2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

Modeling Earth’s Interior from Atomic to Global Scale

Geophysics stands on a synergistic tripod formed by seismology, geodynamics, and mineral physics; it advances by close cooperation between these computationally-intensive fields. Cyberinfrastructure is enabling a leap in computational capability that is helping to produce huge amounts of data on mineral properties. Advances in seismic imaging of the Earth’s deep interior are providing structural information about convective and thermal patterns in the lower mantle. Several fascinating structures holding keys to the nature of deep Earth are currently being mapped in detail and interpreted within geodynamically consistent scenarios that include detailed properties of minerals and melts. Computational mineral physics, a field that evolved from the materials simulation revolution of the late 1980s and 1990s, helps to integrate these fields by contributing data on realistic mineral properties at the extreme. This symposium highlights the synergy between these fields, establishing a transdisciplinary dialogue, a global-scale modeling field, and a new way of operating in geophysics research. The emergence of this modeling phenomenon illustrates what could become typical in other modeling fields, e.g., atmospheric and ocean science, astrophysics, materials processing, and biological systems.