“SEPTiM” project led by James Badro awarded ERC Advanced Grant

James Badro, leader of the Frontier project of LabEx UnivEarthS “Multidisciplinary investigation of the deep Earth”, has been awarded an ERC grant for the “SEPTiM” project on the solidification process of the Earth’s early mantle. The IPGP researcher describes the objectives of this multidisciplinary study.

The Earth formed gradually by accretion of larger and larger bodies, whose energetic impacts kept the planet globally molten for the first few hundred million years of its history. As it cooled, this magma-planet solidified into the solid mantle, whose present structure, composition and dynamics are inherited from these initial conditions.

We propose to elucidate this solidification process, and this transition from a molten to a solid mantle, in a multidisciplinary manner, combining high-pressure and high-temperature experimental petrology experiments, thermodynamic modelling, ab initio theoretical calculations and geodynamic numerical simulations.