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Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma
    #9674039 -

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

It has been described as a geologist's dream - a unique opportunity to study up close the volcanic processes that built the Earth's continents.

Drillers looking for geothermal energy in Hawaii have inadvertently put a well right into a magma chamber.

Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several metres before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study.

Magma specialist Bruce Marsh says it will allow scientists to observe directly how granites are made.

"This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat," the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, professor told BBC News.

"Before, all we had to deal with were lava flows; but they are the end of a magma's life. They're lying there on the surface, they've de-gassed. It's not the natural habitat.

"It's the difference between looking at dinosaur bones in a museum and seeing a real, living dinosaur roaming out in the field."

Professor Marsh has been discussing the discovery here at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting 2008.

In control

This is not the first time drillers have encountered magma; the depth of the hit and the setting are, however, thought to be unique.

The exploratory well was being put down in the east of Hawaii's Big Island, through the basalt lava fields formed by Kilauea Volcano.

The idea was to find steam from waters heated deep underground in fractured rock, to drive turbines on the surface to generate electricity. The company behind the project, Puna Geothermal Venture, has had a successful power operation in the area for 15 years.

But the drillers were shocked - not only to hit magma but to also hit such a big heat source at the relatively shallow depth of 2.5km.

"It's hotter than hell; it's over a thousand degrees centigrade," said Professor Marsh.

Bill Teplow, a consulting geologist with US Geothermal Inc, who oversaw the drilling, stressed there was no risk of an explosion or of a volcanic eruption at the site.

"It was easily controlled in the well bore because of the magma's highly viscous nature. It flowed up the well bore 5-10m but then the cool drilling fluid caused it to solidify and stop flowing," said Mr Teplow.

"At no time were we in danger of losing control of the well."

The breakthrough was made in 2005. Only now are researchers confident enough about their work to discuss the details publicly.

They are not sure how large the magma chamber is, but some initial testing suggests it may have been put in place by activity from Kilauea in the 1950s, perhaps even the 1920s.

Professor Marsh said the chamber was docile and slowly cooling. The consistency of the magma was like chilled pancake syrup, he said.

It is hoped the site can now become a laboratory, with a series of cores drilled around the chamber to better characterise the crystallisation changes occurring in the rock as it loses temperature.

The magma is a dacite, making it chemically distinct from the basalt which forms nearly the entire mass of the Hawaiian Islands and the surrounding oceanic crust. It has a much higher silica content.

Dacite magma chemistry is similar to that of the granitic core of the continents. Professor Marsh said the Puna material, therefore, may represent the first time that the actual process of differentiation of continental-type rock from primitive oceanic basalt had been observed in situ.

"Granites are about 75% SiO2 and basalts are about 50%. Average continental material is probably in between, at about 60%," explained Professor Marsh.

"Here's one that turns out to be 67% silica. It's up there; it's a very respectable silicic magma. And it's in the middle of the ocean, and it could be this is how continents could have been started to be built on the planet."

Geothermal experts are also fascinated by the event. The Kilauea encounter is by far the shallowest and the hottest encounter of rock in a commercial operation, and it will be studied to see if there are lessons that can be applied to electrical generation project elsewhere in the world.

"We were at about 2.5km which is pretty routine drilling depth," explained Mr Teplow.

"But that is half the depth of experimental projects in Europe and Australia where they are drilling very deep into hot granite - some 5-5.5km down - and getting 260C rock; and here we're getting 1,050C rock."

BBC News


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1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: Diploid]
    #9675407 -

This is interesting because, as the article says, almost everything that we know about the behavior of magmas in a magma chamber is due to inference.  We can look at various places around the world where we have cooled magma bodies and we can learn much about differentiation by studying the changes compositions of magmas that are put forth over the life of an eruption.

But something like this is very neat.


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After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action.  If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it.  - Ernest Hemingway

If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it.  In the law courts, in business, in government.  There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.    -Cormac MacCarthy

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.  - Aeschylus

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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: Madtowntripper]
    #9675530 -

i bet those drillers were not able to get their steel out of the hole before the magma came up, thus ruining the equipment.

and i sure as hell bet someone was fucking PISSED about that. geological discovery or not, that shit is very fucking expensive.


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PEACE

:mushroom2:zippoz:mushroom2:



"in times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings - artists, scientists, clowns, and philosophers - to create order. In such times as ours however, when there is too much order, too much m management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption"

"People do it every day, they talk to themselves ... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it."

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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: ZippoZ]
    #9675560 -

I'd be willing to bet they got it out.

Another article I read says that they re-drilled the area several times, and I can't believe they'd keep throwing away million-dollar drill bits.


--------------------
After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action.  If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it.  - Ernest Hemingway

If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it.  In the law courts, in business, in government.  There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.    -Cormac MacCarthy

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.  - Aeschylus

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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: ZippoZ]
    #9675752 -

Capatalistc nomad said:
i bet those drillers were not able to get their steel out of the hole before the magma came up, thus ruining the equipment.

and i sure as hell bet someone was fucking PISSED about that. geological discovery or not, that shit is very fucking expensive.


i used to drill wells with my dad, and you sir are most likely correct. especially considering how deep down it must have been.


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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: Madtowntripper]
    #9676041 -

> I can't believe they'd keep throwing away million-dollar drill bits.

Drill bits are in the $30,000 range.  Time, labor, etc, would be in the millions of dollars.  They don't clad the bore hole until after they get to depth, thus there would have been no steel, other than the drill pipe itself, to get out. Worst case, when a bit gets stuck, you lower explosives down into the hole to cut your 'losses' and pull the rest out.  (At least this is how my grandfather did it with water wells.)


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Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: Seuss]
    #9676159 -

yeah, i mean 2.5km,

once you hit the magma you probably wouldn't know it until it started eating at the pipe....

and i would imagine that the magma would be moving kinda quickly, so it would have been a hell of a race to get that shit outta the hole. probably didnt loose it all, but there had to have been some damage...


--------------------
PEACE

:mushroom2:zippoz:mushroom2:



"in times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings - artists, scientists, clowns, and philosophers - to create order. In such times as ours however, when there is too much order, too much m management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption"

"People do it every day, they talk to themselves ... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it."

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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: ZippoZ]
    #9676839 -

> but there had to have been some damage...

Certainly.  I would have loved to see it happen!


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Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: Seuss]
    #9677912 -

They probably know it came up 5-10m cause they were missing a few lengths of drill pipe when they finally got it all out.

and 2.5miles seems like a little too far to see it happen.

If someone fell down that hole they would probably get impaled by the remaining not melted pipe section(s).

As for the actual discovery, whatever, it's not my field of study.  But hooray for those scientists who managed to stumble across their next 30yrs of an income.


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Re: Magma Theory Validated - First Discovery of In-situ Magma [Re: Idiot]
    #9679828 -

> and 2.5miles seems like a little too far to see it happen.

I was referring to the entire event from the reaction of the rig as it punched through into the magma along with the reaction of the crew as they began to understand what happened.

> If someone fell down that hole they would probably get impaled by the remaining not melted pipe section(s).

It would have to be a pretty small person to fit in the borehole (assuming they are the size that I have seen drilled; in the 40mm range)


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Just another spore in the wind.

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