ブログ |JTRACK IODP Exp.405

Blog

12.17.2024
Blog 6

(Created by Nur Schuba, one of Science Outreach Officers)

第9話: 「ちきゅう」でのお別れ

第8話: 「ちきゅう」の共通のジェスチャー

第7話: デイリーミーティング

第6話: 過去の磁場

第5話: 岩石サンプルからデータをとるのは物理特性チームの仕事

第4話: コアの記載は大仕事！

第3話: パトリックさんはこれから設置する温度計にとてもわくわくしてます。

第2話: 「ちきゅう」にはルールがいっぱい！

第1話: 「ちきゅう」への「通勤」はちょっと特別です。

11.21.2024
Blog 4

What_if ? - The JTRACK core observation+interpretation game.
(Produced by Callan Bentley)

Professor Callan Bentley in this video asks three IODP Expedition 405 scientists, Co-chief Dr. Christine Regalla (Northern Arizona University, USA), Dr. Catherine Ross (University of Colorado-Boulder, USA), and Dr. Amy Gough (Heriot-Watt University, UK), a series of "What If?" questions/scenarios about what different possible findings in the recovered core samples would tell us about the origin and subsequent history of the sediments they are created from.

11.20.2024
Blog 3

Cooking with Cameron TODAY'S RECIPE: SQUEEZE CAKE. (Produced by Callan Bentley)

Professor Callan Bentley and UCLA Graduate student Cameron Brown share a recipe from the geochemistry lab aboard Chikyu - "How to make a squeeze cake!"

11.19.2024
Blog 2

Reflecting on my two weeks aboard CHIKYU. (Produced by Callan Bentley)

Callan Bentley, Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC, USA), describes his experience being aboard DV Chikyu during IODP Expedition 405, and compares and contrasts this experience with other research cruises he has been able to join.

10.21.2024
Blog 1

The longest noodle (Writer: Callan Bentley)

Stretching from Chikyu’s drilling derrick down deep into the seafloor is a very long assembly called the “drill string.” When I stand on Chikyu’s deck and gaze aft at the derrick, I see the drill string beneath a yellow mechanical assembly called the “top drive.” It’s the size of a city bus, but vertical. The top drive visibly bobs up and down relative to the derrick’s frame, as the ship compensates for the heaving motion of the ship. Below it, the drill string appears at first to be a simple black line, backlit by the sky. But when drilling is underway, you can see that it is rotating. White painted numbers appear on one edge, twist into view, and then slip around back.

Aching to unboggle my mind, I search for an analogy. The first thing to occur to me is a long-tailed ichneumon wasp. (Google it to be amazed, and perhaps horrified.) It has an ovipositor like a hypodermic syringe! But a living organism laying eggs isn’t a great match for what the Chikyu is doing here.

Then I consider pasta. Standard spaghetti noodles measure 25 cm long by 1.59 mm wide. The diameter of the Chikyu’s drill string is 13 cm wide, and as I mentioned, it’s 7.2 km long. So how long would I have to make a spaghetti noodle to get it to match the drill string of Chikyu? Dividing the drill string’s diameter by that of the noodle, I get a ratio of 81.8. Then I divided the length of the drill string by that ratio, and produced (in theory) a noodle 88 m long (288 feet), which is about four-fifths the length of a football field.

That’s some noodle!

Now let’s get the orientation right. Imagine taking a power drill, and fitting the upper tip of this prodigious noodle into its chuck. Now stand on the roof of a 25-storey building, lean over the edge, and use the spinning noodle to drill a tiny hole in the lawn in front of the building’s entrance. It’s outrageous to consider, yet that is pretty much what Chikyu is doing here in the western Pacific.