Remembering James Elwood Brooks
Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: September 19, 2019 James E Brooks_Obituary
Alumna wins Emmy for NASA Coverage
Congrats to Dr. Sue Smrekar who received her Ph.D. in Geophysics from the SMU Department of Earth Sciences in 1990. She represented NASA last night at the Emmy's where they won 'Outstanding Original Interactive Program' coverage of the NASA In Sight mission to study Mars. READ MORE
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Ancient Marine Fossils Unearthed in Plano
NBC 5 Originally Posted: August 8, 2019 Construction workers in Plano unearthed ancient marine fossils from a time when the city was under the sea. Crews found the fossils while working on the future Plano police substation at McDermott Road and Robinson Road. Steve Stoler, with the city of Plano, said crews only dug about seven feet into the ground before they found the fossils in a single 50-pound rock. "I don't know how many people realize this: in ancient times, this was an ocean. When you dig into the limestone shelf, it's not uncommon to find sea creatures and sea shells," Stoler said. "At the time these rocks were deposited, about 85 million years ago, Plano was submerged under a large inland sea," said [...]
Heather DeShon, Dedman, study finds Fort Worth basin wastewater injection increases fault-slip potential
Journal of Petroleum Technology Originally Posted: August 7, 2019 The Barnett Shale might be a play of yesteryear for the US onshore industry, but the examination of a decade’s worth of recorded activity from the birthplace of the shale revolution yields new insight on the seismic impact of wastewater injection. Findings from researchers at the University of Texas (UT), Stanford University, and Southern Methodist University (SMU) reveal that wastewater injection in the Fort Worth Basin (FWB) of North Texas “significantly increases the likelihood for faults to slip” if not managed properly, according to a UT news release. To improve understanding of fault sensitivity, the team mapped 251 faults totaling more than 1,800 miles in combined length in the FWB. Those faults mostly extend from the [...]
New map outlines seismic faults across DFW region
EurekaAlert Originally Posted: July 24, 2019 DALLAS (SMU) - Scientists from SMU, The University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University found that the majority of faults underlying the Fort Worth Basin are as sensitive to forces that could cause them to slip as those that have hosted earthquakes in the past. The new study, published July 23rd by the journal Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA), provides the most comprehensive fault information for the region to date. Fault slip potential modeling explores two scenarios: a model based on subsurface stress on the faults prior to high-volume wastewater injection and a model of those forces reflecting increase in fluid pressure due to injection. None of the faults shown to have the highest potential for an [...]
Never-before-seen fossils from Angola were uncovered, thanks in large part to SMU’s Louis Jacobs
Watch: https://youtu.be/Mm_grZakY_Q
New power generation technology using waste heat from geothermal plants tested at SMU
Think GeoEnergy Originally Posted: June 13, 2019 A research project by the Geothermal Lab in SMU has sparked optimism for the use of PwrCor technology to generate additional power from ultra-low-grade heat typically discarded by geothermal facilities. Source GlobeNewswire The Geothermal Laboratory at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has just completed a research project that aims to use ultra-low-grade heat (150 °F to 250 °F) normally discarded by geothermal facilities to generate additional electricity. A central component of this project was the proprietary bottoming cycle technology of PwrCor, Inc., an advanced technology company that focuses on renewable energy solutions for Waste-to-Heat Power, Geothermal, and Solar markets. Based on the data compiled from 31 out of 73 US-based geothermal sites, an approximate 427 MWe can be generated [...]
Research shows Permian Basin sinkholes are growing
CBS7 Originally Posted: May 20, 2019 Research by geophysics has shown the Permian Basin may be booming economically, it’s also sinking physically. Wink is known for its massive sinkhole, but new research suggests that in the coming years that sight might not be so uncommon. It turns out wink isn’t the only spot prone to sinkholes. Researchers at Southern Methodist University have found points all over the Permian Basin where the ground is sinking at 5 to 53 centimeters every year. But why? CBS7 spoke to a Dr. Zhong Lu, a geophysics professor at SMU who has been studying sinkholes patterns in the Permian Basin. He explained the Permian Basin has a layer of salt below the ground surface and in many instances oil and [...]
Tiny Texas dinosaur finally has a name nearly 35 years after discovery in treasure trove of fossils
Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: April 4, 2019 About 120 million years ago, flocks of small dinosaurs bounded from plant to plant in an open floodplain southwest of what is now Fort Worth. They stood on two legs as they foraged for leaves and shoots. The smallest hatchlings were about the length of your hand, while the largest measured 9 feet from head to tail. “They were birdlike and very agile, slender, fast-running dinosaurs,” said Kate Andrzejewski, a postdoctoral fellow at Southern Methodist University and lead author of a highly anticipated new paper in the journal PLOS ONE that describes these creatures for the first time. The dinosaurs, which Andrzejewski and her colleagues named Convolosaurus marri, make up the largest trove of dinosaur fossils ever discovered in Texas. Convolosaurus means “flocking [...]