An international team of 27 geologists will gather
this weekend at Johns Hopkins to plan its January
expedition to the windswept, arid Dry Valleys of Antarctica
to collect and analyze thousands of pounds of rocks that
will ultimately help scientists learn more about how the
Earth's crust was formed.
The expedition, headed by Bruce Marsh, professor in
the Morton K. Blaustein Department of
Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins, is being
funded by a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant
aimed at bringing together experts from disparate
geological fields to delve further into Marsh's
controversial theory that one of geology's most widely
accepted teachings — that the Earth's outer layer
formed when crystal-free molten rock called magma oozed to
the surface from giant, subterranean chambers — is
fundamentally flawed. Instead, Marsh posits that our
planet's internal plumbing comprises a system of smaller,
vertical columns of interconnected sheetlike chambers that
transport "magmatic mush" replete with crystals previously
formed and constantly recycled.
The trip will mark the seventh time that Marsh has
traveled to the continent under the terms of an NSF grant
to further explore the systems that transport magma to the
Earth's crust. Though his research has taken him to
Iceland, Africa, the Aleutians, Canada and the ridges of
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Dry Valleys of
Antarctica is the only known place on the planet that
offers a so-called "walk-in" view of geologic history.
"Nowhere else on Earth that we know of is the plumbing
system exposed in quite this way," said Adam Simon, a
postdoctoral fellow in Earth and Planetary Sciences and the
program administrator for Marsh's NSF grant. "In
Antarctica, a person can stand on shelves of solidified
lava that were deposited by magmatic activity 180 million
years ago. You can then walk a ways and see the plumbing
system through which the magma ascended from its source to
its final resting place on the Earth's surface. Other
scientists study smaller areas and infer what went on as a
whole. We don't have to. In the Dry Valleys, bands of magma
are frozen in time in spectacular cliffs. We can see the
whole system in all of its beauty, fully exposed and ready
for study."
The geologists joining Marsh and Simon on this
expedition — from universities throughout the United
States, Canada and the United Kingdom — are experts
in one of four areas: magma dynamics, igneous layering,
geochemistry and the mechanics of intrusions. The Oct.
23-25 conference is not only an opportunity for these
diverse individuals to meet and to "gel" as a group (after
all, they will be living in close quarters for three weeks
in the Dry Valleys and at Antarctica's McMurdo Station) but
also to formulate a focused plan for their individual and
collective studies.
The conference also is a chance for participants to
try on specialized survival gear designed and manufactured
by Raytheon Polar Services and to learn about the practical
training they will receive once they are on-site. The
training covers everything from snow-blindness avoidance
and methods of managing altitude sickness to how to
construct an emergency igloo.
"This is probably the first time in the history of
geology that experts in so many areas will come together to
bring their disparate expertise and knowledge to bear
collectively," Marsh said. "The conference is just the
first step in getting them to work cohesively, as a team.
They have to be able to arrive in Antarctica ready to work
together effectively."
Once the researchers arrive in Antarctica, they will
be divided into two groups, one of which will travel by
helicopter 100 miles to Bull Pass, a remote field camp
located in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains in the Dry
Valleys. The second group will remain at McMurdo Station, a
relatively comfortable lodge complete with a bowling alley.
Over the course of the expedition, the groups will switch
places three times.
The teams will spend the three weeks of continuous
daylight (January is summertime in Antarctica) collecting
thousands of samples of rocks, which will be shaved into
sections as thin as sheets of paper in preparation for
analysis with polarizing light microscopes at McMurdo
Station. Though the scientists will have the opportunity to
collect samples to take back to their individual research
programs, most specimens will be returned to Johns Hopkins
as part of Marsh's research program.
"The National Science Foundation has never done
anything quite like this, taking a large group of world
leaders in this area of science to conduct real-time
research in the most remote part of the world," Marsh said.
"Coordinating things so that everyone can see and study the
rocks that will offer the critical evidence to shape their
careers is a huge challenge. Even more impressive, however,
is the trip's potential to influence the building and
dissolution of theories that will affect a century of
science on how planets were formed and how they work."