Geomagnetism.org

We were recently asked to give a talk for science day at St Michaels & All Angels Primary school on the Wirral. So, armed with all our gadgets and activities and a fun presentation, a team of four rose to the task. We ran two sessions, one each for year 3 and year 4 (the children were 8 – 9 years old) which consisted of a 10 minute talk followed by two activities running simultaneously. During the talk the children’s engagement and interest was clear; everyone hand was up at some point to either ask a question or provide a little story that they realised was in some way related.

One activity saw the children drawing Earth’s magnetic field lines and play with bar magnets to reproduce the field with rotating metal strips; they then got to explore the effect of the bar magnets on portable magnetometer measurements. They learned how the direction of the bar magnet changed the reading’s polarity and how the distance from the sensor affected the strength of the signal.

The other activity was ‘Rock or Choc’ which is always well received; here we use magnetic susceptibility meters to measure chocolates that look identical to pebbles and real pebbles. The kids have fun trying to work out the difference first. Everyone had a turn and received a chocolate pebble prize. A brilliant and rewarding afternoon some very clever future scientists.

This January, the University of Liverpool Geomagnetism group attended Magnetic Interactions 2023 hosted by the University of Cambridge. It was a really nice to attend this historic conference in person after the difficulties over the last two years, and we thank St Andrews University in the efforts of virtually hosting during this time. We had a strong showing and presented new research on Earth’s magnetic field spanning the last 2 million years to over a 2.5 billion years ago.

The first day’s talks focussed on the solar system and rock magnetism. Our section, on  Paleomagnetism and geomagnetism, started on the second morning with the first talk from Liverpool by Simon Lloyd who provided a current overview of the age of Earth’s inner core and presented new intensity data from the Cambrian era (530 million years) highlighting the complex and often (extremely!) weak magnetic field during this time.

Brendan Cych then presented on his recently submitted study on paleointensity results from Hawaii compared to global datasets, and provided some insights ways to get better quality results from the experiments. Mary Murray asked how wobbly the Earth’s magnetic field was ~60 million years ago? She presented primary data of the variation in magnetic field directions around this time, which may be related changes in Earth’s core. Andy Biggin rounded off our session by presenting new research on the two huge antipodal blobs of hot material in the lowermost mantle and whether these leave signatures in the palaeomagnetic field? These ‘large low velocity provinces’

We also had a strong poster presence; Yael Engbers presented on a model of the long-term time-averaged geomagnetic field for the Miocene era (5 – 23 Ma), which showed remarkable similarities to the last 5 Myrs. Alex Tully demonstrated the effectiveness of a new criterion, ‘Ziggie’, for improving the reliability of palaeointensity plots. Finally, our former colleague, now global colleague Dan Thallner made it across from the university of Florida to present a poster on his latest models. Thank you to Cambridge for hosting such a great (and fun) event!

In late October 2022 Simon headed to Orkney, Scotland to meet up in with researchers from the University of Oslo. The plan was to undertake a week of fieldwork as part of a large project headed by Annique Van der Boon (former Liverpool PDRA). There is lots of incredible geology in Orkney, and we were there to sample several important rocks:

1) Devonian aged volcanic rocks; 390 Ma rhyolite and younger more mafic volcanics that are 378 Ma.

2) Two sets of dykes which are different in composition and age; Camptonite 302 Ma and Monchiquite 280-284 Ma.

We did find and sample all of these targets, but we had the most success with the Camptonite dykes. These are really important because of their age; they formed and acquired their magnetisation during the Kiaman superchron, which is a period where Earth’s magnetic field was stuck in reverse for more than 50 million years. It was in a state of reversed polarity (North pole had flipped to the South pole) from ~262 to 318 Ma. Understanding this phenomena is an important part of Earth Science and the measurements of magnetic field direction and strength that we perform on these rocks will tell us about the deep earth processes that would need to exist to create this behaviour. Check out the amazing ariel photographs of the geology of Orkney!

Congratulations to three of our PhD students, Yael, Dan and Simon, who celebrated receiving their doctorate today. All started and finished within a month of each other, and all were part of the DEEP project, ‘Determining Earth Evolution using Palaeomagnetism’. They produced some excellent research and publications during their time at Liverpool. Yael and Simon are staying on in PDRA positions whilst Dan is heading to Florida for a 3 year PDRA position in mantle core/ modelling. As you can see, at one point an old bewildered professor wondered into our shot (Oi! less of the old – Ed). A very enjoyable social evening hosted by Andy rounded the celebrations off perfectly.

Going to conferences is part of the job of most scientists. Conferences are the place to share your work, discuss (early) results of your research with other scientists, and meet a lot of old friends and new people. They are the places to go when you want to network, start collaborations, look for new jobs and be inspired. The European Geosciences Union organises a general assembly every year in Vienna, usually in April or May. After a few years as a geologist, I had still never been to ‘EGU’, as we call it, and I was very excited to go this year.

At conferences, scientists propose sessions beforehand, and other scientists can then choose sessions that align best with their research, and send in their work for a poster or oral presentation. EGU has a lot of good sessions on science communication and outreach, so we decided to submit an abstract on our stand ‘Magnetic to the Core’, that we had last year at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

I usually opt for presenting posters at conferences, as I prefer it to oral presentations in front of an audience. With a poster, you have the opportunity to really discuss your work in depth with people who drop by, and talking in front of audiences still makes me  quite nervous. However, this time I decided to go for an oral presentation, as I was feeling confident and enthusiastic about presenting our outreach work of last year.

But then… The world as we knew it changed, when the coronavirus hit everything and everyone. Suddenly a conference with 16,000 visitors from all over the world no longer seemed like such a great idea, and after a few weeks it was announced that EGU was no longer taking place in its usual shape. The organisers decided to still hold the conference, but then entirely virtual. With so many people, it would be difficult to do all the talks as virtual talks, so the format changed a bit.

All presenters can now upload files to the EGU website that can be discussed via a text-chat during the week of the conference. The great thing is that now, the conference is no longer just for scientists, but everyone can participate! I made our contribution as an interactive PDF, which will guide you through our stand at the exhibition last year. There are lots of links to click to videos and social media, so have a look here. If you have a Copernicus account, you can also leave comments on presentations to stimulate a scientific discussion.

Magnetic to the core was our stand at the famous Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in central London.

There were loads of exciting activities, cool things to see and learn, and friendly researchers to talk to. Best of all, it was completely free!

Visitors discovered what happens to compasses as they pulled a lever to make Earth’s magnetic field reverse!

Others learnt about our fascinating field work and took a selfie drilling rocks like a real palaeomagnetist!

A really popular activity involved learning about how rocks contain magnetic minerals and using this to find out whether pebbles we gave out were safe to eat!

Visitors also measured the magnetic records within real rocks and found out whether they formed at a time when Earth’s magnetic poles were flipped.

More information about Earth’s magnetic field

• Take our quiz (you will be given a link to answers at end!)
• 10 things you might not know about the Earth’s magnetic field
• Videos introducing Earth’s magnetic field and palaeomagnetic fieldwork
• Twitter @LivUniGeomag #magnetictothecore #licensetodrill
• Instagram @magnetictothecore
• Our research pages

On the 3rd of January 2019, 54 scientists arrived by car, train, and air to the University of Liverpool, with one thing on their mind: Magnetic Interactions. This rotating yearly event, now in its 3rd decade, brings scientists from the UK and Northern Europe together for 2 days of talks, posters, and networking over dinner.

The first day was focused on recent timescales and began with a tribute to Rod Wilson, the founder of the University of Liverpool Geomagnetism Laboratory, by the head of our laboratory, Prof Andy Biggin. Our first session covered the geophysics of the outer core: Geodynamo processes. Four fascinating talks covered both the actual motion of the outer core and its effects at the Earth surface. We then moved to the second session, in which models of the geomagnetic field were presented from four different perspectives. Immediately afterwards, out came the wine and up went the posters.

After hearing about everything from a new magnetometer system to new geodynamo models to new analysis programs on virtual posters, we reassembled at the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral for a 4-course buffet dinner paid for by our generous sponsors.

The second day expanded our discussion backwards in time and outward into space. We started with our own Ben Handford, who took us back in time to the Triassic and Permian period to discuss its low magnetic field strength. The next talks took us through Earth’s history and then, after some much needed coffee, took us to outer space, where we heard about everything from the Lunar dynamo to nanometer-scale iron grains.

Finally, we gave a tour of the laboratory to half of the delegation, and then we all dispersed, not just for lunch, but also with a renewed drive to continue our research.

– by Michael Grappone