Ask me questions about my job?

[kaberett]

I kind of want to be excitable at people about my work (and I kind of want the human contact without needing to actually parse audiovisual cues as required in in-person conversation), so... if you are curious please Ask Me Things? <3

Comments

An uplifting experience

[hairyears]

I was going to ask if you're nervous around HF; but I read your earlier reply, you're *cautious* with it.

So...

Will we ever observe conditions in the Mantle directly, or even in the lab with tiny samples under (say) a diamond anvil?


Also, from a previous reply: I *get* your sense of geology and the landscape. I'm no geologist, I'm a Civil Engineer by training, and I read the engineered landscape; it's always an amazing thing, out in a landscape that's there to be read, always more than mere scenery.

Re: An uplifting experience

[kaberett]

Yep, my supervisor takes the attitude that there's no point being scared of it - sure it's nasty stuff, but you're not going to help anything by being on an adrenaline kick while interacting with it. Being scared also doesn't help with spills: you just need to be able to step through the containment/decontamination without freezing up in a panic. (The upside of the couple of minor spills a few months back is that I now know I can do this.)

Regarding your main question -- that's more about tech than about geology, exactly, and as such means that the answer is slippery around what counts as "observe" and "directly". Laser-heated diamond-anvil cells are a thing (26GPa & 900K were already being achieved in 1996); beyond that... enh. Talk to the engineers :-p

:-)