The "dream" experiment is actually the idea, or "dream", of Chuck Stelting, one of the administrators of the Chevron research program here at MIT. Once only his idea, the project has now taken on a life of its own. It has several objectives, not the least of which will be to understand in quantitative way the distribution material, both coarse and fine, in a turbidite-built submarine fan.

First, and probably most lofty, is that we hope to understand the fluid mechanical processes responsible for submarine channelization. Research (Imran et al., 1998*) has begun in this area, however, no fan has been built to date which is both large and multiple-bedded (i.e., more than 5 beds). It is thought that proper instrumentation and monitoring, the fluid mechanical characteristics associated with flow depostion and distribution will be realized.

Second, we hope to stochastically characterize the distribution of coarse (sandy) material in submarine fan. This has obvious consequences for the oil industry and benefits from the same careful monitoring.

Finally, it is hoped that we can understand how turbidity currents react to topography. This will be helpful in not only how these currents build up their own topography, but how they respond to other factors, such as tectonics.