Mining minerals found 15,000 feet below sea level could help secure a low-carbon future, but at what cost? Researchers including Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, are racing to understand the environmental impact of deep-sea mining.
Professor Thomas Peacock is a member of the UN Global Compact Task Force urging coordinated international response for offshore and shipping industries.
A new field study reveals a previously unobserved fluid dynamic process that is key to assessing impact of deep-sea mining operations.
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
B.Sc.UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Ph.D.Professor Thomas Peacock is the Director of the Environmental Dynamics Laboratory (ENDLab) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He received his B.Sc.(Physics) from Manchester University and D. Phil. (Physics) from Oxford University. The mission of his research group, the Environmental Dynamics Lab (ENDLab), is to advance understanding of environmental fluid dynamic phenomena to address societal grand challenges, with a committment to education and outreach to inform policy makers and the general public. His group conducts field studies, laboratory experiments and modeling of environmental flows with an emphasis on ocean dynamics and transport. He received an NSF Career Award in Physical Oceanography and has been a PI on numerous ocean field programs for NSF and ONR sponsored projects, with recent studies in the Arctic Ocean, the Timor Sea, the South Chinas Sea and the Western Pacific. In recent years, he has established a research program at MIT studying scientific and societal aspects of deep-sea mining, with activities ranging from plume dynamic studies in the Pacific Ocean to the development of an international royalty payment regime for the International Seabed Authority.