Gravity Art: "The Face of the Earth viewed by a Gravity Scientist"

Last week I visited a conference which had the theme: "The Face of the Earth". At the conference were very inspiring talks and interesting scientists. It gave me new inspiration for my blog and my PhD research. It also gave me artistic creativity. So enjoy my art work titled: "The Face of the Earth viewed by a gravity scientist!" (click on figures to enlarge)


The figure represents the free air anomaly of the Earth. This anomaly is the deviation of the gravity signal from the main ellipsoidal signal (the 9.81 m/s^2 you learned in high school). The colors represent the magnitude of the deviation. So more mass is red and blue means less mass then the main signal (green is zero). But you don't want to talk numbers, you want to enjoy the colors, because that is art all about. The above picture is of course the old continent Africa. You can clearly see some nice features in the gravity field. In the middle of Africa (Congo) is a large blue area, showing the location of the Congo Basin and the old craton beneath it. Also you see the characteristic gravity signal of mid oceanic ridges, where the dynamic mantle pushes material up, creating a gravity high (reddish/orange). Furthermore, the large collision zone between Africa and Eurasia is viewed as large red band of mountainous land. Finally, the subduction zone near Indonesia is seen as a very thin ribbon of blue and red. What else can you see?

Another one I made for my Auntie Down Under:


She wanted to see more colors so I played a little with the colormap. Can you see cool details? For Example, I noticed small red/white blobs just offshore the west coast of Australia. Those are marine volcanos, which I did not know they existed (but now I found them on Google maps). Furthermore, I filtered the effect of mantle convection and deep density anomalies to get a better view on the crustal structures.


Can you see the differences (colormap is the same)?

Let me know what area of Earth you would like to see Gravity Artified, and I will see what I can do!

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