Press archive 2013

17.05.2013 | GPS solution provides three-minute tsunami alerts

GFZ researchers have shown that, by using global positioning systems (GPS) to measure ground deformation caused by a large underwater earthquake, they can provide accurate warning of the resulting tsunami in just a few minutes after the earthquake onset. For the devastating Japan 2011 event, the team reveals that the analysis of the GPS data and issue of a detailed tsunami alert would have taken no more than three minutes.

09.05.2013 | Climate History of the Arctic as a Key to the Future

Analyses of the longest continental sediment core ever collected in the Arctic have provided an almost continuous archive of information on arctic climate dynamics for the period from 3.6 to 2.2 million years ago. It was during this period that a transition took place from the warm Pliocene to the Quaternary, the so-called Ice Age, in which we live today and through which the polar region, which undergoes glacial /interglacial cycles with varying ice coverage, is characterized.

28.03.2013 | Helmholtz Alberta Initiative continues

The Helmholtz-Alberta Initiative lives on Research on oil sand related aspects within the scope of the Helmholtz-Alberta Initiative (HAI) will be discontinued on the German side. At the same time, however, the cooperation in the context of HAI will be expanded in other fields and the excellent research with the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, will be continued and strengthened.

18.03.2013 | Queen Elizabeth Prize for the Inventors of the Internet

Queen Elizabeth Prize for the Inventors of the Internet “Nobel Prize for Engineering Sciences” Outstanding achievements of global significance in engineering science will, for the first time, be awarded today, 18 March 2013. With prize money of one million pounds the Royal Academy of Engineering this year honors the inventors of the Internet for their revolutionizing accomplishment. With this, the Queen Elizabeth Prize is the most highly endowed award in the field of engineering science worldwide.

13.03.2013 | Extreme water

The earthly, omnipresent compound water has very unusual properties that become particularly evident when subjected to high pressure and high temperatures. In the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), a German-Finnish-French team, including GFZ scientists Dr. Max Wilke, Dr. Christian Schmidt and Dr. Sandro Jahn, published what happens when water is subjected to pressure and temperature conditions such as those found in the deep Earth.

08.03.2013 | Large parts for the smallest quantities

On 8 March 2013 a new secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) will be delivered to the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. The bulky device is divided into seven parts and transported as a heavy load. The apparatus weighs 10 tons but is used for high-sensitivity measurement of lightweights. Secondary ion mass spectrometry is one of the most important micro-measurement methods in the geosciences and is used to determine the concentration of trace elements.

22.02.2013 | Fragments of Continents Hidden under Lava in the Indian Ocean

The islands Reunion and Mauritius, both well-known tourist destinations, are hiding a micro-continent, which has now been discovered. The continent fragment known as Mauritia detached about 60 million years ago while Madagascar and India drifted apart, and had been hidden under huge masses of lava. Such micro-continents in the oceans seem to occur more frequently than previously thought, says a study in the latest issue of Nature Geosciences ("A Precambrian microcontinent in the Indian Ocean," Nature Geoscience, Vol 6, doi: 10.1038/NGEO1736).