 The One O'Clock Block, I'm Jay Finder. This is ThinkTex's research in Minoa, where we find out what the scientists are doing up there. And today we're going to talk about, I call it, it's all about magnetism, research in Minoa, paleo magnetism, lessons from Earth's magnetic field. But it goes beyond that. And our primary guest is Dr. Emilio Herrera Bervera. And he is one of the most magnetic personalities I have ever met in geoscience. You'll see what I mean. I'm not kidding. Welcome to the show. I am a walking magnet. That takes you to what I am. Right? If you want to define a magnetism in human bodies, that way. We're going to talk about that. Okay, next to him we have Carl Jörniker. Gerst Niker. Gerst Niker. No, Gerst Niker. Gerst Niker. It's a mouthful. I remember that, too. And he's a student in what? Geoscience in... Yes, master student at the University of Hawaii. Master student in geoscience. You guys know each other, actually, yeah? Of course. I just want to check up on that, yeah? So we're going to talk about magnetism today. And, you know, the interesting thing that we should start with is that paleo magnetism, because paleo magnetism can teach us about the past, right? And teach us amazing things, not only long-term things, but relatively short-term things. But how do you learn about the past using magnetism? That sounds like a long way to go. What kind of technology actually does that? Okay, what we are actually doing is we're studying the magnetic minerals in rocks, right? I'm talking about all kinds of rocks that we have in nature. So we can go from the contemporary type of rocks. I'm talking about lava flows that have been erupted in the past few days. And then we can go back, more or less, to about four billion years. There are rocks that have been found, for example, in Canada that probably they retain the original magnetism when the lava, for example, were erupted. This reminds me of a show we once had about computers. And we got a call from some guy. And he said, you're talking about computers, but I need to know about electricity. Can you tell me about electricity? So, you know, it's a parallel, but what is magnetism? Am I ideal? Basically, it's not really that simple to define that. The war was actually coined from the island of Magnesia. It started doing that kind of, you know, definition of it. And magnetism basically is when you have something like an object that could be basically a lodestone or something metallic that has two different charges, right? One positive and negative, right? So this is basically producing what is called a magnetic moment and it's a dipole. Okay, so it has to be metallic. Yeah, it's not necessarily red. Can I have something that's magnetic, that has no metal in it? No, yeah. Well, it has iron and it has oxygen. Those are the ferro and ferromagnetics, okay? But it could be iron and sulfur, right? So those are basically things that... It's a combination of... Yeah, it's a combination of... But there's always iron. There's always iron involved in... And this piece of material, whatever it is, has to be charged at somewhere along the line to have the magnetism. Yeah. How do these magnetic objects get charged? It's basically the atomic structure, right, of the combination of oxygen and iron that actually produce this atomic combination that is actually carrying the magnetism of some of this material. And how long does, you know, a piece of material from way back went from paleo days, how long does it keep that charge? Billions of years. Really? Right, so it depends upon the grain sizes. You know, how small these magnetic domains are. If you have very, very small type of sizes, these are called superparamagnetic, and the magnetism is, you know, some sort of a short-term. But when you're talking about other materials that have a different type of magnetic grain sizes, single domain, multi-domain, pseudo-single domain, then you're talking about relaxation times of billions of years. This is a very good question because, for example, all the oceanic crusts of the Earth, of the planet, carries magnetism. And how long is it going to be the magnetism actually holding there, right? So you're talking about in this particular case, because of that magnetic grain sizes, or those magnetic grain sizes of these particles, that they will be there for billions of years. Well, are they ever there, like, forever? For infinity? In other words, they never do two-year-age? No, no, no. They always do two-year-age. Yeah, they suffer, for example, a low-temperature oxidation. Some others, they suffer what is called a high-temperature oxidation. That's one of the things. But compared to our lifetime, right? You know, a human being, you know, will live up to maybe 78, 80, my dad died a couple of years ago, and he was 98 when he died. This is basically the historic time that people relate to when you're talking about how all these hold. So 100 years compared to four billion years, you're talking about, you know, a tremendous amount of time, right? That's essentially one of the scales. Now, I can read magnetism. Yes. What do I need to read magnetism in a given object? Well, you need to actually take that particular type of material. And when we're talking about materials, we're talking about, for example, the hard drive of your computer. Sure, sure. It's not going to last a billion years. I'm telling you that. Okay, yeah. So you can have the hard drive of your computer, but you can also have other things like, for example, a bio-magnet. Right? What is a bio-magnet? It's a bacteria that, you know, can actually swing from one polarity to another polarity, for example. You can have a rock. How do you read it? You have a machine. You know, it scans things and tells you how much magnetism. Yeah, basically what you do with this kind of thing is you have some measuring devices. This is basically one of the things that we're trying to do today in the 21st century, that we know the magnetism has been there for many years, but also the techniques of actually reading that signal coming from these objects, now they have improved so much that we have now instruments that can go and measure things like, for example, the magnetism of our hair. Right? We're talking about a hair. Basically, you're talking about 60 micro meters. Has magnetism? It could be. Well, this suggests that a magnetic charge is essentially a storage device, like for energy. Exactly, yes. So you could, if you could figure out how to take something that will take a lot of energy and you could charge that up. You have a battery that could be very efficient. We're not talking about energy, you know, when you actually try to decipher the past history of the Earth, then you have to go to rocks because the history of the rocks is basically recorded by the rocks in the oceanic crust. Okay. So we're talking about going, you know, for the present configuration of the continents, we're talking about you can go back 180 million years, right? You would take. Right? So more or less, 180 million years. But if you actually try to understand how the continental masses have been actually placed, you know, these paleogeographic reconstructions, then you can go to probably 1.5 billion years, or even longer than that. Let me shift to Carl. Yeah. Because we only have a few minutes left in this segment. Carl, I assume that you know at least a fair part of what Emilio knows about this subject, yeah? Well, I just thought... And if you're wrong, he can correct me. Good. Yeah. I really had a awakening when I took this class to... I've already noticed in other classes that I'm kind of using it to solve problems. It's just another tool for the geologist. Geologist, but you know, you were talking before about biomagnetism. That's not geology, is it? That's chemistry. No, no, really. I mean, it's a soft feel of magnetism that basically we're talking about. But I mean, what that suggests to me, and this may be outside the notion of paleomagnetism, of course, but is that the magnetic charge in your hair, or in the other parts of your your biome, so to speak, have an effect on you. They're not operating in a vacuum. The charge in your hair may have an effect on your skin or some other organ. And so there is a biological phenomenon happening here, which, I don't know if that's within your science, but it sounds very interesting to be able to see relationships of pieces of your biology in terms of magnetic effect, cause and effect. Yeah, well, they are several, let's say chapters of these biomagnetic type of understanding and knowledge. One of the things we are doing in our class, for example, is to understand how we get, for example, some of the magnetic particles that are in the environment in the lower part of our lungs or in the middle part of our lungs. Is that good for you? No, no, on the contrary, on our brain. So one of the things that we actually we are studying in our class and the laboratory is that, for example, we need to take samples of the tailpipe of our car. Right? And you say, how? Well, you know, you can dust off the tailpipe or you can get, for example, a toilet paper, you know, that type of tissue and you go there and try to get some of these magnetic particles onto the paper, right? So what you do with this kind of thing, you go to the laboratory and you measure, you know, supposedly the magnetism of these particles. And we have done that and it's amazing because there is a very strong magnetic signal coming from these things. Carl, you've been working with this too. Yeah, the environmental magnetism and that's kind of where the link is with the human body and the geology side because we're using the exact same equipment that we process, you know, rock samples with but instead, in this regard, we're looking at brake pad dust, we're looking at your exhaust, even stuff that your vacuum cleaner picks up because this is all basically magnetic pollution that you don't realize because that brake pad just disappears as you drive and no one thinks a thing of it. What's magnetic? Just for the record, what is magnetic pollution? Well, okay, so okay, this is a very good question because what the other thing that happens is that people do not really realize that we have, for example, their condition in here. So they are particles that are actually raining on our heads, right, because of the entire A-conditioning system of the building and then we have to go with the size of these particles. So we have, you know, very small particles, right, like viruses, bacteria and many other things. A virus or a bacteria could actually have a charge? They could have a charge and I'm going to go back to what Carl was saying about the brakes. So what basically happens is that you go there, pick up some of these pieces from the tailpipe or your brakes, you know, the brake pads, and then you go to the instruments and you measure the magnetism of these kind of things, even though they are very, very small, you know, you're talking about a hair, the diameter of hair is about 60 micrometers, but they are something called PM Particular Matter, this is about 10 and then 2.5. So these kind of things, they go up in the atmosphere, you know, the cars are actually expelling that kind of stuff and you're going to say, where are they coming from? They are coming from the engine that is breaking down. I love this. This is great. We're living in a world of magnetism. I suppose you can see the whole thing in terms of magnetism. I suppose this class has changed your way of looking at things, Carl. Yes, yeah. And it really kind of baffles you when you step back and you realize that a brand new set of tires has like an extra half inch of tread on it and you don't think a thing of it and you get a new set of tires and then when you start looking at how much rubber that is, it's incredible how much stuff just you don't even think of. Does this suggest that you could have a sort of magnetic signature that, you know, an object would be unique for the way its magnetic field works and the particles in it and the configuration of those particles, so that you can say based on a magnetic signature this object is different from all the other objects in the world and I can look at it magnetically. Indirectly, yes, you can do that. But one of the things that we are trying to do is basically study the magnetic grain sizes or these kind of things from the engine. Yeah. And when you determine that there is magnetism in this tiny thing of particles, what happens? I know what happens. I know what happens. What happens? You take a break. Oh, okay. Carl, thank you for being with us. Thank you. That's Carl. Let me say this right. Gersnecker? Yes. Okay. Who is a student, a master's student in geoscience at HIGP. Don't get up. We're not done yet. That's okay. That's Emilio Herrera-Bivera and he is going to be with us in the next segment so he's going to put his microphone back on right after this break. What an exciting show this is. Okay. We have additional guests now. We have, to Emilio's left, Vanessa Lopez. Hi, Vanessa. Hi. And we have Brian Suley. Suley. Suley. Okay. Also from SOES, the School of Oceanology and Science and Technology, and HIGP, the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planning. Why? What are you guys doing there anyway just so we can compare you with Carl? Well, I'm a student. I'm an undergraduate student of geophysics and I've taken Emilio's class to learn more about paleomagnetism and the effects of magnetism on the earth and the human bodies. It was introduced to me at the beginning of the class. As you spoke earlier, we were talking about the biomagnetism within our bodies that we have been working on and it's really interesting. You know, this is something- Working in that area. Working in that area. What are you learning about that? Vanessa, what about you? I'm doing the same thing. I'm an undergrad in geology and geophysics and I'm really excited about paleomagnetism. So that excitement that you both seem to have, is that going to lead to a graduate degree in geophysics? Are you writing this down, Emilio? Yeah. You may know him a long time. Are you going to be doing geophysics in your graduate work? Yes. Planning on doing research about it. Yeah. So is this a class for undergraduates you're talking about? It is a class that is classified as GG, Geology, and Geophysics 651. But both undergraduates and graduate students actually take it. Oh, the same class. Yes. There is another student that is not here. I don't know why he probably couldn't make it. But that student and Carl, they are graduate students and these two students are undergraduate students. But I have to say something here also in addition to this kind of thing. We're not only studying this type of environmental magnetism. We are actually studying rocks. You know, we are actually drilling a section at Macapool Point. And basically the idea is to determine how the magnetic field of the earth is actually changing. Okay. Can we talk about that? Yes. Okay. So we have a rock. I give you a rock, Emilio. And you have your special things that can tell the magnetism in the, I guess, the molecules of the rock or the atoms, whatever it is in the rock. Yeah. And you can get a whole picture of the rock, a map if you will, of the rock and the magnetism and all this. More or less. How do you get from there to paleo-magnetism? Okay. Essentially what you basically, let me tell you the background of this kind of thing. I wrote a proposal to the National Science Foundation. The proposal basically was to study one of the sections of the Koala Volcano. The Koala Volcano was like this, right? And basically one of the reasons why this flank of the volcano collapsed and went into the ocean is because of the stiffness of the lava. You know, they were erupted very fast. And then there's a lot of dikes injected into the system and then the volcano collapsed. Yeah. And the pieces of the volcano are out there. They travel about 250 kilometers in one shot. So this actually creates a very unique condition because once the volcano is collapsed, then you have the innards of the volcano exposed, like, for example, at Macapoo Point. Yeah. If you go to Macapoo Point and you stand up there, you say, well, it looks like that part of the volcano is actually missing. Yeah. But the beauty of that kind of thing is it is actually leaving the lavas, you know, the inside of the volcano right there exposed. So those lavas are ideal for sampling because you have them there, right there. It's like a pancake one after another, huh? So you take Macapoo or the volcano began. So you have to look at samples of rocks from various places in the structure? Well, let me explain about that. What basically happens is I told the students, OK, why don't we just go there, all of us? Yeah. And I have a portable drill. It's a rock drill, right? So we go to the lowest lava flow, you know, the one at sea level. And then we have to actually take samples with the rock drill. You've got to take about at least 10 of these samples. OK. Not very big. No, they are just basically one inch. One inch. One inch. And the length of them is about two or three inches. And the lava? The lava sample, you cut them off. Yeah. Then you take them to the laboratory before you actually take them out of the outcrop. Yeah. You have to mark them, you know, with the orientation relative to it. You guys doing this? Yes. No, we have done it. We've already did that. We've already done it. You're doing it with the tailpipes, too? Yes. OK. Tailpipes and lava. I got it. Tailpipes breaks, you know. And they don't have us. Right? And the residue that I vacuumed out of my room for that biological matter, so yes. Yeah. Those kind of things that he's talking about, they are very important because people don't realize that when you have here, for example, this carpet, it is full of all these bacteria and viruses that came from the air conditioning. Yeah. And you have them there, and you are actually putting them in our system. Yeah. You spoke of environmental magazines. Is that what you mean by environment that's all around us? Yes. But going back to the rocks, right? So you take about 10 of these samples because you have to have some sort of statistics done on them so you can calculate the mean declination and inclination and the intensity. It is a vector. So you take these samples, you cut them off, and you take them to the laboratory, and then you measure the magnetism in them, of each one of them. Yeah, but don't you lose a lot of information when you take them from different places and you don't remember exactly where you took them from? No, no, no, no. There's not such a thing. I mean, you go to the field, you have a notebook, right? And you write down, okay, this is lava flow number one, sample one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And then you move up, you know. So you know pretty much where they came from. Yeah. To the next lava flow, you can even take a picture. The separation or the distance between the first lava flow and the second lava flow could be two, three meters or could be, you know, the adjacent lava flow up on top of this one. So you do this kind of thing. You take all these kind of things in the laboratory. You measure the magnetism. The idea basically is you measure the magnetism of this lava flow down and down and down and down. I can tell you right now from the sea level, you know, a part of the section to the top, you know, there's a lighthouse. If you go to Macapoo, we're talking about 200 meters in terms of the vertical distance. Yeah. They are about 400 lava flows that were erupted by the volcano. Overtime. Overtime. Okay. But there's another component that is extremely important. We have this pancake, right? So determine the magnetism. But then there's a friend of mine. He is from Wisconsin. And they have a laboratory where they can tell you the date of the timing of the emplacement of the rock. From the magnetism. No. They are using argon-argon isotope. Okay. Those system altogether. Another way of reading the rock. This is basically what is called radiometric things. So now I know the magnetism and the age. So what do I do with all that? Okay. You have all these kind of things that now I need to know how the magnetic field is actually changing over time, right? Is it going from a normal polarity to a reverse polarity, normal to intermediate type of configuration of the field to a reverse? Okay. So you reconstruct the past history of that particular section. Okay. I'm going to go to your students now. He's a great teacher by the way. I want to join your class. So now you have the dating. And you have the magnetism. And you have it all in a place somewhere, maybe on a website or a spreadsheet. What is that going to... And you can figure out how it's degrading. The magnetism is degrading or changing over time. What we do is we take these samples and we go back. So what is the aha moment in all of this? I'm asking them. Yeah. And you don't have to grade them on this, okay? No. But unless you want to. No. Okay, all right. So what we do is we go back and we grind up particles and we can check for the curie points to check to see if we have magnetite in them, the pure magnetite. What is magnetite? It is a magnetic particle that is found in all rocks. Okay. It's a magnetic mineral. Mineral. I mean, my apologies. And it's also found in animals, in their brains. Like you can take a human being and... Human bodies. I mean, human bodies. Yes. But it's in animals and that's what allows them to naturally turn to the north and be able to migrate. So Vanessa, how much of what he said do you agree with? More or less. But that's your question. We correlate to the magnetic chronostatography. We will be able to tell in the geological time scale. You can relate the findings to what... So what's the paper on this? I'm going to write for the journal Science. What's the topic? Okay. What's the article that I want to write here? Yeah. The article that we're going to be actually... There is one. Okay. All right. There will be one. No, no, no. Let me tell you something. We have the grant from the National Science Foundation. And the number one priority and our obligation is to produce and writing the results. Remember one thing, and they know that it is not science until it's published. So you know, because if I ask you or any one of you, what is this and then you tell me, you know, that it doesn't have any meaning, right? But if we actually publish the results of our research, then that is... It's clear right here. Then yeah, that's all right. So the idea basically is that you go see how these things are changing. And I can tell you one thing. Many years ago, you know, I was trying to investigate the magnetic field of the Earth in that place. And I told the students. So we thought that the age of the Macapuz section was 1.8 million years old. That means that lava flows were erupted at 1.8. Okay. And layers. Layers, right? So they took a sample from the lava flow. Now going to the... From the bottom of the section to the top, they took several, you know, samples for radiometric dating. We came up with ages that were totally completely all there with respect to what it was reported in the literature. So our ultimate goal of this is to do the magnetics and then the dating. So we can actually tell, you know, how many reversals, if any. So you get a sort of dynamic picture of how this land was created. Well, that's basically... That's another aspect of the research. Right? So what we need to do is to understand the growth, the evolution of Hawaiian volcanoes. Yeah. Once we write the paper, you know, it's going to revolutionize the understanding of the growth of the volcanoes here in Hawaii because the Macapuz section, it is not 1.8 million years old, but it's older. You know, at 9 meters from sea level, the age is 2.61. So that means that the bottom of the section is even older than that. So now we know that the Kola volcano from sea level 1 all the way to the top is about the history of... or recorded as a magnetic field coupling with the radiometric dating. We're talking about 400,000 years of eruptions. Okay, Brian, can you summarize the show for me, if you don't mind? Summarize the show. What do we learn here today? What we learn here today is the fact that the volcanoes here on the Hawaiian islands are older than they are and that the Earth's magnetic field has been migrating over a period of existence here that it's been around and also that there's a lot of magnetic pollution in the environment that we don't pay much attention to that's killing us. That's the most interesting thing to me. It's not just Macapu. It's my lungs. No, no, no. But let me tell you something. We can go one step further. It has been found that in the brain of human beings, we have some of these tiny tiny particles the size of the... And they're damaging. Well, there is a very recent paper saying that there is a direct relationship between the magnetic grain sizes of these particles and Alzheimer's disease. Okay, we got to go. But Vanessa, I wanted to ask you, what do you think of Emilia as your teacher? He's a great teacher. He's a great guest here in the show. I can tell you that. Well, thank you very much. Emilia, Vanessa, Brian and Carl was here a little while ago. It really is a mind-boggling thing what you're doing. It opens all kinds of new thoughts in my mind anyway. Thank you so much, you guys. Thank you. Aloha.