A Rock Murder Mystery – What Happens Deep Beneath Earth’s Surface?
Channel: Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum
Date: 2023-01-25

A science movie designed and produced by:
Friedhelm von Blanckenburg, GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences Potsdam 
Wolfgang Dümcke, Filmbüro-Potsdam

An unbelievable crime is discovered in a storage facility. Rocks have been murdered! Detective Hercule Poirot takes up the investigation. He hires a group of international geo-researchers to search for the "suspects" in a drilling campaign in the spectacular landscapes of Chile. They find evidence of the crime in research laboratories - and present a surprising solution to the murder case. 

The film addresses a scientific question: how does weathering deep below the Earth's surface turn rock into soil? The four "suspects" (meaning processes) - fractures in the rock, water flow, chemical reagents, and microbes are seen in action in animations. However, they only serve as hypotheses that cannot be directly proven. They can only be shown to be false – just like an alibi in a criminal case. Watch the movie to see whether the researchers succeed.

The film was produced as part of the German-Chilean project "EarthShape – Earth Surface Shaping by Biota". Another video can be seen here: The Skin of the Earth - Where Life Meets Rocks

Lizenz: CC BY 4.0 Filmbüro Potsdam / GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
DOI: 10.48440/GFZ.3.3.2022.002