Geophysics
We show that a recently introduced class of electromagnetic composite particles can explain some discrepancies in observations involving heat and helium released from the earth. Energy release during the formation of the composites and…
International Seismic Safety Organization (ISSO) has been formed to promote public safety by being prepared for the largest potential events which can happen at any time, rather than for certain probable events which have been exceeded in…
Using 9-sets of different laboratory earthquake tests, we examined the nature of cracking under true triaxial stress conditions in the lithosphere . We found that 3D stress state can induce oblique nucleation of many fractures, forming…
New mechanism of imbalance between magma column and fluid volume, accumulated in the magmatic system, is considered as a driving force of the volcanic eruption. Conditions of eruption based on this mechanism are used to explain main…
The recovery phase of the largest storms ever recorded has been studied. These events provide an extraordinary opportunity for two goals: (1) to validate the hyperbolic model by Aguado et al. [2010] for the recovery phase after disturbances…
A semiconductor model of rocks is shown to describe unipolar magnetic pulses, a phenomenon that has been observed prior to earthquakes. These pulses are observable because their extremely long wavelength allows them to pass through the…
The Victor Unit of the Ivishak Formation in the Prudhoe Bay Oilfield is characterized by high net-to-gross fluvial sandstones and conglomerates. The highest permeability is found within sets of cross-strata of open-framework conglomerate…
The objective of this work is a physical prediction of such soil shrinkage anisotropy characteristics as variation with drying of (i) different sample/layer sizes and (ii) the shrinkage geometry factor. With that, a new presentation of the…
We present the first successful 81Kr-Kr radiometric dating of ancient polar ice. Krypton was extracted from the air bubbles in four ~350 kg polar ice samples from Taylor Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, and dated using Atom…
Recent developments in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have enabled the recovery of large quantities of natural gas and oil from old, low permeability shales. These developments include a change from low-volume, high-viscosity fluid…
The subject of this work is the modification and specification of an approach to detail the estimation of soil crack network characteristics. The modification aims at accounting for the corrected soil crack volume based on the corrected…
We report results of 3D Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations aiming at investigating the role of the boundary vibration in inducing frictional weakening in sheared granular layers. We study the role of different vibration amplitudes…
We present the current status of geo-neutrino measurements and their implications for radiogenic heating in the mantle. Earth models predict different levels of radiogenic heating and, therefore, different geo-neutrino fluxes from the…
Water retention is one of the key soil characteristics. Available models of soil water retention relate to the curve-fitting type. The objective of this work is to suggest a physical model of water retention (drying branch) for soils with a…
The objective of this work is to derive the soil water retention from the soil structure without curve-fitting and only using the physical parameters found irrespective of an experimental retention curve. Two key points underlie the work:…
The onset of frictional instabilities, e.g. earthquakes nucleation, is intimately related to velocity-weakening friction, in which the frictional resistance of interfaces decreases with increasing slip velocity. While this frictional…
Physical understanding of the links between soil swelling, texture, structure, cracking, and sample size is of great interest for the physical understanding of many processes in the soil-air-water system and for applications in civil,…
Recently some stone structures covering the harraat of the Syrian desert had been investigated using satellite imagery (arXiv:1106.4665). Dispersed in an arid landscape, they were probably made during the Neolithic period. Some of these…
A recent model showed how a clay shrinkage curve is step-by-step transformed into the shrinkage curve of an aggregated soil at any clay content if it is measured on samples so small that cracks do not occur at shrinkage. Such a shrinkage…
It is shown that the Magnetotelluric (MT) impedance tensor admits an anti-symmetric generalized eigenvalue - eigenstate decomposition consistent with the anti-symmetry of electric and magnetic fields referred to the same coordinate frame:…