ERC StG 758199: NEw Window inTO Earth’s iNterior (NEWTON)

 

Project duration: 5 years

 

Budget: 1,466,030 euro

 

Disciplines: geodynamics, seismology, structural geology of the deep Earth

 

Objective:

The Earth's interior is mostly unaccessible to the direct observation because of the high pressures and temperatures present at depths. With this respect, seismic tomography (a non-invasive technique analogous to the computed tomography (CT) scan used in medicine) provides a 3D representation of the deep structures associated with the internal dynamics of our planet.

However, it has been recently highlighted how tomographic images are contaminated by artefacts generated by a widespread but often ignored phenomenon: seismic anisotropy. These artificial structures are undistinguishable from the real ones and consequently bias our understanding of the deep geodynamic processes and of those directly related and occurring at the surface.

NEWTON's principal goal is, thus, to remove the artificial structures by means of sophisticated numerical simulations aiming at better estimating the internal Earth's dynamics and the effects of seismic anisotropy on seismic tomographies. We expect that the new inversion techniques will allow generating new tomographic maps in which a true representation of the real structures will contribute to improve the deep exploration of our planet and our understanding of its internal dynamics.

 

SSD PI: GEO07

 

Research group: 1 PI, 4 Scholars (2 from Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, INGV – Sezione Bologna; 2 from USA Universities), 3 Post-docs, 3 PhDs