a Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences, University 6 of Notre Dame, 156 Fitzpatrick Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, United States b Department of Earth Sciences, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE, UK c Chemistry Division, Nuclear and Radiochemistry, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MSJ514, Los Alamos, NM 87545, United States d IVA — Earth Sciences — Petrology Department, Vrije ...

Optical microscopy is a very unique tool to find out about the structural order of carbonaceous materials and coal by-products. It has two main utilization ways as an instrument to distinguish and quantify different phases in a polished surface and as a record of the reflectance of a given material. Using one or both capabilities there are significant contributions to different aspects of coal ...

Three advances of the previous half-century fundamentally altered petrology, along with the rest of the Earth sciences. Planetary exploration, plate tectonics, and a plethora of new tools all changed the way we understand, and the way we explore, our natural world. And yet the same large questions in petrology remain the same large questions. We now have more information and understanding, but ...