Goldschmidt 2022, Honolulu, Hawaii

July saw SEES PGR students Maddie Murphy (2020-2024), Toby Boocock (2018-2022) and Michele Rinaldi (2019-2023) attend the Goldschmidt conference in person in Honolulu, Hawaii. A mixture of sun and sea alongside fascinating geochemistry talks made it a highly memorable trip. During this conference each presented some of their exciting research to a large group of international scientists and developed their academic networks. 

Maddie Murphy gave a widely attended talk presenting her work on the first secular silicon isotope record of the upper continental crust as recorded in ancient glacial diamictites (tills). She presented new Si isotope data from global glacial samples spanning the Archaean to Palaeozoic that show a narrowing of silicon isotope values over time, interpreted to reflect the stabilisation of cratons and subsequent reworking of crust by the late Archaean, perhaps supporting an early start to Earths plate tectonic regime.  

Toby Boocock presented some of his work on the storage capacity of common crustal minerals (biotite and feldspar) for hosting nitrogen. As a bio-essential element and 78% of the atmosphere, his research aims to better understand the long-term flux and storage of nitrogen between the Earth's mantle, crust and atmosphere and whether the crust can be used as a long-term record of changes in the geological nitrogen cycle.  

At Michele’s invited talk ‘Modelling the formation of diamond inclusions during fluid-rock metasomatism’, Michele Rinaldi impressed those attending with some of the recent results of his thermodynamic modelling. His research challenges the widely used diamond classification based on the chemical composition of silicate inclusions in diamonds. He shows how paragenetic groups can be connected by a single metasomatic event and thus should not be used as a genetic classification unless supported by structural and textural evidence. 

The students couldn't resist some sightseeing, and why not?