• Question: How do you do your deep sea current research?

    Asked by to Thomas on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Thomas Elias Cocolios

      Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I am currently starting that line of research. My contribution to the work will be the analysis of the samples, but unfortunately not the gathering of the samples. I shall collaborate with oceanographers who identify the best places from which to gather water samples. They will then separate the Ar, for example, from the sample and give me a tiny bottle that I can connect to my setup.

      I shall then make a ion beam with those Ar ions and shine my lasers on them to select the different isotopes of interest and measure their relative abundance. It does not sound like much, but we are talking about 1 special isotope in 1e16, or against 10,000,000,000,000,000! Talk about a needle in a hay stack? That would be easier!

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