Issue date: 6/7/05 Section: News

Media Credit: Mark Beal JOIDES Resolution, for which Texas A&M is the contractor, moors in a harbor in Mobile, Ala.

Scientists from Texas A&M's Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) have drilled a hole in the Atlantic Ocean that will allow scientists to examine Earth's evolution in that area over the past few million years.

The vessel, JOIDES Resolution, for which Texas A&M serves as the contractor, carried out the IODP's benchmark expedition to the Atlantic Ocean. It took almost three months to drill the hole, which is more than 4,600 feet below the ocean's surface.

Jay Miller, a staff scientist at A&M and one of the project leaders, said the project started in the late 1950s when scientists tried to drill into the Earth's crust to get core samples. They recognized that drilling into ocean crust was more feasible, as ocean crust was six to 10 kilometers thick, whereas the continental crust was 35 to 70 kilometers thick.

Miller said scientists aboard the vessel recovered more than 1,000 meters of core samples and used seismic waves to examine the sample. Scientists are expected to publish research within the next four years, but research on these samples will continue for many years.

"We know now from the core samples that the structure of the Earth is much more complex than we had thought," Miller said. "Samples from the hole (are) changing our understanding of how the Earth developed."

Rodey Batiza, an ocean program officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF), said the project is fundamental research to discovering the history of the Earth and history of ocean basin.
"There are many graduate students involved in the program," he said.

"For the undergraduate students, if they talk to the scientists of the IODP, they would find the chance at least to get into the research."
Batiza said the IOPD, which was formed in 2003, has $1.5 billion in funding and will last for 10 years. There are four sponsors of the program, with the NSF and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology acting as lead agencies. Other agencies involved include the Engineering Committee on Oceanic Resources and the People's Republic of China Ministry of Science and Technology.

Masako Tominage, a graduate student in the Department of Oceanography and one of the student members of the IODP, worked on JOIDES Resolution for two months last spring. Her work was to measure remnant magnetization of core rocks.

"Being involved in a program like this was one of my long-time dreams, then it (became) reality," Tominage said. "My deepest impression from the expedition (was that) we never know anything after we see the actual ... rocks. It was extremely worthwhile to know many leading scientists from all over the world and learn from them."

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