The paleomagnetism laboratory at the Institut de Physique du Globe de
Paris analyses the magnetic properties of rocks, sediments and baked
archeological materials. These properties are useful to study a broad
range of questions from the acquisition mechanism of various natural
remanent magnetisations to the alteration processes acting on earth
materials, and a breath of disciplines including geomagnetism, plate
tectonics, geodynamics, biomagnetism, volcanology, paleoclimat,
paleoenvironment, and archaeology. The laboratory seeks to acquire
paleomagnetic and rock magnetic data from various geological and
archaeological materials spanning a wide range of ages and geographic
locations, and accompanies this data acquisition with the development of
novel experimental protocols, and models and simulations of the studied
processes.
The laboratory investigates a wide range of topics synthesized below
under four main topics which allows the laboratory to explore a large
number of phenomenon that has punctuated the Earth’s history.
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The Earth’s paleomagnetic field: The laboratory seeks to further our
understanding of the temporal and spatial evolution of the Earth’s
geomagnetic field, its geometry, direction and intensity, across all
time scales from historic periods to 3.5 billions of years.
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Sediment magnetism and the environment: Iron oxides and other
iron-bearing minerals are tracers of a rocks geological history.
Characterizing and determining the origin of iron-bearing minerals
is primordial to all paleomagnetic but can also bring important
information about changes to the environment and climate in which
evolved the rock or sediment formation.
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Paleogeography and paleoclimate: The Earth has experienced several
major climate events over its history (e.g. Snowball Earths, the
Great oxidation Event, …). A complex history that the laboratory
attempts to untangle by decoding climate records with paleomagnetic
and rock magnetic data, as well as climate and geochemical models.
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Plate tectonics and geodynamics: The geometry of the geomagnetic
field and its fossilization in rock and sediment records enables to
trace the positions of continents and oceans in the past, thus to
study the history and dynamics of global plate movements from
Precambrian times to the present. Continental drift, which is an
expression of mantle convection, opens the door to global scale
geodynamics studies inclusive of all the terrestrial envelopes.
