Blogs

When the magma becomes rock !

Since one month, the scientists aboard the JR have examined with the rocks coming up to the seafloor.

Once their physical properties recorded (see previous enigma), these rocks are described. 

Several teams of researchers and technicians are in charge of this work.

Seven rocks cores from the ocean floor…

among them a sediment core less dense than the others hard rocks cores …

How to find it using the balance only two times ?

A enigma that can be solved as follows (see attached) :

With the second animation complete, I thought it would be a nice idea to answer all the 'how'd you do that?' questions. I will assure it, it's made to look more spontaneous than it actually is. But in terms of animating in a limited space, this method seems to work really well. It's quick and dirty, but effective and fun. 

Today is the boat's official "Hump Day", this is the half way point in the expedition. However, there is a lot of discussion about when the correct day falls, is it the day that we got underway, the day that we first got on-board or the day that we left home? Also, different people arrived on different days, ie the technicians and crew arrived before the scientists.

I am often asked why we have traveled out to the Hess Deep, why not just drill for gabbro closer to land? There are several layers of rock that make up the oceanic crust,gabbro is one of the lower ones. Other expeditions have tried to drill through all the layers to get to the gabbro, this is very time consuming and difficult.

..you took a polystyrene object, decorated it with bright, permanent markers, put it in a net bag and sent it to the bottom of the Hess Deep? Answer, your object shrinks to a fraction of the size due to the huge pressure exerted on it by the water.

Susan and I have been working on a package designed to help students think about which animals the JR's drillstring might meet on it's journey to the seafloor 5,000 meters below. As the drill travels deeper through the water column, light and temperture decreases while the pressure increases.

One of my principle tasks whilst on board is to deliver Skype broadcasts to students of all ages, all over the world. The schedule was completely full several weeks before the start of the expedition and we have calculated that we will speak with over 4000 young people.

A pod of 12/15 Short Finned Pilot Whales danced and dived around the JR yesterday entertaining us for around half and hour, lobtailing and spyholing. Pilot Whales eat squid and fish, they can dive down to 500m but a 30-60m forage is more typical.