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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.
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. )
It's probably the CIA trying to recover a lost Soviet rock diver.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
My company (we do geological services) covered that rig when they started drilling. They were drilling outside of Parkfield, CA where there was a fault lock. Approx every 30 years there, an earthquake about Magnitude 6-7 happened. I believe 2004 was 32 years since the last quake. I know Stanford was hoping to put some geophones down there to see what kind of readings they could get when the quake went off.
I was only down there for a week, but I was talking to the person who was there to finish the job. She said the quake went off before they had finished drilling and it was pretty wild.
I guess they didn't get the geophone data, but it looks like they finally passed the fault and got some pretty good geological data. Cool!
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.
Keep the Mole Men down there where they belong!
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.
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.
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.
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!
Lubing the 2.5 mile hole, then pushing the drill down to the bottom of it and taking it out, repeating many times - now THAT is going to cause a HUGE quake!
Muhahahahaaaa (I guess I'm going to be modded down)