Although seismic tomography evidence leaves no room for fully layered mantle convection, it is still arguable that over Earth's history convection has efficiently homogenized mantle composition. We first searched for remains of the early differentiation of the planet in the 3.8 Ga rocks from Isua, Greenland. A sensitive indicator is the extinct

Discovery of the true nature of the halo of the Galaxy has long been limited by the number of stars with available spectroscopy and photometry. This constraint will soon be lifted. While undertaking a thorough spectroscopic follow-up of ~ 1,000,000 extragalactic sources, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will ALSO obtain spectra of as many as ~

Slow earthquakes and afterslips prove that the Earth does not have just two response time scales, i.e. that of tectonic loading and that of regular earthquakes. A swarm of slow earthquakes, with time constants of the order of hundreds of seconds, has been detected by a laser interferometer below the Gran Sasso massif (Italy). We analyse and model

OSIRIS (Optical System for Imaging and low/intermediate-Resolution Integrated Spectroscopy) is an instrument designed to obtain images and low resolution spectra of astronomical objects in the optical domain (from 365 through 1000nm). It will be installed on Day One (middle of 2004) in the Nasmyth focus of the 10-meter Spanish GTC Telescope. This

We have determined the gravitational torque of a sample of 45 galaxies observed at K band with the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope. The results of this sample, combined with those for a sample of 30 galaxies previously analysed (Buta & Block 2001), show that the gravitational bar torque correlates only weakly with the optical bar type listed in the

We have analyzed six OB supergiants and one giant covering spectral types from O3 to B1 in the Galactic OB association Cyg OB2 by means of an updated version of FASTWIND (Santolaya-Rey et al. cite{sph97}) that includes an approximate treatment of metal line blocking and blanketing. This large coverage in spectral type allows us to derive a new