I’m a scientist and my job is to look below the surface of the earth. One of the questions often asked of people working with what we call geophysical imaging is, “How deep can you see?” It’s a difficult question to answer of course, since one person’s “deep” is another person’s “shallow”, and what is deep to the archaeologist will barely scratch the surface for the planetary seismologist.

For my own part, I’m a “near-surface geophysicist”, interested in the physical properties of mat