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2.5 Mile Deep Hole Drilled Into San Andreas Fault
iandoh writes "Cool research: Geologists at Stanford University and the US Geological Survey have drilled a 2.5 mile deep borehole into the San Andreas fault. They've extracted over one ton of rock from 2 miles down, and they'll be installing sensors down the length of the borehole."
The fault is between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, both of which IIRC are more than 50 miles thick. Why are we looking at only the upper 5%? ( Modern oil wells are drilled as deep as 6 miles or more now. )
They drilled in a part of the San Andreas fault that creeps and doesn't generate big earthquakes. My take is that they're looking for a lubricant, something that allows the fault to slide. Another possibility would be merely that the fault doesn't have bends or splits in it unlike the faulting at the south end of the San Francisco Bay. The San Andreas fault runs along a chain of mountains south of Silicon Valley and then north through San Francisco, following the coast thereafter, while the Haywood fault runs along the base of mountains east of the Bay area from Milpitas to north of Oakland.
If a lubricant is responsible for the fault creep, there are apparently several possibilities: water, serpentine (which can be formed by weathering or metamorphization of several minerals including olivene/peridot), or talc (formed by serpentine exposed to water). If you have talc, you probably have the other two as well. Serpentine is a bit harder than talc (the latter is soft enough to easily scratch with a fingernail), but both deform easily under pressure. I seem to recall cases where serpentine has "bubbled up" over millions of years through denser rock, acting as a very slow moving fluid.
As I see it, if we can understand how to lubricate faults, then it is possible to not just trigger faults, but also to ease pressure on a fault. Maybe the cost of the materials will make it infeasible, but we can consider it now.
I was born and raised in the usa. I see where your comment is coming from but it's way late. Western influence spread like a disease (and it is) across the face of the planet long ago. Even if all of the usa was completely destroyed and everyone inside her boarders killed it wouldn't make much of a difference, the materialism and hatered we have created as idols are already bowed down to by people all across the globe.
You don't have to look at it like that though- even though the usa contributed to this sad reality it had been stirring since the dawn of time. We as a nation may have done more to push its spread but the truth is it would have happened even if the north american continent never existed.
What it boils down to is people. Not people from this country, people from that country, people with this color skin, people with this color hair, people with this taste in fashion or music, people with this political stance-- none of that matters. People, simply people, are the problem.
Does that mean everyone should die? I used to think so. The truth is though, believe it or not, there are decent people out there that understand what really matters and I believe it is for these peoples sake that everything hasn't completely collapsed yet. These are the people most often ridiculed without cause, leaned on and despised without cause. I would know. I did it to many of them myself.
Midwestern property?!?! What ever happened to Arizona & Nevada?!?!