Outreach news

The TIMEleSS-tools were developed in the course of the TIMEleSS project to streamline the processing of multigrain crystallography data from diamond anvil cell experiments. They were actively developed in the course of the project, guided by our needs for data processing, and used in all TIMEleSS publications involving multigrain X-ray diffraction. They are a set of python programs, open-source, under the terms of the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 2, and part of the more general FABLE-3DXRD project.

After years of development, we finally reach the time for a 1.0.0 release. TIMEleSS-tools were uploaded to PyPI and will now be easily installable on any python distribution, by simply typing those three magical words pip install timeless-tools. The latest and most up-to-date version will remain at our TIMEleSS-tools github homepage, but this release is easier to install for starting users.

This official release also come with our first user publication! Robin Fréville, Agnès Dewaele, and co-authors published a Physical Review B paper on a Comparison between mechanisms and microstructures of α−γ, γ−ε, and α−ε−α phase transitions in iron on March 14, 2023. It is the first non-TIMEleSS published paper that relies on the TIMEleSS-tools. Congratulations to all!

Multigrain X-ray diffraction (sometimes called 3D-XRD or HEDM depending on communities) allows characterizing hundreds of crystals in a polycrystalline material. It has been adapted to diamond anvil cell experiments for the investigation of materials under high pressure and high temperature. The method lies at the core of the experimental portion of the TIMEleSS project. We use it to characterize transformation and deformation microstructures in mantle minerals.

Multigrain X-ray diffraction can be hard to learn and implement. Hence, along the course of the project, timeless members documented their procedures for processing such data in an online documentation: the TIMEleSS Multigrain Wiki.

We are now finished with our rounds of experiments, data has been processed, and results are being submitted for publication, so it is time to give back to the community! The TIMEleSS Multigrain Wiki has been accessible for years to who knew the URL. Now the link is public and should be easy to find with your best search engines. Please use it, enjoy it, and do not hesitate to contact us if you want to contribute and suggest corrections

This wiki, among with other outputs, was used as a basis for the creation of the Commission on Diffraction Microstructure Imaging of the International Union of Crystallography. This new Commission on Diffraction Microstructure Imaging was established at the Prague General Assembly in August 2021 and TIMEleSS PI S. Merkel is one of the founding members for the application.

New publication in the French edition of The Conversation!

The Conversation is a network of not-for-profit media outlets that publish news stories written by academics and researchers.

In this paper, TIMEleSS PI S. Merkel speaks about the Earth’s lowermost mantle, seismology, high pressure / high temperature mineral physics, and how phase transformations help us understanding deep Earth processes!

The fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is the largest international Earth and space science meeting in the world with approximately 25000 attendees.

2019 is a special year that marks the Centennial for AGU. Monday dec. 9th was a celebration day for Earth Interior studies with a special Centennial session in which TIMEleSS PI S. Merkel was in charge of organizing and chairing part of the day.

Things return to a normal AGU now, with the usual layout for sessions and presentations. The TIMEleSS project will be presented on Thursday morning in session DI41C – A Deep Dive into Lowermost Mantle Processes. Please come by to see the state of our current research!

Students from the “Collège Val de la Sensée” in Arleux (Junior High School) are working on a project related to the famous Jules Vernes book Journey to the Center of the Earth.

On Nov. 25, 2019, they came to the Université de Lille for an example of a university class, as Otto Lidenbrock can teach in the Jules Vernes book. S. Merkel gave them a lecture on the Center of the Earth, as scientists view it and study it today, and how Jules Vernes visionary writings were both close and distant from today’s view of the Earth interior.

TIMEleSS members will be at GeoMünster 2019! GeoMünster 2019 is the Annual Conference of the Deutsche Geologische Gesellschaft – Geologische Vereinigung (DGGV – The German Geological Society) and the Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft (DMG – The German Mineralogical Society). It will be held 22–25 September 2019 at the Münster University, Germany, and will be organized and by the Institutes for Geology and Paleontology, Mineralogy, and Planetology.

TIMEleSS members are organizing a session entitled Minerals in the depths: an experimental approach, with a oral presentation of TIMEleSS student Matthias Krug and a poster from our partner Iliya Kupenko.

See you in Münster in September!

The synchrotron guys of the TIMEleSS project met up for a datatron the second week of May 2019. During a TIMEleSS datatron, we all sit in a room and get moving on data processing from our recent synchrotron experiments!

The datatron was attented by M. Krug, E. Ledoux, and J. Gay, PhD students involved in the TIMEleSS project, S. Merkel, the PI for TIMEleSS. We also welcomed 3 guests during this week: J. Wright, from ID11 at ESRF, A. Dewaële from CEA, and M. Bykov from the Bayerisches Geoinstitut.

The next TIMEleSS datatron has not been planned yet but may happen later in 2019.

This week, two of the TIMEleSS PI’s are attenting the Final Workshop of the CREEP ITN at the Ecole de Physique des Houches, in France. The workshop is held from 27 January to 1 February 2019 in the town of Les Houches, in the Chamonix valley.

The CREEP ITN is a EU funded project that proposed an interdisciplinary and multiscale approach to study the origin of rheological complexity in Earth and analogous materials and how it controls the dynamics of our planet, including natural and human-induced seismicity, and affects a large range of industrial applications, from energy production and waste storage to production of high-performance glasses. It included a number of partners, from academia and industry with over 10 PhD fellowships. More details can be seen at the CREEP ITN website.

The TIMEleSS project, its objectives, and some results were highlighted in a an hour long invited presentation regarding Phase transitions in the mantle by PI S. Merkel.

Estelle Ledoux and Jeff Gay presented they current work at the PhD student days for the UMET lab in Lille. The symposium is organized yearly in January.

This one-day meeting is an opportunity to discover the work of current PhD students and the evolution of research in the lab. It is an opportunity for exchanges between students and researchers, exchange ideas, and build strong future collaborations.

The full program of the symposium can be found online in the following document.

The American Geophysical Union held elections to replace its council members earlier in 2018. S. Merkel, one of the TIMEleSS PI’s, was elected for the Mineral and Rock Physics section of AGU.

He will begin is 4-year term as a Council member for AGU on January 1st, 2019. As a member of the Council, representing the broad spectrum of AGU members,  he will oversee the scientific affairs of AGU. The Council is responsible for the scientific affairs of AGU and plays three distinct roles: forming science policy, generating and deliberating science-related ideas, and advising on science and member issues.

He will also endorse the role of president-elect for the Mineral and Rock Physics section in 2019-2020 before becoming the section president for a 2-years term in 2021-2022.