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Danish Research Center To Explore Mysteries of Earth's Interior

Posted by samzenpus on from the jules-verne-approved dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The DanSeis Centre at the University of Copenhagen has just received a grant of more than €3 million from the Danish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Higher Education to investigate and tackle one of geoscience's great mysteries: do mantle plumes, hypothetically buoyant regions of heated mantle material rising towards the earth's surface, actually exist?"

5 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Great News by guttentag · · Score: 4, Funny

    I will be watching this closely, as I have often wondered what on Earth is at the center of a Danish.

  2. What "new methods and instruments" ? by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the article, it is stated that

    "Using new methods and instruments, we can take geologic measurements much deeper within the Earth than before. Now, down to 500 and 1000 kilometers! Methods in current use, by the oil industry among others, provide information for areas down to between 6 and 10 kilometers," explains Professor Thybo.

    If the multi-trillion-dollar oil industry can only make geologic measurements to a depth of 6 to 10 kilometers, what make you think a research program that cost 3 million euro can measure down to 500 or even 100 kilometers?

    Just what kind of "new methods" and "instruments" are they going to deploy??

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:What "new methods and instruments" ? by Rakshasa-sensei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Also they aren't out to drill for oil at 500-1000 km depths.

  3. What about the discontinuity of gravity? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why is the force of gravity at the core zero?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earth-G-force.png
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slice_earth.svg

    And why the hell is there a Gutenberg discontinuity where gravity increases the closer you get, then drops down to zero?
    i.e.
    The Gutenberg Discontinuity, is the boundary, as detected by changes in seismic waves, between the Earth's lower mantle and the outer core about 1800 miles below the surface. It is also called the core-mantle boundary.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovi%C4%8Di%C4%87_discontinuity

    1. Re:What about the discontinuity of gravity? by jlar · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Why is the force of gravity at the core zero?"

      Because the integral of the forces acting on some mass at the center of the Earth is zero. Or to put it differently: You are being pulled by (approximately) equal forces in all directions.