Catherine Chauvel awarded ERC Advanced Grant 2018
Publication date: 28/03/2019
Awards and Distinctions, Institute Life, Press, Research
Related teams :
Cosmochemistry, Astrophysics and Experimental Geophysics (CAGE)
Catherine Chauvel, CNRS research director at the Institut de Physique de Globe de Paris, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for her project SHRED: Survival of Hadean Remnants in a Dynamic mantle.
Summary of his project:
Plate tectonics governs the formation and destruction of the crust and introduces surface materials into the Earth’s depths, while mantle convection mixes materials of different origins, erasing their diversity.
Geochemical heterogeneities in modern volcanic rocks show that remnants from the Hadean period (4.5 Ga) have survived in the mantle. Their existence raises some key questions: What is the nature of the material bearing these strange geochemical signatures? How can Hadaean material survive in a convecting mantle? What physical properties do these materials have when they are entrained in hot-spot volcanism? Are Hadaean relics stored in the deep mantle in the megastructures revealed by seismologists? Answering these questions is the ambitious aim of the project. SHRED will define the location, dimensions, structure, physical nature and composition of the ‘storage site’ for ancient materials and will constrain the conditions necessary for their sampling by hot spots.
Find out more about the project:
