Question: What is the first lab experiment you did,relating to extremophiles and volcanoes?

Kate Dobson answered on 10 Nov 2014:

I work on volcanoes and the magmas that drive them, rather than on the extremophiles that live in the very inhospitable, hot and often acidic volcanic systems (http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/sfs/index.jsp?id=life&sid=ext).

My first laboratory work was measuring the different gasses being given off by the Kileuea volcano. From looking at the volume of CO2 and SO3 coming out the different parts of the volcano we can tell how deep the magma is. Lots of Co2 means the gases are bubbling out the magma many km beneath the surface, and “burps” mean that there is a pulse of more magma on it’s way up to the surface. Lots of SO2 and we know the magma is moving much closer to the surface.

My first experiment in the lab was to date the age of a crystal (and therefore of the rock that crystal was in). Uranium and Thorium are present in very small amounts in some minerals and the natural radioactive decay means that over millions of years, as the Uranium and Thorium reduce, there is a build of Helium inside the crystals. My first experiments were to measure the amount of Uranium, Thorium and Helium and calculate how old the crystal was (~60 Million years!).