By Natasha42 and Adrienne26
As a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkley, Lekic formulated higher-resolution images of the Earth’s mantle structure, stemming from his creation of a global seismic velocity model. Not only is the model able to give geologists a better understanding of plate tectonics, but it also helps explain the movement of continental plates and their evolution, Lekic said.
As a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkley, Lekic formulated higher-resolution images of the Earth’s mantle structure, stemming from his creation of a global seismic velocity model. Not only is the model able to give geologists a better understanding of plate tectonics, but it also helps explain the movement of continental plates and their evolution, Lekic said.
Lekic’s research is
based on ground vibration recordings, which he and his students use to detect
the scattering of seismic waves across the North American tectonic plate. In
conjunction with the National Science Foundation’s EarthScope Facility network,
the data is collected from the 49 states and Puerto Rico and makes up about 3.8
million square miles, Lekic said.
Transforming data into inner earth visuals
Nearly 2 million data
lines fill the screen of Vedran Lekic’s computer every day, each representing
seismic waves that are detected from of the more than 1,700 seismic stations
around the U.S.
Lekic has already
used the seismic information to investigate why and how the crust moves over
the Earth’s mantle. As of now, the deepest any machine has been able to dig was
about 12 kilometers into the Earth’s crust, a minuscle fracture of the roughly
6,730 kilometers it takes to get to the Earth’s core. Using the seismic
information helps geologists see the shapes and sizes of the Earth’s layers.
“What we do is
comparable to how an ultrasound let’s us see through our bodies,” Lekic said. “But this lets us see through the Earth.”
Scientists unite to further research
From this data, Lekic
is creating a map that will not only cover all 48 contiguous states, Alaska and
Puerto Rico, but also dive deep into the Earth’s crust and core.
In recognition of his
efforts to integrate computer science and geological studies, Lekic joined the
ranks of 17 other early career U.S. scientists and engineers who were awarded a
Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering last week.
“If you look at the field of those who get it and try to figure out from their research summaries and letters which are the strongest candidate, it’s a difficult task,” said Franklin Orr, chairman of the Packard Fellowship panel. “We always run out of fellowships before we run out of wonderful people to give them too.”
“The great thing about this fellowship is its flexibility to go chase a really good idea to wherever it leads,” said Orr, a Stanford University professor. “It is an incredibly valuable fund and gives the researchers an opportunity to take off with a good idea instead of waiting a year or more for federal money.”
Lekic uses Fellowship to Expand Research
Now that a large fund
has been granted to his work, he hopes to spend more time plotting the seismic
information in graphs and models so that he may better understand the Earth,
Lekic said.
“EarthScope is kind of like our Apollo mission, but not as costly,” Lekic said
Lekic is now one of
five alumni faculty members who have received the award while at this
university, and he will be given access to unrestricted funds of $875,000 over
a five-year period to support his extensive research on Earth’s inner
structure.
Lekic has received several other
early career awards besides the Packard Fellowship.
Other than his seismology research contributions, Lekic is also a forerunner in the new geological field of neutrino geoscience.
Neutrinos are a type
of electrically neutral subatomic particle that are created during radioactive
decay or some kinds of nuclear reactions. The particle, which was only
discovered geologically in 2005 and physically detected for the first time last year, moves through every kind of object,
McDonough said.
“It sounds magical; it’s like a particle that exists but you can’t really see,” Lekic said of neutrinos.
