Month: February 2017

Tectonic plates are jigsaw-like pieces of the thin rigid outer-shell of our planet, which move around colliding and sliding past each other. They are comprised of the crust and the outermost part of the mantle, and are somewhat simpler in nature beneath the oceanic parts than they are beneath the continental parts. Plates are a … Read more

PiLAB stands for passive imaging of the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary. The main objective of the experiment is to determine what makes a plate ‘plate-like’. I have a lecture that I give to second or third year students which is entitled ‘What is a plate?’. For such a simple question the answer is not as straight-forward as … Read more

  I will be on a scientific cruise aboard the RRS Discovery for the entire month of March. Tomorrow, we sail from Tenerife. The experiment is called PiLAB and the cruise involves scientists from 5 institutions and 3 countries, who will be picking up ocean-bottom magnetometers and seismometers that were deployed in February 2016. The … Read more