Magmas with different compositions widely exist in Earth and some other terrestrial planets (e.g., Moon, Mars), and play an important role in planets' differentiations. They are the major agent to transfer heat and chemical species either to the planet's surface or to the deep interior, depending on their buoyancy (density contrast) with the surrounding solid mantle.

For our own planet Earth, deep melts could be generated at various depths by various processes (e.g., dehydration melting, redox melting, etc.), and the composition of these melts could be silicate, carbonate or even metallic. Detecting these melts at depths often relies on seismic observations, which in turn requires us to know the acoustic behaviors of these melts at pressure (P)-temperature (T) conditions corresponding to the Earth's interior.

However, measuring physical properties of melts under extreme conditions is not an easy task. During my PhD, I took a lot of effort to develop techniques for melt sound velocity and density measurements at high P-T conditions combined with state-of-the-art synchrotron techniques. These "fancy" techniques are briefly presented below. Despite the challenging nature of these experiments, I was able to determine the sound velocity for both silicate melts and carbonate melts at high P-T conditions for the FIRST TIME EVER, which is really exciting!!! 😊These results can help us better understand the stability, transport of deep melts and their effects on seismic observations. Please check out the links below for more details on results for melts of different compositions and their implications for our planet evolution!