Lovely cumulate textured Mare basalt collected during the Apollo 12 mission to the Moon for #ThinSectionThursday - one of several being studied by an undergraduate dissertation student at TCD 🚀 🌕 🪨

Visiting @cat17.bsky.social at Bayerisches Geoinstitut where she is doing high pressure mantle - melt reaction experiments. This one is running today 🤞🤞

Escaped Dublin for fieldwork - Dani and Jack sampling Carboniferous volcanics on the Beara peninsula for Dani's PhD project.

We're in Yellowknife (Northwest Territories, Canada) for the kimberlite conference. They like their geology here.

Its been a while since we last analysed tephra in the TCD laser ablation lab - look at these lovelies from an IODP core off Nova Scotia. The vesicles show as dips in counts in the raw data as we ablate through.

View from Dublin, the firefox wandered south tonight

Excellent response to the call for abstracts to mantle sessions at EMC2024 in Dublin - 30 talks - Its not too late to join us, the early bird registration and abstract submission deadlines have been extended to 19th April. Go to www.emc-2024.org to see sessions and keynotes.

Thinking of attending EMC 2024 in Dublin? Consider submitting an abstract to our session on “Reactions in the upper mantle” or indeed any of the other sessions. Abstracts submission (deadline 22 March) & registration (early deadline 3 March) here:

emc-2024.org/registration/

Its snowing! and I am a gleeful child for it. The TCD campus looks beautiful. To my PhD students - take the day off and enjoy while it lasts.

Cat Melai (cat17.bsky.social) and I are happy to announce our session "All change: subsolidus, melting, volatile and redox reactions in the upper mantle" at the 2024 European Mineralogical Conference, Dublin (18-23 August). Keynote speaker Sonja Aulbach. Abstract deadline 22nd March:

emc-2024.org

Thanks to @gernon.bsky.social for joining TCD Geology and the Irish Mantle Group for his talk on “Rift induced disruption of cratonic keels drives kimberlite volcanism”. Very interested in the drivers for, and magnitude of, evolution in the thickness and lateral extent of the cratonic lithosphere.

Congratulations to Dr Lucy Blennerhassett who passed her PhD viva today at TCD, it has been a pleasure working with you. Thanks also to examiners Gill Plunkett and Robbie Goodhue.

We are trying to build a mantle research group in Ireland, many thanks to Nicolas Celli and Emma Chambers at DIAS for hosting our third meeting, on seismic tomography and state of the lithosphere. Next event - seminar by @gernon.bsky.social at TCD on 24th November