Geology Bites: An Earth and Planetary Science Podcast

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Evan Smith on Diamonds from the Deep Mantle

We have only a tantalizingly small number of sources of information about the Earth’s deep mantle. One of these comes from the rare diamonds that form at depths of about 650 km and make their way up to the base of the lithosphere, and then later to the surface via rare volcanic eruptions of kimberlite magma. In the podcast, Evan Smith talks about a new class of large gem-quality deep-mantle diamonds that he and his coworkers discovered in 2016. Inclusions within these diamonds serve as messenger capsules from the deep mantle. They show an unmistakable genetic link to subducted oceanic slabs, and thus give us clues as to what happens to subducted slabs as the pass through the lower mantle transition zone. Evan Smith is a Senior Research Scientist at the Gemological Institute of America, New York. Illustrations and full transcript: https://geologybites.com/evan-smith

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  Tony Watts on the Mechanics of Tectonic Plates

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  Torgeir Andersen on Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism

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  Brian Wernicke on Lithospheric Extension and the Basin and Range Province

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  Bernhard Steinberger on Whether Hotspots Are Fixed

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  Sonia Tikoo on the Moon's Magnetic Field

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  Steve Brusatte on the Dinosaurs That Survived the Asteroid

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  Alec Brenner on When Tectonic Plates First Moved

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  Steve Jacobsen on Materials in Extreme Environments

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  Esther Sumner on Turbidity Currents

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  Hal Levison on the Mission to Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids

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  Sara Pruss on the First Reef Builders

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  Michael Manga on Wet Eruptions

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  Carina Hoorn on the Evolution of the Amazon Basin

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  Anat Shahar on What Makes a Planet Habitable

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  Keith Klepeis on How Plutons Form

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  Tom Herring on High-Precision Geodesy