Mr. Mingda Lyu (M.S. Peking University) and Dr. Jiachao Liu (Ph.D. University of Michigan) join us at MSU this Fall 2016!

In print now at American Mineralogist: http://ammin.geoscienceworld.org/content/101/7/1659

Dr. Dorfman is now an Academic Partner with the Carnegie-DOE Alliance Center, or CDAC!

Lecture tonight at the Michigan Mineralogical Society meeting at the Cranbrook Institute of Science on the most abundant mineral in the Earth: “Chemistry and physical properties of bridgmanite.”

Ben Brugman was co-author on a poster titled, “Equation of state measurements for planetary defense,” presented at the Omega Laser Facility Users Workshop, April 27-29. The poster describes results from dynamic compression experiments at Los Alamos National Laboratory on materials including olivine and phyllosilicates.

New paper out in Geophysical Research Letters (available open access here) hypothesizes that geochemical and geophysical observations of the deep lower mantle are consistent with metallic melt trapped during the solidification of the mantle magma ocean. Metallic melt would host siderophile and incompatible elements detected in hotspot volcanism and would lower observed seismic velocities to those observed in large low shear velocity provinces. This work is the product of a collaboration with a fantastic group of geophysicists and geochemists that began at the CIDER workshop in summer 2014.

We’re just back from MSU’s first high pressure mineralogy synchrotron run! 30 hours of beautiful laser heating at conditions reaching those at the core-mantle boundary.

Dr. Dorfman’s chapter, “Phase Diagrams and Thermodynamics of Lower Mantle Materials,” is available online and soon in print in Deep Earth: Physics and Chemistry of the Lower Mantle and Core, edited by Hidenori Terasaki and Rebecca Fischer.

Source: Wiley: Deep Earth: Physics and Chemistry of the Lower Mantle and Core – Hidenori Terasaki, Rebecca A. Fischer

Thanks for the opportunity to speak on iron in Earth’s lower mantle in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Gravenor Lecture series at the University of Windsor!