Materials in Extreme Environments

Most of the material in the Earth and other planets exists under extremes of pressure and temperature quite unlike those we inhabit on the surface of the Earth. Steve Jacobsen is a mineral physicist who studies how rocks and minerals behave under such alien conditions. In the podcast, we discuss his experiments and what we’ve learned about three extreme environments: the core-mantle boundary, the mantle transition zone, and the surface of the Moon. Jacobsen is a Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. The image shows him in his optical spectroscopy lab, where extreme conditions found throughout the solar system are re-created.

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Materials in Extreme Environments is an episode from Geology Bites By Oliver Strimpel by Oliver Strimpel.

This episode is 00:35:41 long.

This episode was published on Apr 15, 2026.

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