Palo Alto Colloquia
The Palo Alto Colloquia are a long-standing tradition of public outreach that deliver information about aerospace research and development to the local community. All presentations are given on Thursdays at 4:15 p.m. in the Lockheed Martin ATC Auditorium in Building 202 and last about an hour. Refreshments are available at 4:00 p.m. Visitors are welcome. Stop by to find out the latest details about some fascinating science! Next Event | Nov 12: GAS HYDRATES - UP CLOSE |
Ms. Laura A. Stern, U.S. Geological Survey  Gas hydrates, also called clathrate hydrates, continue to generate enormous interest as potential energy resources, as possible major players in global issues of climate and seafloor stability, as manufactured materials, as candidate repositories for carbon sequestration efforts, and as serious hazards for oil and gas drilling efforts and flow assurance issues.
To help characterize these widely occurring compounds, a group at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has developed novel methods for fabricating high-quality gas hydrate samples to use for testing material properties, formation and dissociation kinetics, and stability behavior.
This talk will provide an introduction to clathrate hydrates and an overview of work on these unusual materials, with special attention given to findings relevant to geotechnical issues.
For more information, visit http://energy.usgs.gov/other/gashydrates/gashydrates_learn.html.
Ms. Stern is a research geophysicist with the USGS in Menlo Park. She completed her BS and MS degrees in geology at Stanford University and joined the USGS full time in 1986. Her team’s work in investigating physical properties and strength characteristics of various Earth materials and planetary ices, including gas clathrate hydrates, was published as the cover report of Science in 1996, and they received the American Chemical Society’s Energy and Fuels Division R. A. Glen award in 1997.
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