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On the history and culture of geophysics, and science in general

University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.

Email cll@utulsa.edu or Web site http://ens.utulsa.edu/cll/ChrisLiner.html

"...I am coming to Princeton to do research, not to teach. There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools. The only rational way of educating is to be an example—if one can't help it, a warning example."
—Albert Einstein (A letter to a young girl. Published in Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Quierdo Velag, 1934.)
Editor's note: Dr. Liner is a faculty member in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Tulsa and author of the books Elements of 3-D Seismology (Pennwell, 1999), and Greek Seismology available free from Samizdat Press. When not engaged in the serious business of teaching and research, he can often be caught playing with computers and reading really old books.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	Earth Surgery

 
Worlds of medicine and petroleum converge
How ideas from the operating room lead desert researchers to smarter drilling and more profits
ALBUQUERQUE (March 14, 2004)—Terry Johnson is a happy man. From a building in the New Mexico desert, he watches a bank of four flat panel computer screens which transport him half a continent away—300 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. But the view is not live-feed television from a helicopter or drilling rig, it is an amazing image of rock layers deep in the earth.

With 3-D seismic technology, scientists have been able to create windows into the earth for many years. But this is different: The view is continuously updated to give a better and better estimate of what is down there.

Dr. Johnson, an MIT graduate, and a world-wide internet-linked team are pioneers of a technology inconceivable even two years ago.

"The idea came to me when a friend was diagnosed with a small brain tumor," Johnson recalls. "She underwent a process called image-guided surgery. Once I saw it, the application to petroleum exploration was obvious. And I am glad . . . [Full Text of this Article]