Research news
Find here the latest scientific news from the Institute's groups.
En analysant des données sismiques par la méthode d’inversion de forme d’onde, une étude internationale menée à l’IPGP et en Australie propose que la partie inférieure de la croûte océanique se forme par refroidissement et cristallisation du magma in situ.
About six million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea underwent a period of rapid drying, eventually forming a giant salt deposit. This so-called Messinian salinity crisis was the result of the gradual tectonic closure of the Strait of Gibraltar, the waterway linking the Mediterranean Basin to the Atlantic Ocean.
An international team of 21 researchers, including six from the IPGP, sailed off the Azores aboard the oceanographic vessel "Pourquoi Pas?" on the Arc-en-sub mission, from May 5th to June 2nd 2022.
A team of researchers from the IPGP-Université Paris Cité and the Institut des Sciences de la Terre (CNRS Grenoble) has reviewed the mechanisms proposed to sustain the geodynamo and shows that convection could supply enough power to sustain a long-lived geodynamo if the thermal conductivity is lower than 100 W/m/K.
A sample collection mission was carried out on alpine glaciers by two IPGP researchers, with the aim of tracing the distribution and the sources of particles of nanometric size in areas suppo¬ sedly preserved. This expedition follows on from the NanoTrack project, on the study of nanoparticles and their effects on humans and the environment.
Seismic waves recorded by the SEIS broadband seismometer since one martian year have enabled the international team of NASA's InSight mission to estimate the size of the core, the thickness of the crust and the structure of the mantle of Mars.
This recommendation of the OVSM-IPGP to the Préfecture de la Martinique follows the detection of the evolution of seismic signals recorded in the framework of the monitoring of the volcano by the observatory and the consultation with a group of experts that have studied these phenomena.
A research group has focused on the fault segmentation issue, aiming at testing if one could evidence intrinsic parameters controlling lateral strike-slip fault geometry.
The Cassini-Huygens mission made many discoveries about Saturn and its many satellites, the largest of which is Titan. During its descent into Titan's atmosphere in January 2005, the Huygens module identified a dendritic network of rivers incising a hill near the landing site, similar to the networks observed on Mars and Earth.
For the first time, a team has succeeded in characterizing, in a liquid medium and at the nanometric scale, the influence of bacterial cells and the organic polymers they secrete on the formation of a mineral.
This effect violates elementary rules governing the distribution of isotopes during chemical reactions. It could be relevant for many chemical elements and be part of some well-known isotopic variations, identified in the components of meteorites, and generally considered to reflect stellar nucleosynthetic processes.
Earth’s atmosphere is made up of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, a mixture that is unique in the Solar System1. The oxygen was produced by some of the first living organisms. But where did the nitrogen come from? Did it escape from Earth’s mantle through volcanic activity?