Iceberg ahoy, and splitting core!

Friday, January 29, 2010

Sorry for the late blog, we receive our internet through satellite signals, and sometimes there is a hiccup in the signal.

Other then a mild storm, it has been very smooth going.  Well, aside from the iceberg that is heading almost right for us, but the captain has already made plans to move us to the side if needs be.  Here is a picture of the iceberg.  It looks like it won’t get closer then 5 miles from us, but just in case, we can move.

We can do this because we leave the beacon that I talked about earlier at the bottom of the ocean.  Between this, and something called a ‘free-fall funnel’ we can pull the drill string up off the seafloor a few meters, and move off to the side.

A ‘free-fall funnel’ is a neat little thing that looks like an upside down cone.  The drillers put one around the drillstring, and drop it into the ocean.  It drops all the way to the sea floor, following the drillstring.  This makes it easy for us to go back into the hole if we have to leave it.  We only use a free fall funnel if we need to, but they are quick and easy to get ready.  And once we use one, because of that beacon, they are easy to find again.  In fact it usually only takes about 15 minutes to find, and get the drill bit back into the hole after we move!

A free fall funnel looks like this, but in this picture it is upside down because it has not been deployed.  You can see one of the scientists on board, Francisco, so you can see how big the funnel is!

Did you know that this expedition has 33 scientists on board, from over 10 countries?  Francisco is from Spain, but we have American’s, Germans, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Australian, New Zealand, Korean, English, and Indian scientists on board as well.  And that list does not include the technicians, drillers, engineers, mechanics, and all the other people needed to keep the ship working properly.  There are about 140 people on board, and without all these other people, the scientists would not be able to do our jobs.

Speaking of doing our jobs, when we last left Lambchop, she was about to split a core.  Now, she does not actually split the core.  The technicians on board split the core.  This is because it is very easy to do it wrong, and the techs have been doing it for years.  But here is a picture of the tech’s splitting a core.

Depending on how hard the core is, the techs have different ways to split the core.  When the core is really soft, they use a piece of wire, which cuts the core very cleanly.  When the core gets harder, they have to use a saw.  The photo above is of them using a saw to cut the core in half.  This is because the sediments we are drilling have lithified and are now rocks.  In fact we call them sedimentary rocks.  Or rocks that are made of sediments.

Now, once it’s split, half of the core goes to the sampling table, where the scientists start taking samples, and performing more measurements.  The other half gets photographed, scanned, and described, then it is put in a box for safekeeping.  The first scientists to take a sample are the Physical Properties Specialists, but that will have to wait for next time!