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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."
Oh, sure, just do his work for him. Why not install some nuclear warheads down there while you're at it.
This sounds like a bad scifi film where they have to mine some tachyon fracture fault or the universe will explode.
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. )
Geologists at Stanford University and the US Geological Survey by drilling a 2.5 mile deep borehole into the San Andreas fault, caused a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.
It's probably the CIA trying to recover a lost Soviet rock diver.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
12:50 - press return.
Let me tell you something. After digging that hole I am ready for a six-pack. And I wish they would have thrown in a pair of gloves, cuz I gots some serious blisters.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
They've extracted over one ton of rock from 2 miles down, and they'll be installing sensors down the length of the borehole.
I wouldn't want to be the guy who's in charge of monitoring sensory data from something called "the bore hole". that sounds like a really tedious job.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I feel our economy will be well served by the extra 6 energy.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
They should dump a few tons of super glue down there. That'll fix her.
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.
Not THAT bad... kinda.
Can someone please explain how to unlock this feature ? Is it similar to the Hot Coffee mod ? Where can I download it ? I've been playing San Andreas for years but have never encountered any kind of drilling mission or mod.
Keep the Mole Men down there where they belong!
You'll miss us. Who'll blow stuff up when we're gone?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
'In early December, a "sample party" will be held at the USGS office in Menlo Park, where the cores will be on display and scientists will offer their proposals to do research projects in a bid to be allowed to analyze part of the core.' I can only imagine the carnage after some disappointed geologist grabs a sample of core and teaches them all whose fault it is...
Someone please mark parent as flamebait.
The game.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
No, thank you. I'm not checking there for a hidden package.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
My favored culprit for drastic friction reduction during faulting is lubricating Silica Gel; finely crushed quartz in the active fault zone reacts with water forming fluidic silica gel. There is excellent laboratory evidence of silica gel lubrication in simulated fault zones (see Mineral Gel May Reduce Rock Friction to Zero During Earthquakes, http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100325. All that is needed is field evidence, and I think I have it.
Hopefully the United States.
That would be cool. We Yanks could gather 'round the edge of our continent and piss on the rest of you from low earth orbit. So, instead of bitching about 50 million Republicans pissing on the world in some figurative sense, you would get splashed in the face by the real deal!
This is my sig.
Then again, maybe we shouldn't butter her up. I hope Pele's bad sista' Shake-Shake doesn't feel violated and go tectonic on us -I live on the fault!
I don't get why this is newsworthy. Pretty boring to me.
*rimshot*
*runs and hides from the angry mob*
Like the Bugs Bunny episode where he saws Florida off the U.S. and lets it float away because he's pissed about the two cent fine for hunting rabbits out of season.
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.
I honestly don't know if I find the joke funny or offensive, but I do think that the same standard should be applied to all jokes in that vein. Then again, double standards for what people say are a problem of society in general, not just slashdot moderation.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (a spiritual branch from the Civilization series, which I consider better than any of the Civ proper games that followed it), thermal boreholes are terrain improvements that provide +6 energy and minerals (a great deal by the game's standards).
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
...it was again about us crossing the frontier to California...
I was like, holy madre de Dios, wtf?
Seriously, was this tagged goatse to stop me clicking the link? I mean this is slashdot, it's not like I would have clicked the link anyway.
All adjacent areas are reporting increased energy and mineral production. Peculiar worms have also been reported in the area.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Ooh...maybe a bat-like apparition will fly out again...
Quick! Someone spread a rumor and see if it shows up on TBN!
Who said anything about joking?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Yes, but watch out for that Xenofungus!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
..but sticky
I have ridden the mighty moon worm!
But what if they drilled right through the unfortunate testudinate?
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Great; there's a hole now, artificially changing the semi-predictable nature of the problem. What's going to fill it? Oh, yeah....water. The same thing that fills the empty space under Houston where they've been pulling oil out for over a century.
Like the other poster mentioned, does digging a mere 5% into this famously-fragile section really reveal anything we didn't know before? Seems like they'd pick a place that _doesn't_ have 20 million people involved, if they open a hole to say, lava or something else that induces a change under there...but I'm just a layman.
It's just the line "don't tug on Superman's cape" comes to mind...
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
You forgot K-Y jelly.
Loderunner + GTA, now THAT'S a game!
Idiots!
What a dumb move.
Geophysicist Nerd 1: "Hey let's drill a hole 2.5 miles into a known fault!"
Geophysicist Nerd 2: "OK! Let's do it."
drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill drill
Nerd 2: "Now what?"
Nerd 1: "Ummm... How about we put some sensors down there?"
Nerd 2: "Hey! Why not!!!"
Nerd 1: "Errmmm... Shit! We've only got 1000ft of wire!"
Nerd 2: "Damn!"
.
.
"Hey! What's that really hot red stuff bubbling out of the hole?"
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Whilst the study will provide insight to many issues, it will not help as you have described.
The expanding/contracting earth hypothesis has long been discredited. It was originally proposed as a mechanism for mountain/basin formation. See this excerpt from Kearey & Vine, Global Tectonics (excellent book on the subject I used studying geology at uni)
http://books.google.com/books?id=usiqam9p7GAC&pg=RA1-PA248&lpg=RA1-PA248&dq=expanding+contracting+earth+hypothesis&source=web&ots=zMEsYJotvA&sig=zlFveSBMr73m6Srq3ahXADG8Vkc
Vibration analysis - I assume you mean the geophones that are placed downhole will help. However more comprehensive global coverage with seismometers would be better. The global seismometer net (instigated to monitor nuclear detonations from the the 1950s) is predominantly northern hemisphere.
Fracture mechanics - potentially. However the mechanics of crust/mantle deformation are better studied through other avenues.
I always went the super eco route, to the point where it was better for me to plant fungus than farms or mines. The huge mindworm boils were pretty entertaining as well. You couldn't control the main stack from a fungal bloom (at least not that same turn), but all the ones around it? No problem.
The only time I did boreholes I did it to hasten global warming, and flood out my enemies coastal cities. Muahaha.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They got the monsters out in Surface the series ???
*yawn* indeed, this joke bores me
Russian scientists dug the deepest hole on the planet in Siberia, but bottomed out at about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) below the surface.
Last I heard the Kola Peninsula is not in Siberia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
Drilling cost go up as square of depth. Oil companies can afford spend a hundred million to drill five miles below two miles of water. The NSF cannot afford really deep holes. The entire NSF earth science budget is lees than the average oil company single deep water hole.
"Borehole", isn't that a slang word for a jerk who hogs a meeting?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Well it is California. And San Francisco lies on a fault line. This ties in with my post on lubrication.
Beavis and Butt-head are listening to Stuart and Mr. Whatsisname work on this science project:
Mr. Whatsisname: Stick it in my borehole, Stuart. Drill it deep, Stuart. Sink it all the way in, Stuart. Now push your sensor deep in, Stuart. If you're having trouble, move the rocks out of the way, Stuart.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The best thing about America is Capitalism.
Unfortunately, the worst thing about America is Capitalism.
Did Stanford just buy up some real estate in Nevada?
Scott Carr
Now all they need is a huge cotter pin.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I think this warrants a new category. Rather than 'insightful' I really think 'terminally depressed' captures it better.
People who aren't from that part of the country might want to first learn about important details like the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Quoting the Wikipedia article (which quotes USGS and the University of Memphis), {t]he seismic zone covers parts of five U.S. states: Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee."
Anything that shakes the ground enough to make the Mississippi River change course or (temporarily) "flow backward", as eyewitness reports have recorded, is not something I particularly care to be close to. But then, I grew up in the Bay Area and, as a loyal Giants fan, was in Candlestick Park for World Series Game 3 on 17 October 1989...."game called on account of earthquake", for those with short memories.
Another reason to get humanity off this rock - it just isn't safe anywhere.
Aside from the trolls and "bore hole jokers" I actually "learned stuff" about geology from your original post and I'm actually a little more curious about it.
/.'ers)
We're not all 12-year-olds... ("we" meaning
Here's to the crazy ones
Cutting 135ft of core from 12000-odd feet is absolutely routine. I've pulled similar lengths of core myself on 3 occasions in the last couple of years.
Absolutely routine.
I see the lazy so-and-so's are doing up the Jubilee clips with a power drill, instead of suffering with the traditional bent screwdriver that's the wrong size. And it's not snowing either, which is normally the case for core catching. Obviously there's a lazy shit-bagger somewhere up in the chain of command, doing the organisation. No way is this the first time this bunch has cored.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Put a turbine on the hole.
Pump water down.
Harvest the steam, sell the energy.
Use the funds from the geothermal power facility to fund the second hole.
Repeat.
Given you've converted enough water to steam it should be cool enough to go deeper.
I think it would be something like:
1. Let gravity pull water through hole.
2. Earth heats up water and causes steam.
3. ????
4. Profit!