Hi everyone!
I wanted the write a very short blog today, just to tell you all where I am going to be next week! Last year, around November and early December, I was in contact with Dr Timmons Erickson who works at the Johnson Space Center to talk about one of my thesis chapters. In this chapter, I want to figure out the temperature of melt that is produced when a meteorite or comet strikes the surface of a planet or moon. To do this, I am looking at the microstructure (the physical structure of a crystal not visible to the naked eye!) of a mineral known as zircon. Zircons are very strong and tough (extremely durable!) and are able to withstand extreme pressure and temperature conditions in the interior of our planet, such as the squeezing of Earth's tectonic plates or the rise of new mountain ranges. When a meteorite strikes the surface and melts rock, the zircon microstructure changes and leaves imprints (almost like when you leave your fingerprint on a glass window), which we can study using focused beams of electrons. Depending on the changes in the zircon microstructure we can learn about the temperature the melt was at when it formed. It sounds a lot better when I explain everything in person. I do plan to make a video or Instagram story tutorial explaining how I am studying the zircons and what the data is telling me about the temperature of melt produced by meteorite/comet impacts. Stay tuned for those videos :D
So going back to talking with Dr Timmons Erickson. I contacted him because he was a co-author on a 2017 paper that found a zircon from the Mistastin impact structure, located in Northern Labrador, Canada that recorded the highest temperature produced by a meteorite/comet impact event on Earth. He invited me to come to the Johnson Space Center in February and use some of the laboratory equipment to study the zircons I found in the same type of sample from the 2017 paper. I have been preparing for this trip since then, and tomorrow morning, I will be heading off to Detroit to fly down to Houston and I will be working with Dr Timmons Erickson until the 22nd of February! I will be keeping everyone updated every couple days or so while I am down there. If you want to know what I will be up to every day before I post again, you can follow me on Instagram at @gavin4science_94 :)
I plan to take a new Johnson Space Center/Houston photo to maybe replace the one of me in the Apollo sample vault in 2018 :D
See you guys next time!