• Question: What is the strangest / most interesting thing you found by accident?

    Asked by rustygear to Laura, Angus, Christian, Hannah, Simon on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by latras303, biskinkiki1234.
    • Photo: Laura Roberts Artal

      Laura Roberts Artal answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      In some of the rocks I’m working on at the moment, I’ve found that they are able to change the orientation of the magnetic field within in them on their own, due to some funky chemistry and physics that happens inside the rock. It’s a difficult process to understand and it doesn’t happen very often at all, so I was super excited to see it in my rocks! I wasn’t looking for it, so it was something I happened to find by accident!
      I’m doing some experiments as we speak to check that I am not wrong!

    • Photo: Simon Holyoake

      Simon Holyoake answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      I have done some work with microbiologists, injecting bacteria into rocks where they grow into layers called ‘biofilms’

      I was asked to look at what we thought was electronic noise on the pressure transducer output, but was able to identify that it was caused by the bacteria! they were building up until they blocked the cracks in the rock completely, then the fluid pressure built up and built up, until it flushed the bacteria out again, then the bacteria started growing again

      it was certainly not something we expected to see!

    • Photo: Christian Maerz

      Christian Maerz answered on 22 Jun 2013:

      A really old piece of amber I found in a Polish quarry.

Comments