New laser technique allows analysis of smaller geological samples

Ars Technica : Analyzing sediment and ice cores has usually required removing chunks of material and taking them to a laboratory for study. One form of chemical analysis involves lipid molecules, which aren’t easy to measure with the necessary precision. Now a group of researchers led by Lars Wörmer of the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen in Germany has developed a method using lasers that can get much more detailed results from much smaller samples of material. When aimed at a sample, the laser stirs up microscopic clouds of molecules that can then be analyzed by a mass spectrometer. In a side-by-side comparison with traditional techniques, the laser method not only showed comparable results but also detected more detail, such as the fact that sea surface temperatures appear to vary more in the short term than was previously believed. Next the researchers hope to turn their laser technology onto other organic molecules in sediment in order to learn even more about past climates and ecosystems.