Rocks store information about the temperatures that they have experienced. Wageningen University researchers and international colleagues are the first to develop a method that reveals low-temperature information (from 35 °C and higher) on a relatively short timescale of thousands of years. The new method might find application in locating geothermal reservoirs and in maintaining underground tunnels.The deeper you go into the Earth, the warmer it gets. But how warm exactly can differ from location to location, for example because of snowmelt infiltration or a warm aquifer amidst the rocks. Luminescence can retrieve the temperatures that the rocks have experienced over thousands of years. The technique is based on trapped electrons that build up in crystals under the competing influences of natural radioactivity and heat. It is a fine balance, and small changes in temperature cause large changes in the signal intensity. The signal can be extracted in the laboratory by light. Read More....
Rocks store information
about the temperatures that they have experienced. Wageningen
University researchers and international colleagues are the first to
develop a method that reveals low-temperature information (from 35 °C
and higher) on a relatively short timescale of thousands of years. The
new method might find application in locating geothermal reservoirs and
in maintaining underground tunnels.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-opportunities-geothermal-energy-method-reveals.html#jCp
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-opportunities-geothermal-energy-method-reveals.html#jCp
