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Posts Tagged ‘Earthquakes’
Scientists discover earthquakes can create new ‘economic-grade gold deposits’
Sunday, 17 March 2013 19:00
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Solid gold can be deposited in Earth’s crust “almost instantaneously” during earthquakes, said a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday.

The gold is formed when a tremor splits open a fluid-filled cavity in the Earth’s crust, causing a sudden drop in pressure, according to a team of Australian researchers.

This, in turn, causes the fluid to expand rapidly and evaporate, and any gold particles that had been dissolved in it to “precipitate almost immediately”, said a Nature press release. (Read more…)

“Repeated earthquakes could therefore lead to the build up of economic-grade gold deposits.”

The researchers said much of the world’s known gold was derived from quarts veins that were formed during geological periods of mountain building as long as three billion years ago.

The veins formed during earthquakes, but the magnitude of pressure fluctuations or how they drove gold mineralisation were not known.

For this study, researchers used a numerical model to simulate the drop in pressure experienced in a fluid-filled fault cavity during an earthquake.

In so doing, they answered a long-standing question about the world’s gold resources — how the metal becomes so concentrated from a highly dissolved state to a solid, mineable one.

The study said single tremors would not generate economically viable gold deposits, which were built up one thin coating at a time.

To form a 100 tonne gold vein deposit would take less than 100,000 years, the team wrote.

["Prospecting" on Shutterstock]

 
7.7 Earthquake Hits Where The World’s Largest Geoengineering Experiment Took Place
Monday, 29 October 2012 16:45
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Source: USGS

Terry Wilson of the Canadian Awareness Network links the rogue geoengineering project by Russ George to a massive earthquake off the coast of British Columbia:

A 7.7 Earthquake hit the coast of British Columbia on Saturday night, and there has since been as many as 40 aftershocks today. Including one that measured 6. (Read more…)4 in magnitude. The quake sent many residents on the coast, fleeing for higher ground due to tsunami warnings. That where issued as far away as Hawaii.

The Earthquake originated on the island of Haida Gwaii, other wise know as the Queen Charlotte Islands region. The islands are located along the Queen Charlotte Fault, which is an active transform fault that produces significant earthquakes every 3–30 years. (the last major one happening in 1949, that measure 8.1 in magnitude)

As soon as I caught the news of this quake today, the first thing that came to mind was. Wasn’t Haida Gwaii recently in the news?

Worlds Largest Geoengineering Test Conducted Off Canadian West Coast

“In July 2012 a private businessman named Russ George, or as the Vancouver Sun has dubbed him the “rogue climate hacker”. Dumped over 100 tonnes of iron into the pacific ocean, just off the coast of British Columbia (Haida Gwaii) in the largest ever geoengineering experiment.

The iron is meant to help spawn plankton (main stream press have dubbed these creatures “artificial plankton”) that will absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed. A geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilization. George hopes that this will be lucrative in carbon credits. But even the strongest of man made climate change proponents agree that he has gone too far, and some are outraged. According to the main stream news outlets.”

Could this be simply be a coincidence? Well as many in the alternative media have realized. Coincidences in situations like this are very, very rare…

[continues at the Canadian Awareness Network]



 
Geologists: Groundwater extraction caused earthquake in Spain
Sunday, 21 October 2012 20:05
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Massive extraction of groundwater helped unleash an earthquake in southeastern Spain last year that killed nine people, injured at least 100 and left thousands homeless, geologists said on Sunday.

The finding adds a powerful piece of evidence to theories that some earthquakes are human-induced, they said.

Seismologists were surprised by the May 11, 2011 earthquake which happened two kilometres (1. (Read more…)2 miles) northeast of the city of Lorca.

The quake struck in the Eastern Betics Shear Zone, one of Spain’s most seismically active regions, where there has been a large number of moderate-to-large temblors over the last 500 years.

But the May event was unusual because it was so devastating and yet so mild — only 5.1 magnitude — in terms of energy release.

Researchers led by Pablo Gonzalez of the University of Western Ontario in Canada probed the mystery.

Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience, they found that the quake occurred at a very shallow depth, of just three kilometres (1.8 miles), so the shockwave swiftly reached the surface with little to dampen it on the way.

The quake also happened on a complex but dormant fault that ripped open after water had been extensively pumped out of a neighbouring aquifer, causing a domino effect of subterranean stresses, they said.

Gonzalez’ team first used ground-radar imaging by the European satellite Envisat to build a map of how terrain around Lorca changed before and after the quake.

The picture confirmed that the event had occurred on the so-called Alhama de Murcia fault, which slipped between five and 15 centimetres (two and six inches).

They then investigated the Alto Guadalentin Basin, an aquifer lying just five kms (three miles) south of the fault, where they found widespread evidence of subterranean subsidence from water extraction.

Between 1960 and 2010, the level of groundwater from this aquifer fell by at least 250 metres (812 feet), according to records from local wells.

A computer model put together by the team suggests what happens: lowering of the water table caused part of the crust, located next to the Alhama de Murcia fault, to break.

This led to an “elastic rebound” of the crust that in turn cranked up horizontal pressure on the fault, bringing it that much closer to rupture.

The investigation adds to anecdotal evidence that human activities, ranging from exploration for shale gas, quarrying and even water reservoirs, can cause quakes.

“Our results imply that anthopogenic [man-made] activites could influence how and when earthquakes occur,” said the study.

In a commentary, Jean-Philippe Avouac, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) said water extraction at Lorca probably accelerated a natural process of stress accumulation rather than unleashed the earthquake by itself.

Even so, “the consequences are far-reaching,” said Avouac.

He pointed to carbon storage, a still-experimental technique in which carbon dioxide from a fossil-fuel power station is pumped into underground caverns rather than released to the atmosphere, where it would add to global warming.

“For now, we should remain cautious of human-induced stress perturbations, in particular those related to carbon dioxide sequestration projects that might affect very large volumes of crust,” said Avouac.

“We know how to start earthquakes, but we are still far from being able to keep them under control.”