International Research Fellowship Program: Flow Focusing in Volcanic and Hydrothermal Systems: Experiments and Theory

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0602101KatzThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Richard F. Katz to work with Dr. Grae M. Worster at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.Their project involves flow focusing in volcanic and hydrothermal systems. Volcanoes and sea-floor hydrothermal vents erupt fluids with effects that are both devastating and critical for life on Earth. Their existence requires the transport of a hot fluid across a cold layer with very little loss of heat. This transport may be achieved by localizing fluid flow from a broad, diffuse source region to focused flow channels. An important question in understanding volcanoes and sea-floor hydrothermal vents is how this localization occurs. The PI and host hypothesize a mechanism of focusing in which cooling and precipitation by slowly rising fluid locally reduces permeability, redirecting flow into narrow channels. In these channels fluid moves rapidly and hence avoids cooling and precipitation. To test this hypothesis they propose a set of physical experiments and numerical simulations. It is expected that the process of fluid localization is a reactive--dynamic instability that, once understood, can be characterized with simple theory and established mathematical tools. Investigating the physics of hydrothermal vents will help us to understand how this reactive system may have hosted the emergence of life on this planet. The predicted existence of such hydrothermal systems on other planets would be an intriguing lead into the search for life beyond Earth.