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Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus

Norman Sleep

Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus
I apply heat and mass transfer to physical processes within the Earth. I maintain interest in geodynamics and its applications to the modern Earth and conditions for the origin of life on the young Earth and Mars. I am concentrating on the microphysics of friction and nonlinear seismology. I am currently applying the results to nonlinear attenuation and ground damage by strong seismic waves. I have developed a self-consistent rheology for faults that are dynamically weakened by heating of real contact asperities. I am developing flow-law alternatives to the traditional geotechnical approach with Masing Rules and testing it with real data. I am also examining the records from the Denali earthquake for interaction of high frequency S waves with the low-frequency near-field velocity pulse

Education

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Geophysics (1973)
M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Geophysics (1969)
B.S., Michigan State University, Geology and Mathematics (1967)