DeepEarthScience

This morning I got up earlier today to attend the Delfi-n3Xt launch event in our faculty. Delfi-n3Xt is a nano-satellite (the size of a milk carton) which is built by students and staff of our faculty. Launch events are always exciting, because you don't know what will happen. But after two stressful hours we got the confirmation, "Nano-sat number 7 successfully deployed." This was followed by some cheerful cheers. However, was it turned on? This blog started with some post about listening to satellites using the ground station on top of EWI (faculty of electronic engineering, mathematics and computer sciences). This ground station is mostly set up by a student which I assist in teaching him to track satellites. So this gives me the opportunity to get the telemetry data of the Delfi-n3Xt quite fast. It's good to be a teacher :). The next figure will show the satellite's first sounds in space: Click on the figure to get a larger view. In the bottom left

Last week, I was visiting the beautiful capital of Denmark, Copenhagen. I was selected to participate in the International PhD Elite Course "Tectonics" at the University of Copenhagen (READY program), organized by Prof. Hans Thybo and Prof. Irina Artemieva. During this five day course, the participants (PhD students from all over the world and me :) ) were being taught by two experts in the field of tectonics, the wonders of geosciences. From Geology (I write G eology, because it was defined by the lecturer as one of the two only real sciences); Prof. Çelal Şengör from Turkey with a beautiful British-sounding way of lecturing. From Geophysics (capital G, because I disagree with Prof. Şengör ;)); Prof. Seth Stein from the USA, who also brought his wive, Carol Stein. She gave a very interesting view on the Mid-Continental Rift. These last five days were fantastic, because I learned a lot and met numerous interesting people. I recommend any PhD student participating in such a c

No, this is not a blog about some random Sci-Fi movie, it really is a blog about the secrets of the deep ocean (sorry guys, no shiny sphere that gives you special powers when you touch it). Already as a kid I was fascinated about large structures in the deep depths of our oceans. I will show you some cool geological features and their origin in the deep depths of the South Atlantic Ocean. Fortunately, Vening Meinesz, the geophysicist I am talking about now for some time, sailed over this huge ocean onboard the K18 submarine (yes, yes, I know, again I am spamming you guys about this very interesting and cool scientist).  After visited several ports along the eastern South American coastlines, the K18 and its occupants started from Mar del Plata the difficult crossing of the South Atlantic Ocean. Vening Meinesz wrote in Volume III of his "Gravity Expeditions at Sea", the following about this crossing: The crossing of the Atlantic from Mar del Plata to Cape Town was a s