Unveiling the cores

As you read this, I'll be at Stanford University, where scientists in the San Andreas fault drilling project are showing off some of the rocks they retrieved from deep underground where earthquakes are born. Here's a preliminary picture gallery of this historic occasion, including a closeup shot of the core. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The press conference was attended by several TV crews and radio reporters as well as my colleagues from the print/online media. Six core sections were presented, and it was a great privilege to behold these precious samples from the plate boundary with my own unmediated eyes. The key finding, which the three chief scientists did their best to explain, is the presence not just of serpentinite, which was already known from drill cuttings in 2005, but of fresh serpentinite in active gouge. It is testimony that the fault zone is a place of constant, active mixing and not a sector that gets "tired." On the other hand, I didn't see a full spectrum of mixing, from round clasts to stretched clasts to wisps. But then, I only eyeballed a couple of cores. The active fault zone at this site consists of at least three zones of cataclasis (grinding) totaling about 3 meters in width. Now I'll start beefing up the picture gallery.

And as I post this, Alicia Chang of the Associated Press has put a story online.

UPDATE II: My photos from the press conference are added to the gallery. I got to shoot photos of the uncovered cores from inches away. Tomorrow I'll write up something more organized. After the press conference, I drove up in the hills to visit the fault itself, walking the earthquake trail at Los Trancos Open Space Preserve above the city of Palo Alto—and the rest of the Bay area—on a lovely autumn day. Look for new photos tomorrow in the Northern San Andreas Fault photo-tour.

_{Even seismologists like Bill Ellsworth talk with their hands — Geology Guide photo}