Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-157). / by Edward Paul Dever. / Ph.D.

Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 2007. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 30). / The mechanism responsible for the formation of the Siberian Flood Basalts (SFB) has yet to be discovered and adequately quantified. One theory proposes that thinning of the lithosphere due to delamination triggered the eruption. This model is characterized by a drip of denser material within the mantle, and because it involves a density-driven process, calculations of predicted gravity at the surface can be used to test the model. Temperature, composition, and stress output from the delamination model presented in Elkins-Tanton (2007) were used to calculate predicted gravity measurements at the surface. These predictions were then compared to gravity observations of the SFB, focusing on the potential eruptive center at Noril'sk. Model runs in both Cartesian and axisymmetric coordinates were analyzed, and each run predicted a negative anomaly over the site of the drip with a magnitude ranging from 20 to 50 mGal. In the observations, an average radial gravity profile centered on Noril'sk also contained a slight negative anomaly at the center, suggesting partial agreement with the delamination theory. Because the amplitude of the observed gravity anomaly is substantially smaller than the predicted amplitude, the qualitative agreement is encouraging, but not definitive. / by Margaret A. Rosenburg. / S.B.

Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 30-31). / The Solar-Stellar Spectrograph (SSS) Project includes frequent observations of 30 - 50 Sun-like stars to address a wide variety of questions regarding the nature of stellar magnetic activity cycles. The magnetic activity cycles of 18 stars in the SSS project are analyzed using the Lomb Scargle method of least-squares spectral analysis. Periodograms reveal that out of 18 stars, 9 stars have one magnetic cycle and 6 stars have two magnetic cycles, with periods ranging from 2 years to 17 years. The remaining stars show significant variability but without pronounced periodicity. Most of the detected cycles have a false alarm probability (FAP) well below 10-3 The results for a number of stars are compared and confirmed with earlier observations by Mount Wilson Observatory's project, published by Baliunas et. al. (1995). Four more stars are added to the plot of activity cycle period - rotational period relation by Bohm-Vitense (2006), and they all lie on either the active sequence or the inactive sequence. This result, together with the fact that several stars have two different cycles lying on different sequences, lends more evidence to the hypothesis that stars have multiple dynamos but are dominated by one of them. / by Duy Anh N. Doan. / S.B.

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