at that time. My approach involves careful field observation, followed by microscopic analysis of grain sizes and shapes and the ways grains fit together, to decode the solidification history.

Last summer we spent six weeks in East Greenland, working on a 60 million-year-old body of igneous rock called the Skaergaard Intrusion. I've been working on this for 12 years now, but on this trip, we saw masses of really novel things and I made many important breakthroughs in understanding - that was pretty thrilling.

I guide my group in their science and help them write their papers. I sometimes have time for my own research, which involves optical microscopy (I have rather less time for this than I would like!). One of the great things about Cambridge is that it has an excellent museum collection of rocks I can dip into when chasing up particular hunches and ideas. Most years I supplement this museum-based work by going into the field to collect new observations and samples - this is usually in the summer, and involves being away for up to several months though the usual time is a couple of weeks.

A key moment that helped define the development of my career happened when I was waiting for an experiment to heat up during my time in Edinburgh: I was quietly knitting a sock, watching the temperature climb on the dial... and out of nowhere I suddenly had a brainwave that made sense of everything I had been working on for the previous year. I learned from this and now find that spending time knitting, running, breastfeeding(!) and other quiet activities is the best way to trigger insights into my research.

Professor Marian Holness leads a research group in the Department of Earth Sciences, and studies the processes which occur during the melting and solidification of rocks. Here, she tells us how time spent in quiet activities like running, knitting and even breastfeeding have helped to trigger new insights in her research.

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