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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)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Friday July 03 2020, @04:06AM (2 children)
The trouble is the temperature. 1500F is a nontrivial materials science problem. That's the temperature where you forge iron, and it's difficult even for tungsten carbide in a nonreducing environment.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 05 2020, @03:24AM (1 child)
Then make it cooler. There's limits to how much heat you could dump on the surface of Earth (generating useful power in the process), but it's pretty high.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 08 2020, @01:43PM
Easier said than done. The challenge is not where do you dump the heat - it's how do you move massive amounts of heat tens to hundreds of miles, fast enough to keep the bit from overheating. The scale of the problem is akin to dropping a fine wire into a scalding hot tub, while keeping the water around the wire frozen.