Noah Fay is studying the causes of geologic change.

“The mountains were beautiful,” Fay said. “I found myself wondering, all those miles in the car, ‘How did they come to be?’”

He arrived at the University of Oregon in 2001 with that question in mind. Now, just one term away from a doctoral degree in geological sciences, Fay’s question has expanded into pages and pages of “better questions.”

Fay, who earned his bachelor’s degree in physics at the Eastern Michigan University, believes the most important skill he’s been taught at Oregon is how to refine his intuition as a scientist.

“Geophysics isn’t like physics or chemistry,” Fay said. “The data can be ambiguous, so I find I have to be more creative.”

Though the math itself is more straightforward, he explained, nature can complicate matters. “Earthquakes are a little experiment that the earth does for you,” he said.

Fortunately, being in Oregon provides UO students with access to some good natural laboratories. “The Western U.S. is one of the most active in making geology,” said Eugene Humphreys, Fay’s graduate advisor.

Humphreys shares Fay’s fascination with the land and with the same essential question: Why do mountains build and canyons expand? More specifically, the two researchers ask: Is geologic change caused by faults or the viscous processes underneath the plates?

Of course, this is not an either/or proposition. The extent to which each is a factor in mountain building is, Fay said, “Somewhere between 1 and 99 percent.”

Humphreys said, “It’s nature. It’s imperfect. It’s got a wide range of variables, so you’re constantly asking, ‘Is the theory wrong or did something else complicate it?’”

In their calculations, Fay and Humphreys aim to evaluate both the strength of geologic materials, such as the earth’s crust, as well as the forces deforming them. “We look at everything related to what a plate might be,” Humphreys said. With so many factors to consider, sometimes the results can only be expressed with a range rather than a number.

But the relative imprecision of nature’s experiments doesn’t bother Fay. In fact, his background in math and physics helps him create geologic models that he hopes will continue to narrow those uncertainties.

Fay’s recent research with Humphreys on the Salton block in Southern California was published in the April 2006 issue of Geology. In their article, they assert that the San Bernardino Mountains are not simply squeezed into being, but that the friction of lateral movement is an even more important factor for the range’s uplift. To demonstrate, Humphreys twisted a thick foam plate, inward and sideways.

But the geologists in the Humphreys lab aren’t “rock squashers.” That is, they don’t bring rock samples home and test how much force it takes to break them. Why not? Because it takes more force to break a rock in the lab than it does to break the same rock in the earth, said Humphreys. His lab is interested in answering the question of why.

“What we want is at great depths, not on the surface,” Fay said. “We can only infer about what we really want.”

And so, while other scientists drill one or two miles deep into the crust, Fay and Humphreys use the resulting rock data to create parameters for models that they believe more accurately represent all the forces at play. Fay tests his theories with what he calls his “imaginary rocks,” virtual mountains and movements that live only in the computer.

Those models have been the source of Fay’s most exciting moments in geology, but he said they’ve also been the source of some of his greatest frustrations. The computer code with which he meant to solve a problem often was the problem, said Fay, a self-taught programmer. And, in many cases, the answers would present themselves as soon as he looked away. “You can rip your hair out, hit your head. It just won’t work. Come back the next day and it’s the simplest fix.”

Humphreys’ mentorship style seems to encourage the surreptitious “a-ha.”

“Gene is subtle, not forceful or frank,” Fay explained. In Humphreys’ corner of Cascade Hall, scientific conversations tend to be more low-key and fluid.

“He’s always available with his ideas,” Fay said. “Always there to talk it through.”

As a result, posing the right questions has become easier, Fay said. Even his dissertation topic is a testament to that organic process. Though he wanted to study the region that inspired his initial interest in geophysics, Fay noticed that the Salton block in Southern California provided a convenient microcosm for the questions he wanted answered in that larger fault system.

“I’ve been learning how to ask questions that are answerable, or that lend themselves to testing somehow,” he said.

After graduating, Fay will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona, where Humphreys will also conduct research next year.

Reminded that his UO diploma will carry the motto “Minds Move Mountains,” Noah Fay smiled. “That sounds just about right.”

— JL