On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
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The formation of the Earth set the initial temperature and composition for its later evolution. The onset of plate tectonics and the generation of Earth’s magnetic field both depend on these initial conditions. Based on isotopic and geochemical observations, we know that the metallic core separated from the mantle silicates during Earth formation, when high-energy planetary collisions were building up its mass. However, we do not know how mixed metal and silicates were during, and after, each collision. Their chemical equilibration, and the resulting composition of the core and the mantle, depend on this mixing.
We investigate the fluid dynamics of planetary collisions in laboratory experiments. From our findings, we infer the efficiency of metal-silicate mixing within the forming Earth. Our results also indicate that the stratification in the present-day Earth’s core could be a vestige of the giant impact that formed the Moon.
