Category: Seminars

Speaker:
Dr. Kevin Hand
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Abstract:
At least five moons of planets in the outer solar system may harbor subsurface liquid water oceans. The total volume of liquid water on these worlds is likely in excess of 100 times the volume of all the liquid water on Earth. These oceans have persisted for much of the history of the solar system and as such they present highly compelling worlds in our search for life beyond Earth. In this presentation Dr. Hand will explain the science behind why we think we know these oceans exist and what we know about the physical and chemical conditions that likely persist on these worlds.

Reading:
Chyba & Hand, 2005

Speaker:
Prof. Melany Hunt
Dept. Mechanical Engineering, Caltech

Abstract:
In the southwestern United States and at approximately 40 locations around
the world, large sand dunes can generate a loud booming sound during a
natural or induced avalanche. The sound builds over time to a single
frequency varying from 75 to 105 Hz plus harmonics depending on the
dune location and time of the year. This talk will outline the
historical references to this phenomenon, as well as our field work
involving seismic refraction, ground penetrating radar and sand
sampling. In addition, the talk will describe some of our related work
on flows of granular materials.

Reading:
Hunt & Vriend, 2010

Speaker:
Prof. Kim Kastens
Dept. Earth and Environment, Columbia University

Abstract:
This colloquium is intended as an introduction to research on thinking
and learning in the Geosciences, pitched for an audience who know a
lot about geosciences and not so much about education research. As
geoscientists, we ask our brains to make sense of an object larger than
the human senses can encompass at one time, older than any time span
with which humans have direct experience, which is not susceptible to
experimental manipulation, whose crust at any given point has
experienced superimposed chemical, physical and biological events,
where flows of matter and energy intertwine at a bewildering level of
complexity. How do we pull this off?

The talk is organized in three concentric rings:

The first and broadest ring situates geoscience education research amid
physics education research, chemistry education research, drawing
on the current National Research Council study on “Discipline-based
Education Research.”

The middle ring draws from the current Synthesis of Research on
Thinking & Learning in the Geosciences project, and explores four key
themes: spatial thinking in geosciences, temporal thinking in
geosciences, systems thinking in geosciences, and teaching and learning
in the field.

The most-tightly focused and final section of the talk will dig into
one of my own research projects: an effort to understand how
geoscientists and geoscience students integrate information from scattered outcrops to form a mental model of a geologic structure.

Reading:
Kastens et al., 2009

Speaker:
Prof. Victor Baker
Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona

Abstract:
Megafloods (terrestrial water flows with discharges exceeding one
million cubic meters per second) are the largest known freshwater
floods, with flows comparable in scale to (though of shorter duration
than) ocean currents. Although there are no modern examples of
megafloods, such flows occurred during major periods of Earth’s
glaciation and during past epochs on Mars. A prominent example is the
paleoflooding caused by late Pleistocene outbursts from Glacial Lake
Missoula, which formed when the Purcell Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice
Sheet extended south from British Columbia to the basin of modern Pend
Oreille Lake in northern Idaho.

Reading:
Baker, 2008

Speaker:
Prof. Dave Trilling
Dept. Physics & Astronomy, Northern Arizona University

Abstract:
The small bodies of the Solar System have a story to tell about the
history of our Solar System. Near Earth Objects — asteroids whose
orbits bring them near the Earth’s orbit — are interesting both
because they sample compositions from throughout the Solar System and
because they can, and do, hit the Earth. Kuiper Belt Objects, at the
outer edge of the Solar System, are, in contrast, relatively primordial
and record the formation environment in the early Solar System. In my
talk, I will present our latest results in studies of both Near Earth
Objects and Kuiper Belt Objects, focusing on new results obtained with
data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and
the STEREO mission.

Reading:
Trilling et al., 2010
Fuentes et al., 2010