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In a quest to make concrete more durable and sustainable, a UC Berkeley-led team of geologists and engineers has found inspiration in the ancient Romans, whose massive concrete structures have withstood the elements for more than 2,000 years.
Tag: geology
Salamander helps rewrite geologic history of Central & South America
March 20, 2013:
UC Berkeley’s David Wake and colleague Kathryn Elmer at the University of Glasgow analyzed the genetic variability of salamanders that had moved from Central to South America and concluded that they could not have diversified within the 3 million years geologists think the two continents have been connected. They think the Panamanian land bridge formed 23 million years ago.
UC Berkeley junior hot on the trail of Sutter’s Mill meteorites
May 17, 2012:
When a fireball exploded over California’s Gold Country on April 22, Cal geology major Jason Utas wrapped up his final exam and headed to Sutter’s Mill with a dozen of his friends to look for fragments. Four of them, including Utas, found small pieces of a rare carbonaceous chondrite, a type of meteorite that may have carried the building blocks of life to Earth billions of years ago.
Novel technique reveals how glaciers sculpted their valleys
March 31, 2011:
Using a new technique called thermochronometry, UC Berkeley and Berkeley Geochronology Center scientists have detailed the 2.5 million year history of the beautiful and distinctive U-shaped glacial valleys of Fiordland National Park in New Zealand.
North American continent is a layer cake, scientists discover
August 25, 2010:
The North American continent is not one thick, rigid slab, but a layer cake of ancient, 3 billion-year-old rock on top of much newer material probably less than 1 billion years old, according to a new study by UC Berkeley seismologists. The new findings by Barbara Romanowicz and Huaiyu Yuan also indicate that the continent grew by addition of rock from subducting ocean floor, not by mantle plume upwelling from below.
Strongest evidence to date links exploration well to Lusi mud volcano
February 11, 2010:
New data provide the strongest evidence to date that the world’s biggest mud volcano, which killed 13 people in 2006 and so far has displaced 30,000 people in East Java, Indonesia, was not caused by an earthquake, according to an international scientific team that includes researchers from Durham University and the UC Berkeley.
