A week or so ago I had the opportunity to take a tour of the drillship JOIDES Resolution. JOIDES means Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling. The ship had recently been renovated.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26661&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26944&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br />Here you can see powerful presses used to extract water from the core samples. We were told that the water samples are then analyzed looking for hydrocarbons. Should the ship breach an underground reserve of natural gas or petroleum there would be immense damage done.<br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26686&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br />This is the drilling floor, the red platform retracts to reveal the moon pool, the white column is where the drill shaft would be lowered.<br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26776&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br />This is the core receiving deck, the cores are about 9 meters long when extracted this is where they are cut to a manageable size.<br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26818&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br />Some core samples...<br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26884&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br />These monitors display data about each later in a core sample at actual size.<br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26914&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br />This device is a superconducting rock magnetometer used to measure the direction of the magnetic fields in the rock. This data can be used to determine age of the rock and provide insight to the periodic magnetic pole reversal that occurs.<br /><img src="http://www.andrewbarna.org/photos/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=26926&g2_serialNumber=2"/><br /><br />That's all for now...<br />-Andrew