DeepEarthScience

Few weeks ago, I visited the Queen of the Hebrides, or better known as the isle of Islay. My dad and I organised the trip for some friends of ours with the main objective to show them the many beauties of the island. Two years ago my dad and I made a ‘reconnaissance’ trip to explore those beauties.  Machir Bay viewed from the old abandon RAF radio station. Photo credit: Maurits Kok. Being true to my blog, which is a more scientific-orientated blog, I will not make this post a travellers log, but lets just say we visited several distilleries (even one that is now under construction), enjoyed the cuisine (which was quite high standards in the hotel we stayed), and made many long walks through the fantastic and overwhelming landscapes of the Scottish island. This island keeps surprising me with its fascinating history, incredible geology, and beautiful whiskies. Whisky Wharehouse tasting at Bruichladdich. Photo credit: Maurits Kok Before the trip I bought a book about...

This week I saw a great article in Wired.com about the static test of one of the solid boosters for the SLS rocket. So I tweeted: "The Earth rotated a little bit faster that day! #rocketengine". I should have known that I cannot make these kind of statements without proving them first. One of my friends called my bluff. So, I replied with "Challenge accepted!". The blog post will report on my investigation and show how much the Earth speed up/slowed down by the QM-2 test of the SLS booster rocket. My investigation consists of three parts: the model, the search for reliable information, and my conclusions. Model of the Earth with an attached booster By igniting their propellant, rockets can produce thrust that normally propel them upwards towards space. If you fix them on the Earth they could speed up or slow done the rotation of the Earth, depending on  the direction of its thrust. Ok, hold your horses! Of course this will have a small effect, but I st...

On a cold winter day, 21 November 1934, professor Vening Meinesz turned on his pendulum apparatus. Just a few minutes ago, the submarine K-XVIII dived to a depth of 30 meters [1]. A t these depths, t he motion of the surface waves was dampened such that it did not influence the delicate measurements done by the professor. This particular observation would mark the 500th measurement, observing the tiniest changes in the Earth's gravity field. This new gravity dataset would reveal many new mysteries of our home planet and would be the life’s work of Vening Meinesz. It is all documented in scientific publications of four volumes called  Gravity Expeditions at Sea , followed by a fifth volume with gravity observations done by his students. Along these expeditions, the professor had brought his specially designed pendulum apparatus, or folklorised by the sailors on board the many submarines: Het Gouden Kalf  (the Golden Calf). The pendulum apparatus of Vening Meinesz, also kn...

The ice sheets and glaciers on our Earth are currently melting, which causes the global sea level to rise. This has of course major impacts on the 44 percent of the world’s population living in coastal areas. This melting is happening already since 24,000 years ago, during that time enormous ice sheets, up to 3-4 km thick, covered lands like Scandinavia and Canada. Scientists have done measurements of this rising sea level using the coral reefs at Barbados that show a sea level rise of 120-130 meters since the start of the de-glaciation. Imagine this for a moment; England was not an island at that time. Currently, we see a global sea-level rise of 3 mm/year, however locally the rate of sea-level change can vary significantly. For example, at the coastlines of the Netherlands we observe a 2.3 mm/yr sea-level rise, whereas the center of Sweden and Finland has a 7.8 mm/yr sea-level drop. The cause of these particular variations is that not only the sea-level changes, but also the so...