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25th January 2022

WACSWAIN: Time and ice

My last blog about the WACSWAIN project was in February 2020. We had just started the chemical analysis of our 651-metre-long ice core from Skytrain Ice Rise (Antarctica). The theme of this article is time – the first aspect being that a lot of time has since passed. Soon after I wrote last, our labwork was completely shut down by the pandemic, some of the team went back to their families in other countries, and we all learnt what Zoom meetings were.

11th January 2022

The Sedgwick: Museum on a mission – Part III

In Part III of our blog series, we talk to Sandra Freshney, Museum Archivist, about the work she is doing to bring to light women in the Sedgwick collections.

Sandra authored Women in the Archive, an online exhibition featuring documents and photos depicting the experiences of women studying geology from the 1880s until the end of the First World War. Sandra’s work challenges assumptions about what geology and geologists traditionally look like, whilst allowing quieter voices in the department’s history to be heard.

24th November 2021

Updates from Nick Tosca and the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission

Nick Tosca, Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology, is a member of the core science team for the Mars Perseverance 2020 mission. In this blog post Erin finds out how Nick has adapted to life as a researcher with NASA and gets the inside scoop on the first tantalising results.

17th November 2021

The Sedgwick: Museum on a mission – Part II

In part 2 of our series on the Sedgwick Museum and its role in reflecting new perspectives, Rob Theodore, Exhibitions and Displays Coordinator, discusses the greater role of representation in the Museum.

27th October 2021

Corals on climate, and why they are even cooler than you already think

There is a lot to be said about corals: their diverse beauty, their importance for marine ecosystems and, of course, their plight against climate change and warming oceans. And yet this only begins to scratch the surface of these complex, mesmerizing and somewhat alien animals.

18th October 2021

The Sedgwick: Museum on a mission

In this series of blogs we interview Rob Theodore, Exhibitions and Displays Coordinator, and Sandra Freshney, Museum Archivist, and hear more about how the Sedgwick is shaping visitors’ experiences: exposing the stories behind the collections and challenging our perceptions of Earth Sciences as a subject and its researchers.

22nd September 2021

Arran 2021: reporting on the successes of running a field trip in Covid-times

Nicholas Barber, 4^th Year PhD Student, tells us about his experience as a demonstrator for this summer’s first year field trip to Arran – the first since the pandemic started.

Covid-19’s impact has touched each and every one of our lives. While the impacts of the pandemic have been devastating, in a much smaller way Covid-19 has completely reshaped what it means to study Earth Sciences at Cambridge. Traditionally, our students would spend a week over the Easter holiday tramping through the bogs and heather on the Isle of Arran – this would be their first taste of fieldwork and would be “the best revision any Cambridge undergraduate could ask for.”

26th August 2021

Emma Perry zooms in on the hidden depths of nuclear waste breakdown

Nuclear energy is a low-cost and reliable source of energy with a very low carbon footprint, and for these reasons is likely to be a key player in the green energy transition. But, in order to include nuclear energy in our investment plans, we need to ensure the small amount of nuclear fuel waste generated can be stored safely. I am halfway through my PhD project, which is looking at how nuclear waste, stored in geological disposal facilities hundreds of metres below the surface, dissolves when groundwater seeps in through multiple barriers of protection.

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