Last night we had a great first 2007 Café Scientifique Syracuse. With about 40 people (with an unusually high proportion of students) squeezed into the sushi and cocktail bar at Ambrosia, my colleague Jeff Karson from the Earth Sciences department gave a tremendous talk titled Going Deep: Rocks, Fluids and Microbes on the Bottom of the Ocean.

Jeff is an expert on structural geology, studying, among other things, the tectonics of oceanic spreading centers. He does a lovely job of describing his work as the exploration of an alien landscape - the ocean floor - and talked about his “spaceship” - the mini submarine his group uses - and the robotic explorer drones, like the Hercules, above, that do some of the work.

The question and answer session was lively, as usual, with some excellent points raised by the audience. Jeff answered them all deftly, and commented on his view that funding agencies need to be less conservative, and be prepared to fund exploratory research more frequently, if we are to unlock the secrets of the deep ocean.

Now, just got to settle on a speaker for next month.