Event name:Is Earth's Core Young at Heart? The search for inner core fornation using paleomagnetism and dynamo theory
Event time and place: Thursday December 7, 2023 Online Zoom
This presentation detailed information about the earth’s core, its magnetic field and what these pieces of information can tell us about the earth. The main points Dr.Peter Driscoll goes over are the basics of the Earth’s inner Core, the paleomagnetic rock record, and numerical dynamo modeling.Through these lenses they described the structure of the earth with the different layers from the inner core to the outer crust, as well as how it formed.They he also went over how magnetic records in rocks can show different things about earth's magnetic field in the past and as a result tells information about earth's core.He also goes over Dynamo Modeling, showing how fluid dynamos work, as well as showing a numerical dynamo model for the earth which leads to 3D dynamo model predictions.These models show that the earth's magnetism essentially allow for a window into the insides of the earth and how it has changed over time.He also discussed how these predictions lined up with what data they currently had to test the validity of them.
I did find the main points of the presentation convincing. The way that Dr.Driscoll explained everything was very easy to understand and related to the topic of analyzing rock records like how Dr.Merck and Dr.Holtz went over in CPSG100.Through analyzing paleomagnetic rock records we are able to tell the possible conditions of the earth’s core during past time periods, though they paint a rather murky picture as he described it. This method also being used to tell features about the climate in the past made that point relatable in terms of prior information that I had on the subject.Also his explanation of dynamo modeling was easy enough for someone (me) who had never heard of it to understand.He first used the example of a rotating tank with conducting fluid, then related it to the earth itself showing how those basic conditions can be applied to the earth.He then showed how the 3D dynamo model predictions were similar to his past predictions, but wasn’t quite as accurate to what the data showed. Overall the presentation was fairly interesting, and was relevant to what we had learned in CPSG100. The way that Dr.Driscoll explained and broke down how analyzing earth’s core and magnetism can tell us different things about the planet's history was friendly enough to me.