Keele UniversityFaculty of Natural Sciences
Geography, Geology and the Environment
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- 2011
Brian O' Driscoll Royal Society success
Dr Brian O'Driscoll has been awarded £5,520 from the Royal Society for a project entitled: 'Serpentinisation: magnetite production, precious metal concentration and the origin of life'. The project will investigate the nature of chemical reactions between seawater and oceanic crust at submarine mid-ocean ridges.
Such reactions have been shown to be important in stabilising economically important platinum alloys, as well as being a possible origin for early life on Earth. Fieldwork will be carried out on ~490 million year old slivers of oceanic crust from an ancient ocean called Iapetus, preserved today in the Shetland Isles and in northern Norway.
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