SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the where-the-mother-lode-gives-birth? dept.
Geologists identify deep-earth structures that may signal hidden metal lodes
If the world is to maintain a sustainable economy and fend off the worst effects of climate change, at least one industry will soon have to ramp up dramatically: the mining of metals needed to create a vast infrastructure for renewable power generation, storage, transmission and usage. The problem is, demand for such metals is likely to far outstrip currently both known deposits and the existing technology used to find more ore bodies.
Now, in a new study, scientists have discovered previously unrecognized structural lines 100 miles or more down in the earth that appear to signal the locations of giant deposits of copper, lead, zinc and other vital metals lying close enough to the surface to be mined, but too far down to be found using current exploration methods. The discovery could greatly narrow down search areas, and reduce the footprint of future mines, the authors say. The study appears this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.
[...] The study found that 85 percent of all known base-metal deposits hosted in sediments-and 100 percent of all "giant" deposits (those holding more than 10 million tons of metal)-lie above deeply buried lines girdling the planet that mark the edges of ancient continents. Specifically, the deposits lie along boundaries where the earth's lithosphere-the rigid outermost cladding of the planet, comprising the crust and upper mantle-thins out to about 170 kilometers below the surface.
Up to now, all such deposits have been found pretty much at the surface, and their locations have seemed to be somewhat random. Most discoveries have been made basically by geologists combing the ground and whacking at rocks with hammers. Geophysical exploration methods using gravity and other parameters to find buried ore bodies have entered in recent decades, but the results have been underwhelming. The new study presents geologists with a new, high-tech treasure map telling them where to look.
Journal Reference:
Mark J. Hoggard, Karol Czarnota, Fred D. Richards, et al. Global distribution of sediment-hosted metals controlled by craton edge stability, Nature Geoscience (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0593-2)
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @11:39PM
Gold Rush?
Nope. Total annihilation of most metal markets. Even complex alloys will fall in price dramatically, and that cost will be related mostly to fabrication and not materials.
Once we have lowered the cost to get to space enough, we can transition to the moon. At the moon, we can build automated factories, foundries, and mines. We just need enough supplies of other materials to perform final fabrication in space. The costs of getting materials to Lunar orbit is dramatically lower. So it could be incredibly easy to launch prefab components into Lunar orbit and complete final fabrication there. The very first things we should build are automated craft that could capture small asteroids and bring them back into Lunar orbit. We will learn enough about automated mining on the moon, that automated mining of the asteroid belts will be something were competent at.
Imagine a steady stream of ore coming into Lunar orbit, where in combination with Lunar sourced products, and expensive products from Earth, are used to create immense structures. If we built something like that, the costs of metal could be lower than the costs of plastic. That's only until they get off their asses and complete automated capturing of hydrocarbons from Titan.
I think the truth is that would be could be facing a world of incredible abundance, and that useful tool scarcity, will no longer be around to control populations. In fact, I bet that's the reason why it will take as long as it does. Rich people love artificial scarcity and protected markets. There is so much metal in our Solar system, that we could probably give each person on Earth access to unlimited metal for their life times. Imagine recycling and fabrication with metals that cost almost nothing because we brought back millions of tons just in the last quarter.
The actual costs for quite a few things will transition to labor and other complex components that have a ton of labor built into them. Simple structures that could be automatically built could be incredibly cheap.