Category Archives: Laboratory

outReaching the new generation of planetary scientists

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Hello readers!! This past month Sarah, Mark and myself have had the pleasure of being involved in two secondary school visits to SEAES, both year 8 classes. Now I say pleasure but being both mine and Marks first school visits, … Continue reading

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Halogens within the Earth and Solar System

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Halogens have been a widely underutilized geochemical tool. Only now are we seeing the potential that halogens have to answer deep unresolved questions like How did they Earth form from meteorites? And how does the Earths volatiles get transported and stored. The … Continue reading

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Using these “lasers” we punch a hole…

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Austin Power’s nemesis Dr Evil was always up to no good, punching holes in ‘the protective layer around the Earth, which we scientists call the “Ozone Layer”’ with his ‘sophisticated heat beam which we called a “laser”’. Of course we … Continue reading

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RIMSKI – ‘Operation Pied Piper’

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Untangling the Confusion in the Laser Mass Spectrometry Lab…  Hello readers! Allow me to introduce myself, my name’s Mark and I’m one of the new additions to the research group this year. I’ll be working with the tuned laser spectrometers … Continue reading

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Studying isotopes in meteorites with SADIE

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SADIE is our Nu Plasma Multi Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (or MC-ICP-MS for short). However, since even the shortened version of that is such a mouthful and all the other spectrometers have catchy names like RELAX and IDLE, … Continue reading

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Cookin’ Up a Comet

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Manchester Science Festival is rapidly approaching, and we are busy planning and preparing our activities for the Meteorite Day on Monday 29th October. One of the things we want to show visitors is a “real” comet, based on NASA’s Cookin’ … Continue reading

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A look into the IDLE laboratory

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Our IDLE (Interstellar Dust Laser Explorer) laboratory is home to two time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometers (TOFSIMS) which we have built ourselves. Building the instruments ourselves not only saved money but also made it possible to customize the instruments for … Continue reading

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RELAXing in the lab

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RELAX is an instrument used to measure xenon isotope ratios. Contrary to popular believe, this does not mean we sit around the lab with our feet up all day! RELAX stands for Refrigerator Enhanced Laser Analyser for Xenon. It is … Continue reading

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