After describing all the contradictions associated with the current Plate Tectonics theory, this paper proposes a model where a single cause can explain all geophysical and geological phenomena. The source of the Earth's activity lies in the difference of the angular velocities of the mantle and of the solid inner core. The friction between both spheres infers heat, which is the cause of the melted iron which constitutes most of the liquid outer core, as well as the source of the global heat flow. The solid inner core angular velocity is supposed to remain steady, while the mantle angular velocity depends on gyroscopic forces (involving acceleration) and slowing down due to external attractions and, principally the motions of mantle plates 2900 km thick. The variations of the geomagnetic field are therefore the direct consequence of the variations of the angular velocity of the mantle relative to that of the inner core. As a result, the biological and tectonic evolutions during geological times are due to those phenomena. So, the limits of eras coincide exactly with the passage to zero of the geomagnetic field. Here we show that cycles of about 230-250 millions years, which exhibit the correlation between the mantle angular velocity variations, the geomagnetic variations, and therefore the climate, allow us to predict future events : the current global warming which parallels the Earth's magnetic field decrease.
Scientific curiosity, exploration of georesources and environmental concerns are pushing the geoscientific research community toward subsurface investigations of ever-increasing complexity. This review explores various approaches to formulate and solve inverse problems in ways that effectively integrate geological concepts with geophysical and hydrogeological data. Modern geostatistical simulation algorithms can produce multiple subsurface realizations that are in agreement with conceptual geological models and statistical rock physics can be used to map these realizations into physical proper…
Mapping topographic, geophysical and gravimetry data of Pakistan -- a contribution to geological understanding of Sulaiman Fold Belt and Muslim Bagh Ophiolite Complex
Université Libre de Bruxelles, École polytechnique de Bruxelles (Brussels Faculty of Engineering)（布鲁塞尔自由大学，布鲁塞尔理工学院）
Regional characterization of the continental crust has classically been performed through either geologic mapping, geochemical sampling, or geophysical surveys. Rarely are these techniques fully integrated, due to limits of data coverage, quality, and/or incompatible datasets. We combine geologic observations, geochemical sampling, and geophysical surveys to create a coherent 3-D geologic model of a 50 x 50 km upper crustal region surrounding the SNOLAB underground physics laboratory in Canada, which includes the Southern Province, the Superior Province, the Sudbury Structure and the Grenville…
In a previous paper, we introduced a framework for carrying out petrophysically and geologically guided geophysical inversions. In that framework, petrophysical and geological information is modelled with a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM). In the inversion, the GMM serves as a prior for the geophysical model. The formulation was confined to problems in which a single physical property model was sought, with a single geophysical dataset. In this paper, we extend that framework to jointly invert multiple geophysical datasets that depend on multiple physical properties. The petrophysical and geologi…
We consider lithological tomography in which the posterior distribution of (hydro)geological parameters of interest is inferred from geophysical data by treating the intermediate geophysical properties as latent variables. In such a latent variable model, one needs to estimate the intractable likelihood of the (hydro)geological parameters given the geophysical data. The pseudo-marginal method is an adaptation of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm in which an unbiased approximation of this likelihood is obtained by Monte Carlo averaging over samples from, in this setting, the noisy petrophysical…
The number of active volcanoes and its latitudinal extent is likely to be related to the magnitude of internal heat in rocky planets. A critical value of internal heat may require in these planets to sustain volcanic activity and the decline of volcanic activity since their formation of these planets is inferred to be governed by radioactive decay laws. We find that major volcanic activity in Mars, Moon, Mercury and Venus has ceased when their respective surface heat flux values are within ten percentage of the current surface heat flux value of Earth. The reduction in spatial extent of recent…
NORCE Norwegian Research Centre（NORCE挪威研究中心）；Heriot-Watt University（赫瑞-瓦特大学）
Geosteering of wells requires fast interpretation of geophysical logs, which is a non-unique inverse problem. Current work presents a proof-of-concept approach to multi-modal probabilistic inversion of logs using a single evaluation of an artificial deep neural network (DNN). A mixture density DNN (MDN) is trained using the "multiple-trajectory-prediction" (MTP) loss functions, which avoids mode collapse typical for traditional MDNs, and allows multi-modal prediction ahead of data. The proposed approach is verified on the real-time stratigraphic inversion of gamma-ray logs. The multi-modal pre…
When applying the Earth's natural pulse electromagnetic fields to geophysical prospecting one should take into account characteristics of their spatial and temporal variations. ENPEMF is known to include both pulses attributed to atmospheric thunderstorms and pulses generated in the lithosphere by mechanic-to-electric energy conversion in rocks. It is evident that the most valuable information on the geophysical structure of a certain area is obviously contained in pulses originated from this area. This article covers a method of recording spatial variations of the Earth's natural pulse electr…
While many geological and geophysical processes such as the melting of icecaps, the magnetic expression of bodies emplaced in the Earth's crust, or the surface displacement remaining after large earthquakes are spatially localized, many of these naturally admit spectral representations, or they may need to be extracted from data collected globally, e.g. by satellites that circumnavigate the Earth. Wavelets are often used to study such nonstationary processes. On the sphere, however, many of the known constructions are somewhat limited. And in particular, the notion of `dilation' is hard to rec…
Komatiites are fascinating volcanic rocks. They are among the most ancient lavas of the Earth following the 3.8 Ga pillow basalts at Isua and they represent some of the oldest ultramafic magmatic rocks preserved in the Earth's crust at 3.5 Ga. This fact, linked to their particular features (high magnesium content, high melting temperatures, low dynamic viscosities, etc.), has attracted the community of geoscientists since their discovery in the early sixties, who have tried to determine their origin and understand their meaning in the context of the terrestrial mantle evolution. In addition, i…
In a first approximation, the Earth's interior has an isotropic structure with a spherical symmetry. Over the last decades the geophysical observations have revealed, at different spatial scales, the existence of several perturbations from this basic structure. In this paper we discuss the hemispheric perturbations induced to this basic structure if the inner core is displaced from the center of mass of the Earth. Using numerical simulations of the observed hemispheric asymmetry of the seismic waves traveling through the upper inner core, with faster arrival times and higher attenuation in the…
Google Earth (GE) has become a powerful tool for geological modeling and visualization. An interesting and useful feature of GE, Google Street View, can allow the GE users to view geological structure such as layers of rock masses at a field site. In this paper, we introduce a practical solution for building 3D geological models for rock masses based on the data acquired by use with GE. A real study case at Haut-Barr, France is presented to demonstrate our solution. We first locate the position of Haut-Barr in GE, and then determine the shape and scale of the rock masses in the study area, and…
Research on the earthquake occurrences using a statistical methodology based on point processes has mainly focused on the data featuring earthquake catalogs which ignores the effect of environmental variables. In this paper, we introduce inhomogeneous versions of the Cox process models which are able to quantify the effect of geological factors such as subduction zone, fault, and volcano on the major earthquake distribution in Sulawesi and Maluku, Indonesia. In particular, we compare Thomas, Cauchy, variance-Gamma, and log-Gaussian Cox models and consider parametric intensity and pair correlat…
Recently, I showed that the "standard model" of solar system formation is wrong,yielding the contradiction of terrestrial planets having insufficiently massive cores, and showed instead the consistency of Eucken's 1944 concept of planets raining out in the central regions of hot, gaseous protoplanets. Planets generally consist of concentric shells of matter, but there has been no adequate geophysical explanation to account for the Earth's non-contiguous crustal continental rock layer, except by assuming that the Earth in the distant past was smaller and subsequently expanded. Here, I show that…
Geometrical properties of landscapes result from the geological processes that have acted through time. The quantitative analysis of natural relief represents an objective form of aiding in the visual interpretation of landscapes, as studies on coastlines, river networks, and global topography, have shown. Still, an open question is whether a clear relationship between the quantitative properties of landscapes and the dominant geomorphologic processes that originate them can be established. In this contribution, we show that the geometry of topographic isolines is an appropriate observable to …
The geoid is the true physical figure of the Earth, a particular equipotential surface of the gravity field of the Earth that accounts for the effect of all subsurface density variations. Its shape approximates best (in the sense of least squares) the mean level of oceans, but the geoid is more difficult to determine over continents. Satellite missions carry out distance measurements and derive the gravity field to provide geoid maps over the entire globe. However, they require calibration and extensive computations including integration, which is a non-unique operation. Here we propose a dire…
Debate continues on the amount and distribution of radioactive heat producing elements (i.e., U, Th, and K) in the Earth, with estimates for mantle heat production varying by an order of magnitude. Constraints on the bulk-silicate Earth's (BSE) radiogenic power also places constraints on overall BSE composition. Geoneutrino detection is a direct measure of the Earth's decay rate of Th and U. The geoneutrino signal has contributions from the local ($\sim$40$\%$) and global ($\sim$35$\%$) continental lithosphere and the underlying inaccessible mantle ($\sim$25$\%$). Geophysical models are combin…
The Earth's surface is composed of a staggering diversity of particulate-fluid mixtures: dry to wet, dilute to dense, colloidal to granular, and attractive to repulsive particles. This material variety is matched by the range of relevant stresses and strain rates, from laminar to turbulent flows, and steady to intermittent forcing, leading to anything from rapid and catastrophic landslides to the slow relaxation of soil and rocks over geologic timescales. Geophysical flows sculpt landscapes, but also threaten human lives and infrastructure. From a physics point of view, virtually all Earth and…
The possibility of an increasing gravitational constant $G$ and its implication on the Earth's history are discussed. The model is consistent with geophysical and astronomical data. The number of days in early epochs predicted by the model is in agreement with those obtained from fossil corals. The model predicts that the Earth was initially cold and is gradually heating up during its course of evolution. The exact law for the variation of $G$ is still to be obtained from the variation of the Earth's parameters with cosmic expansion.
Knowledge of the amount and distribution of radiogenic heating in the mantle is crucial for understanding the dynamics of the Earth, including its thermal evolution, the style and planform of mantle convection, and the energetics of the core. Although the flux of heat from the surface of the planet is robustly estimated, the contributions of radiogenic heating and secular cooling remain poorly defined. Constraining the amount of heat-producing elements in the Earth will provide clues to understanding nebula condensation and planetary formation processes in early Solar System. Mantle radioactiv…
Inverse analysis has been utilized to understand unknown underground geological properties by matching the observational data with simulators. To overcome the underconstrained nature of inverse problems and achieve good performance, an approach is presented with embedded physics and a technique known as automatic differentiation. We use a physics-embedded generative model, which takes statistically simple parameters as input and outputs subsurface properties (e.g., permeability or P-wave velocity), that embeds physical knowledge of the subsurface properties into inverse analysis and improves i…
The existing high technology laser-beam detectors of gravitational waves may find very useful applications in an unexpected area - geophysics. To make possible the detection of weak gravitational waves in the region of high frequencies of astrophysical interest, ~ 30 - 10^3 Hz, control systems of laser interferometers must permanently monitor, record and compensate much larger external interventions that take place in the region of low frequencies of geophysical interest, ~ 10^{-5} - 3 X 10^{-3} Hz. Such phenomena as tidal perturbations of land and gravity, normal mode oscillations of Earth, o…
A strategy is presented to incorporate prior information from conceptual geological models in probabilistic inversion of geophysical data. The conceptual geological models are represented by multiple-point statistics training images (TIs) featuring the expected lithological units and structural patterns. Information from an ensemble of TI realizations is used in two different ways. First, dominant modes are identified by analysis of the frequency content in the realizations, which drastically reduces the model parameter space in the frequency-amplitude domain. Second, the distributions of glob…
The UK and Ireland Geophysical Array -- Concept and Design
University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；University of East Anglia（东英吉利大学）；Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies（都柏林高等研究院）；British Geological Survey（英国地质调查局）；University of Aberdeen（阿伯丁大学）；University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Cardiff University（卡迪夫大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；Washington University in St. Louis, USA（美国圣路易斯华盛顿大学）；Geological Survey of Norway（挪威地质调查局）；AWE Blacknest（英国原子武器研究所布莱克内斯特设施）；Royal Observatory of Belgium（比利时皇家天文台）；University College Dublin（都柏林大学学院）；Northumbria University（诺森比亚大学）；TNO, Netherland（荷兰应用科学研究组织）；Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), The Netherlands（荷兰皇家气象研究所）；Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, Germany（德国波茨坦地球科学研究中心）；Sproule ERCE（斯普鲁尔环境资源咨询公司）；University of Leeds（利兹大学）；INGV, Italy（意大利国家地球物理和火山学研究所）；Newcastle University（纽卡斯尔大学）；University of Liverpool（利物浦大学）；University of Leicester（莱斯特大学）；Durham University（杜伦大学）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
Geo-neutrinos, electron antineutrinos from natural radioactive decays inside the Earth, bring to the surface unique information about our planet. The new techniques in neutrino detection opened a door into a completely new inter-disciplinary field of Neutrino Geoscience. We give here a broad geological introduction highlighting the points where the geo-neutrino measurements can give substantial new insights. The status-of-art of this field is overviewed, including a description of the latest experimental results from KamLAND and Borexino experiments and their first geological implications. We …
Star compositions are essential for examining densities and compositional ranges of rocky exoplanets, testing their similarity to Earth. Stellar elemental abundances and planetary orbital data show that of the ~5000 known minerals, exoplanetary silicate mantles will contain mostly olivine, orthopyroxene, and clinopyroxene, $\pm$ quartz, and magnesiuwustite at the extremes; wholly exotic mineralogies are likely absent. Understanding these exotic geological systems requires a better marriage of geological insights to astronomical data. The study of exoplanets is like a mirror, reflecting our inc…
Google Earth (GE) has become a powerful tool for geological, geophysical and geographical modeling; yet GE can be accepted to acquire elevation data of terrain. In this paper, we present a real study case of building the discrete surface model (DSM) at Haut-Barr Castle in France based on the elevation data of terrain points extracted from GE using the COM API. We first locate the position of Haut-Barr Castle and determine the region of the study area, then extract elevation data of terrain at Haut-Barr, and thirdly create a planar triangular mesh that covers the study area and finally generate…
The timeline of the Earth's history reveals quasi-periodicity of the geological record over the last 542 Myr, on timescales close, in the order of magnitude, to 1 Myr. What is the origin of this quasi-periodicity? What is the nature of the global events that define the boundaries of the geological time scale? I propose that a single mechanism is responsible for all three types of such events: mass extinctions, geomagnetic polarity reversals, and sea-level fluctuations. The mechanism is fast, and involves a significant energy release. The mechanism is unlikely to have astronomical causes, both …
Recent experiments elucidated the structure and function of the cyanobacterial circadian oscillator, which is driven by sunlight intensity variation and therefore by Earth's rotation. It is known that cyanobacteria appeared about 3.5 billion years ago and that Earth's rotational speed is continuously decreasing because of tidal friction. What is the effect of the continuous slowdown of Earth's rotation on the operation of the cyanobacterial oscillator? To answer this question we derived the oscillator's equation of motion directly from experimental data, coupled it with Earth's rotation and co…
Understanding the electronic transport properties of iron under high temperatures and pressures is essential for constraining geophysical processes. The difficulty of reliably measuring these properties under Earth-core conditions calls for sophisticated theoretical methods that can support diagnostics. We present results of the electrical conductivity within the pressure and temperature ranges found in Earth's core from simulating microscopic Ohm's law using time-dependent density functional theory. Our predictions provide a new perspective on resolving discrepancies in recent experiments.
Planetary rotation organizes fluid motions into coherent, long-lived swirls, known as large-scale vortices (LSVs), which play an important role in the dynamics and long-term evolution of geophysical and astrophysical fluids. Here, using direct numerical simulations, we show that LSVs in rapidly rotating mixed convective and stably stratified fluids, which approximates the two-layer, turbulent-stratified dynamics of many geophysical and astrophysical fluids, have a generic shape and that their size can be predicted. We show that LSVs emerge in the convection zone from upscale energy transfers a…
The geology of Earth and super-Earth sized planets will, in many cases, only be observable via their atmospheres. Here, we investigate secondary volcanic atmospheres as a key base case of how atmospheres may reflect planetary geochemistry. We couple volcanic outgassing with atmospheric chemistry models to simulate the growth of C-O-H-S-N atmospheres in thermochemical equilibrium, focusing on what information about a planet's mantle fO$_2$ and bulk silicate H/C ratio could be determined by atmospheric observation. 800K volcanic atmospheres develop distinct compositional groups as the mantle fO$…
Geophysical and atmospheric implications of $f$O$_{2}$-dependent melting on rocky exoplanets
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所）；Netherlands eScience Center（荷兰e科学中心）；Interuniversity Micro Electronics Centre（跨大学微电子中心）；Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院地球与行星科学系地球化学与岩石学研究所）；Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学天文学研究所）
Remarkable global correlations exist between geometrical features of terrestrial surface on the Earth, current mean sea level and its geological internal processes whose origins have remained an essential goal in the Earth sciences. Theoretical modeling of the ubiquitous self-similar fractal patterns observed on the Earth and their underlying rules is indeed of great importance. Here I present a percolation description of the global topography of the Earth in which the present mean sea level is automatically singled out as a critical level in the model. This finding elucidates the origins of t…
Free core nutation (FCN) is the main factor that limits the accuracy of the modeling of the motion of Earth's rotational axis in the celestial coordinate system. Several FCN models have been proposed. A comparative analysis is made of the known models including the model proposed by the author. The use of the FCN model is shown to substantially increase the accuracy of the modeling of Earth's rotation. Furthermore, the FCN component extracted from the observed motion of Earth's rotational axis is an important source for the study of the shape and rotation of the Earth's core. A comparison of d…
We show that a simple, modified version of the Magnetorotational Instability (MRI) can develop in the outer liquid core of the Earth, in the presence of a background shear. It requires either thermal wind, or a primary instability, such as convection, to drive a weak differential rotation within the core. The force balance in the Earth's core is very unlike classical astrophysical applications of the MRI (such as gaseous disks around stars). Here, the weak differential rotation in the Earth core yields an instability by its constructive interaction with the planet's much larger rotation rate. …
Knowledge of the composition of the Earth's interior is highly relevant to many geophysical and geochemical problems. Neutrino oscillations are modified in a non-trivial way by the matter effects and can provide valuable and unique information not only on the density but also on the chemical and isotopic composition of the deep regions of the planet. In this paper, we re-examine the possibility of performing an oscillation tomography of the Earth with atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos to obtain information on the composition and density of the outer core and the mantle, complementary to …
