In the Earth sciences processes can only be understood in the context of the long timespans of Earth history. Processes to the human eye occur at often extremely slow rates and may affect large areas of the earth crust and mantle.
Quantification of timescales and rates of processes helps to provide an absolute framework for understanding how the Earth crust evolved. Ongoing research focuses also on understanding the conditions of formation of life in deep time, thermal evolution of rock during exhumation and subsidence, and using isotopes to characterize the provenance of materials in a range of contexts.
The argon geochronology laboratory’s innovative efforts in the field include the development of fluid inclusion dating by stepwise crushing minerals, the use of a quadrupole mass spectrometer for argon geochronology, scanhead laser sample heating, and most recently the application of a 5 channel dual collector multi-collector mass spectrometer for argon isotope analyses Through more than 20 years of operation the laboratory has worked on timescales research in the widest possible sense.
Current research foci: isotope provenance studies for studying the interaction between climatic forces and topographic evolution in active mountain belts, time scale calibration and paleo-climate studies, crust evolution during ultrahigh pressure metamorphism, dating of variations in earth magnetic field, volcano-stratigraphy, seamount studies.