DeepEarthScience

Plate tectonics is a theory that is only 60 years old. Before this time, people were seeing Earth as a solid un-deformable piece of rock. Imaging you being a geophysicist in those days (ok, if you are currently not a geophysicist this is even more difficult, but in comparison try to explain the wonders of the internet to your grandparents.), having trouble to explain most of the things that where observed. In those times a civil engineer, educated in Delft (my university :) ), went on a submarine voyage, measuring the gravity field of Earth. Wow, they should make a movie about this (I think they even did)! With his own designed pendulum equipment, the Dutch engineer could measure the gravity field with an accuracy up to a few mGal (which is very impressive, just trust me). Who is this brave, 2 meter tall (which I like because I am the same height), submarine-sailing hero? Born on 30 July 1887 in The Hague, he was named Felix Andries Vening Meinesz. I am currently work...

This week I received a package from the USA, containing my own Crookes radiometer (only a few bucks at ThinkGeek.com (Yes, I am a geek, but the good well developed kind ;) )). This device is a small mill with black and white vanes in a vacuum pumped light bulb which turns around when you put it in sunlight (any light works!). It looks like this (pictures speak a thousand words, well in my case a few dozen) My physics teacher used this device to explain that light particles have momentum (he should have known better), and due to the different reaction with the white and black colored vanes, the mill would turn. During my whole life, I was really sure about that this explanation was the effect causing the light-mill in vacuum to turn. Until this week. My old master supervisor (not that he is old, but I am no longer a master student, he is my colleague now) entered my office room with a cup of coffee (this is of course essential for the story) and saw the Crookes radiometer...

A few years ago I was obsessed about Einstein's theory of gravity. I wanted to know everything about it, so I browsed a lot on the internet, trying to find information about the topic (I could have gone to the library, however I was still in the frame of mind that everything on the internet is correct). So one day I came across the following website: Bending Spacetime in the Basement . Wow, can one do this at home?!? First take a good look at the website. He's got a point by stating that he is bending spacetime. It unfortunately has nothing to do with warp-drives and wormholes (Which was what I was looking for), but his experiment is quite cool nonetheless. It somehow proves (I will discuss this later on) that the theory of gravitation found by Newton, not only works for planet and stars, but also for smaller everyday objects. Everything attracts each other. Impressed by the simplicity of the experiment and the fact that it is about gravitation (I think this is one of...