Meteorites and magnetism in comics!
To make it easier to communicate her research subject, a researcher from the IPGP and MIT has teamed up with an illustrator, herself a geophysicist, to create a comic strip that takes readers on a journey from the Sahara to Mars, via the inside of rocks! This initiative, funded as part of a European project under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme and now available online, will be presented at the European Geosciences Union Congress in Vienna on 17 April.
Somewhere in the vast landscape of the Sahara desert, a man stumbles upon an unusual kind of rock. After being passed around from dealers to collectors, the rock finds itself in a research laboratory. The rock is confused and does not remember where it comes from. A researcher invites the rock to a space journey, leading it back to its origins, planet Mars, before bringing it back to the lab to study it.
Meteors and meteorites have always fascinated people, but a particular aspect of these space rocks remains enigmatic to most people: their magnetic records. This comic illustrates how planetary magnetic fields are generated, how rocks record them and how the magnetic record of rocks helps scientists decipher how planets form and evolve over time. The comic also aims at spreading an important message: meteorites should not be exposed to magnets. Doing so comes at the risk of erasing billion years old records of geological history.
> More about the project “Deciphering the magnetic record of planetary rocks using spacecraft and laboratory measurements“
Authors:
• Foteini Vervelidou is a planetary scientist interested in deciphering the information about the formation and evolution of terrestrial bodies, like Earth and Mars, stored in the magnetic record of their rocks. Her project "Deciphering the magnetic record of planetary rocks using spacecraft and laboratory measurements" has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie, and was carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and at Institut de physique du globe de Paris, France.
• Sabrina Sanchez is a scientist by formation and illustrator by passion. Her focus now lies on illustration, comics, and science outreach. This is her inaugural comics project and Sabrina is actively involved in developing further educational and ludic initiatives. Her artistic endeavors can be explored online under the handle @une.sabrina on Instagram.
