Mineral Magnetism: Providing New Insights into Geoscience Processes

Magnetic minerals are ubiquitous in the natural environment, and they are also present in a wide range of biological organisms, from bacteria to human beings. The last ten years have seen a striking improvement in our ability to detect and image the magnetization of minerals in geological and biological samples. These minerals carry a wealth of information encoded in their magnetic properties. Mineral magnetism (together with the related disciplines of rock magnetism, paleomagnetism, environmental magnetism, and biomagnetism) decodes this information and applies it to an ever increasing range of geoscience problems, from the origin of magnetic anomalies on Mars to quantifying variations in Earth’s paleoclimate.