News

New publication: Researchers, including guest researcher Yuan Xie, and GFD Group members Attila Balazs and Taras Gerya proposed a new model for the formation and evolution of the Tibetan Plateau. This unique landscape is shaped by the interplay between subduction and collision processes, crustal deformation, magmatism and climatic forcing. The proposed new model of mantle delamination from the overriding plate provides another plausible explanation for the formation of magma-rich orogenic plateaus over Earth’s history. These results were published in external page Nature Geoscience.

How the Tibetan Plateau formed has remained a challenging puzzle for geoscientists. Our new paper presents a solution to this puzzle that is novel in its ability to potentially explain the geological history of the plateau and geophysical observations of the upper mantle beneath it.

New publication: In a paper published recently in the journal external page Science Advances, Julian Rogger, Taras Gerya from the GFD Group with colleagues from ETH and the University of Leeds argue that plants aren’t just passive participants in Earth’s climate cycle – they can play an important role in shaping it. “We could assume life is just reacting to changes, but it’s also possible it’s interacting with the system and regulates it,” Julian pointed out.

How the plant world shapes the climate cycle — Living fossils: 360 to 300 million years ago, tree-shaped ferns formed huge forests. Today they are mainly found in the humid tropics and subtropics.

New publication: Researchers, including ETH Professor Taras Gerya from the GFD Group, have proposed that plate tectonics, continents, and oceans are critical for fostering intelligent life on a rocky planet and estimated just how common such attributes may be. The team suggested that the lack of evidence of complex extraterrestrial life is due to the scarcity of planets hosting long-lived plate tectonics and an amalgam of watery and dry environments. These results were published in external page Scientific Reports.

Are we alone? — A step closer to solving the Fermi paradox: Finding evidence of complex life elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy hinges on locating rocky planets with plate tectonics and a mixture of landmasses and oceans.

05.09.2023 Kar Wai Cheng successfuly defended an awesome PhD! Very well done Kar Wai! All the best for your future career. We are going to miss you.

14.04.2023 Daniela Sofia Da Paz Bolrão defended her PhD! Very well done Daniela! All the best for your future career.

23.11.2022 Mingqi Liu defended his PhD! Congrats Mingqi! You will also rock California! All the best for your postdoc at USC.

07.10.2022 Anna Gulcher defended her PhD! Congrats Anna! No more secrets of the lower mantle for you. All the best in California!

17.09.2021 Jun Yan defended his PhD! Congrats to you Jun! All the best for your future job! We all miss you already!

06.2020 Antonio Manjón-Cabeza Córdoba defended his PhD! Great work Antonio! All the best in Oslo!

2020 Casper Pranger defended his PhD! Congrats to you Casper! All the best for your future job! We all miss you already!

07.2020. Jessica Munch defended her PhD! Well done Jessica! Subduction zones and surface processes have become so clear as never before. All the best in Davos! We miss your positive energy.

11.2019 Jana Schierjott defended her PhD! Well done Jana! Have fun in Australia!

10.2019 Claudio Petrini defended his PhD! Congratulations to you Claudio!

07.2019 Mara Arts successfuly defended her Master thesis! Well done Mara! Good luck for your PhD with Boris in Mainz! We are going to miss you.

05.2018 Congrats to Tim Lichtenberg for defending his PhD! Well done Tim! Have fun in Oxford now!

Tboy the brave — serious in any circumstances.

02.2018 Charitra Jain has now defended his PhD! Congrats to you CJ! ETH will never be the same without you here. All the best for your postdoc in Durham!

01.2018 Suzanne Atkins has now left our group for a postdoc in Lyon. Good luck to you Suzanne! The level of our english will significantly decrease without you...

12.2017 Paul Tackley is now AGU fellow! Congrats Paul!

27.10.2017 Ilya Fomin now defended his PhD! Congratulations Ilya! Lower mantle melting and melt segregation is now problem solved. Well done!

13.04.2017 Diogo Lourenco defended his PhD! Congrats to you Diogo! Melting and crust production in a global geodynamics code has no secrets for you.

Congratulations for your postdoc in UC Davis! We all miss you already!

24.02.2016 Giovanni Leone successfully defends his thesis "The Southern Polar Giant Impact hypothesis for the origin of the Martian dichotomy and the evolution of volcanism on Mars". Well done Giovanni.

19.02.2016 Ria Fischer successfully defended her thesis entitled "From early Earth Plume-lid tectonics to present day Plate tectonics: A high-resolution 3D numerical modelling approach". Congratulations Ria!