Using the Electron Mircoprobe

Today I went into the lab once more and place the lunar sample into the machine - this time instead of blasting it with x-rays to get element maps I was picking out specific points to hit with an electron beam and see what they are made off.

First off we picked a selection of elements that I wanted to get proportions of and then I picked the points I wanted to know about specifically. From the element maps and the back scatter image I had taken previously I knew that I apparently had several minerals (I had trudged through four large tomes of mineralogy and lunar/planetary stuff to find out what sort of things I might have lurking in the sample. I had then taken the element maps and compared them - drawn faint scetches of them and then working out what elements I had in conjection where drew on mineral areas with coloured pens onto a printout of the backscatter image. (He told me this was actually an x-ray map just not element specific so I need to check whats what with him I think).

They seemed quiet impressed that I had done this but it seemed like the only way to make things clear to me personally. I was becoming frustrated that I couldn't work out the actual proportions and therefore the exact minerals from the elelment maps and that I could only narrow things down. Fortunatly this is what today was actually about so I worked out how many samples I wanted and were to take the measurements - unfortunatly becuase there is a bad polish on the sample I had to be careful and was highly restricted in where I could take measurements.

But I selected 101 points each point was going to take about 9 minutes to analyse but I specifically went in early to get it all going and as it turned out had plenty of time.

I had also narrowed down the minerals really far more accuratly that I thought I had and I had worked out stuff about my 'dirty' quartz that that does seem to be correct which is very cool and makes me feel like I might just have a chance of doing this.

The only thing is I found myself baulkin at the interface of data and computers - there are situations that I just see no reason not to have a computer automate and I think they should be relatively easy to implement and yet there is nothing! This keeps happening every where I turn in geology and earth sciences there is just huge gaps that computers could feel reducing monkey work and increasing the amount of research that can be analysis in depth!

Other issues that I have had is finding information barred to me - this is painful when I would happily pay say £10 for an e-book of the phase diagrams I needed or even just the chapters I needed - then and there I may even have gone up to £20 but it is only avalible as a book and at around $300 which sucks big time.

Can anyone tell me what the restrictions would be on me finding data in papers and ploting my own graphs/diagrams and then putting them on the internet for free so that people like me don't get stuck like this? I just needed a guid to see if I was on the right path. The question of science on the net has been interesting me alot in the past year and I wonder lots about hwo things are going - I like sharing info and I think it helps move projects and science as a whole on but there are those who tell me that I sholdn't talk about my projects and ideas incase they are published by other first.

Also there is the question of funding and where the money is coming from to do the research - I find myself pondering over the wole peer review system and how a nice fast version could apply to articles on line - making the turn around of science much faster without loosing the reliablity.

It is a thorny problem and I feel slightly swamped in it.

Oh well I'm sure I'll sort it all out eventually

The only scary thing about todays stuff was that if I want to go out of the lab I have to remember to press a button that puts an alunium or copper block infront of my electron beam so that it doesn't burn a whole in the sample - this made me quiet nervous!

analysing the moon rock

Friday saw me once again wending my weary way to London.

This time I was going in to carbon coat my lunar meteorite thin section and put it in the machine to make X-ray maps of specific elements. I felt very nervous as I hadnt done anywhere near the amount of reading I had ment to do for it what with boundary disbutes and work stuff etc...

And I had been highly confusing myself by trying to learn lunar mineralogy from scratch - complete with minerals I have never heared off! I had started making a list of elements mentioned in association with lunar minerallogy and then side tracked myself - turns out if I had completed this it would have been a very good start - oh well.

I was a bit sad when I arrived that the sample was already in being carbon coated - I assume the machine works by some sort of spluttering of carbon. You coat the sample to help get a clearer image by stopping alot of the interference(I think). This means I only got a pic of it carbon coated thin section and my hands were shaking so its not a very good picture anyway but this is a piece of the moon that fell to Earth in a meteorite that Landed in Africa.

The Carbon coating machine:

My piece of carbon coated moon rock!

This means I also have to be weary of terrestrial contamination when analysing it.

I took photos of the machine and bits around it!

What I have done for the mini project is just selected one breccia clast/grain out of this thin section from a few cubic cm's of lunar meteorite to ananlyse. This really is looking at the fine detail - I always have to remember that it is part of a system, part of a big over all picture, the small makes up the big and the big affects the small.

We chose which elements to map for, then defined the mapping area which was just slightly bigger than the clast. An important fact is that no matter how good the polish on the surfacce of the section it is not completely flat so to get golod results you have to sort of take the four corners and average them into a focus plan. At least this is what I understood to be happening.

Anyway I selected with some help the elements that I wanted maps for and the grand total time was 56 hours running time for the machine - wowowow. Of course this is why I was in there on a Friday afternoon so that I could have the machine run over the weekend - I clicked the button to start it and away it went.

I then proceeded to make a fool out of my self by saying - its obviously regolith isnt it - erm... we dont know came the reply. I am also very intreged by the clast I have chosen to analyse - it looks like two main minerals interlocked in some sort of intergrowth way - each with its own specific selection of other mineral inclusions.

I am a bit worried that I just dont remember enough mineralogy to do this project justice :/

Still I think I may have some idea of whats going on but suffered that thing of not wanting to say anything incase I was wrong and they thought I was stupid and wasting their time and effort. I now need to go and work out the correct scientific termonolgy instead of inventing my own - again.

Still I got to take pics of the sample being mounted in the machine including the adding of the highly conductive copper sticky tap that also keeps it in place!

There was one interesting point - the machine appears to do a continues scan but it doesnt it stops every .... and 'dwells' for.... this leads me onto something else I have been pondering recently - how different are analogue and didigital - you came make one appear as another depending on resolution etc... but this needs a me to do a bit more thinking and maybe write a few books on the nature of existance I feel!

Once I have worked out the mineral phases in the sample - which I will do from these elemental maps I will be putting it in the microprob for furthure analysis.

I think that for my oral presingtation and poster I will therefore need to focus on what we know of the moon from meteorites rather than just what we know about the moon.

I am getting very excited about all this - its the thought of being able to tie in the mineralogy of crystals grains within a clast with a brecciated meteorite to lunar and even solar and possible even universe formation processes!

Happyness is once again rock shaped. Though I am hoping the element doesn't blow over the week end - it was a new one this week so hopefully it will last!

Artistic Frustration

Last night I saw once again the most fantstic moon, it was a pastal tangerine colour and it was in a twilight sky, just above the horizon and it was huge. It hung there like the proverbial eye and the trees below were bathed in golden light from the setting sun.

But would Alaric turn the van round to go get the camera? Would he even stop to look at it - no!

This is the bane of my life when it comes to photos - I know I'm not exactly brilliant and I would probably have blurred it anyway but hey the moon was hanging over our valley!

I had a similar problem when the snow was on the ground - Dad didn't understand that I wanted to stop the car to get out and take photos of the whole of the bowl shaped bit with like all the built up bit in it - covered in snow. I had asked Alaric to come out and walk up to the main road to take pics as with my pelvis and back I can't afford to be out in the snow falling over on my own but he wouldn't.

Its not their fualts they either just dont see it or do and are genuingly busy but I find it so frustrating along with people talking constantly at me when I'm trying to write, paint, make websites and other things.

And as for having my projects moved or my pooter used when I'm not there - that really makes my blood boil - only becuase people don't know where the fragile bits are or the fact the laptop is on its last legs and has a tendency to crash if you do certian things and it takes me so long to have everything set up to work its a right pain if I have to restart.

I am feeling alittle bit frustrated and am trying to claim back my work space in the office but its slow going.

On the plus side I saw a shooting star last night with a green tinge to it and a cloud that looked like a rabbit or hare running under the moon.

I have a piece of the Moon!

Erm I think that I forgot to mention that even though I have not yet paid my top up fee and therefore do not have libary access etc... I have been given a small sliver of moon rock to blast with lasers

I have been staring at the moon lots since they gave it to me two weeks ago and am also petrofied I'll screw something up!

I got to take the carbon coat off of it and so have a quick peek under a reflected light microscope. It does seem to be an interesting sample - its from a lunar meteorite that fell to earth which is interesting in itself.

After my disappointment over the mini projects I was so startled to get this sample I have been sort of shell shock reading - I know very little about lunar geology so I am having to do some heavy reading. Fortunatly I seem to be able to apply stuff I learnt whilst doing the Carbonado essay and the moon formation essay last term.

I really feel I need to get to grips with this as it is such a blindingly fantastic sample (they have the meteorite as well) that I have jumped ship and will be doing this meteorite as my main project as well - this masters has just dragged on too long now and I don't want anything logistically complicated.

However I do still want to do the astrobiology - impact lithology stuff but when I was looking at it before I found huge issues in talking to microbiologist and isotope chemists who didn't understand one and other and having to translate stuff to each of them that I barely understood myself.

I was recommended to get my hands on some undergraduate texts for the micro-organism thing and the chem I'm picking up from the papers I'm reading and hopefully from the machines I'm going to be using. My origonal project was drawn up with the idea of it being a PhD anyway so this I think is the best course of action.

Happy New Year 2009

This year sees lots of exciting things - its the International Year of Astronomy and so I have set up a specific Astronomy blog - the spellings all need sorting and alot of the stuff on there is from things I've written up on here.

I know its another blog but other wise I have too much to go on here and its nice to have a specific theme and things. Plus I now have a specific career goal which is to be a popular science writer - I want to bring science to the front, so kids find it interesting, explain it to the lay person etc...

I want to rekindle the flame that the victorians lit - a flame that is in the danger of blowing out leaving our culture with just recipies for current technology but no inovation or advancement.

I wanted to do alot of Astronomy stuff last year but with everything that happened it just got swept aside

Other goals for this year are to carry on with the Prince's Trust and MRes both of which are giving me valuable skills. Get Web-Empire fully up and running but more on that later Enter the Young Science Writer of the Year compatition and just generally get our lives back on track.

Jeany will also be starting school in September! She'll be the youngest in her year - I feel this will be a good thing.

I hope you all have good New Years and lets hope this one will be better than the last!