Kraken VMS

ESS Department - May 22nd, 2025

In the world of transitioning to clean energy and the rising demand for base metals (Cu, Ni, Co, Li, Nb), are we ready to meet this demand and, more importantly, do so safely and sustainably? This growing demand for base metals, which significantly exceeds the discovery rate of new deposits, necessitates enormous technological advancements in exploration. With our core competencies, the important question is—how ready are we as geoscientists? As geoscientists, we are always interested in finding minerals, but the climate emergency urges us to completely shift our approach. The global need to move away from fossil fuels is thought-provoking, but for that to happen, we must secure alternative energy sources. We need solar, wind, and, notably, electric vehicles (EVs)—collectively driving the energy transition. However, all these technologies require magnets and batteries that rely on Nb, Co, Cu, and Li as key base metals. This all sounds...

ESS Department - May 14th, 2025

The planet Mars has fascinated humans for centuries. But it is only in the last few decades that robotic orbiters, landers, and rovers have allowed us to explore Mars in ever increasing detail. Nevertheless, some of our biggest questions relating to the formation and planetary-scale evolution of Mars, including its geologic and climate evolution, the history of water and volatiles, as well as the potential for the development of life in its ancient past can only be addressed by detailed analyses of carefully selected martian samples in state-of-the-art Earth-based laboratories. The campaign to return Mars samples to Earth is underway with the currently on-going collection of well-documented samples by the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. The Mars Sample Return (MSR) program represents the next phase of this campaign. I will talk about the samples that have been collected so far and those that are expected to be collected in the near future,...

ESS Department - April 24th, 2025

Paleo-CO2 reconstructions are integral to understanding the evolution of Earth system processes and their interactions given that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are intrinsically linked to planetary function. Furthermore, past periods of major climate change, within both greenhouse and icehouse states, provide unique insights into the response of land-atmosphere-ocean interactions to warming induced climate change, in particular for times of pCO2 comparable to those projected for our future. How well the past can inform the future, however, depends on how well paleo-CO2 estimates can be constrained. Although CO2 estimates exist for much of the past half-billion years (the Phanerozoic), proxies used to reconstruct paleo-CO2, differ in their assumptions and degree of understanding, and many existing paleo-CO2 estimates do not meet modern proxy theory. In this talk, I will first address present-day CO2 in the context of the geologic past...