EES Guest Speaker - Dr. June Wicks

The minerals that make up the interior of earth and other planets control planetary evolution. From density distribution to mass and thermal transport, mineral properties at the extremes of pressure and temperature have planet-sized consequences. In the recent decades, high-powered lasers have opened the door to mineral physics experiments at unprecedented conditions, subjecting materials to hundreds of GPa in pressure and thousands of degrees in temperature. I will talk about recent experiments carried out by my group to measure phase diagrams, equation of states, optical properties, viscosity, and thermal conductivity during dynamic compression, and argue that we’re just starting to scratch the surface of learning what happens to minerals in these extreme environments.