At the time of this writing, a National Academy of Sciences study of geoscience identifies 11 central questions of the field. Along with research at surface facilities and shallow sites, deep underground research contributes to answering six of these questions.
The withering radiation and intense meteorite bombardment at the surface of the early earth presented a challenge for the origins of life. Although the subsurface represents a possible haven for early life, does it possess the necessary attributes for life to develop? If so, then life could be present within planets in our solar system that could never have supported life on their surfaces. In a deep underground laboratory biochemists and biophysicists could perform experiments in situ, within the confines of a high-pressure fracture zone to explore the influence of mineral surface properties and electrolyte interactions on origin-of-life processes.
The origin and evolution of earth's geomagnetic dynamo is tied to its energy sources, and this in turn depends on the composition of the core. Does earth's core contain a natural "georeactor"? By observing the number of neutrinos emanating from the core, scientists at a deep underground laboratory, along with other neutrino observers, could detect the amount of radioactive decay in the earth's core to determine whether a georeactor sustains the earth's magnetic field.
Earthquakes result from unstable slip along faults in the earth's crust. A deep under- ground laboratory would offer the opportunity to measure directly and confirm the seismic properties of rock in place at depth, including the important effects of fluid flow. Scientists could examine slip processes on small faults to calibrate and refine theoretical models in order to see how slip processes can be scaled in size and time. Detailed knowledge of seismic properties and fluid flow are key to the understanding of what causes earthquakes, an important step toward predicting their future occurrence.
The subsurface of our planet is teeming with active–albeit very slow–processes. Geoscientists would use a deep under- ground laboratory to study these interactions over a substantial volume of rock as part of a major program to develop geophysical and other imaging techniques to make the rock "transparent." These "Transparent Earth" experiments would provide for high- resolution mapping of three-dimensional rock properties, leading to a fundamental understanding of how they control the active processes in the subsurface.
The interactions among subsurface microbial communities, the chemical constituents of ground water, and the minerals and organic materials present in rock control the quality of drinking water, the formation of natural gas and carbon dioxide, and the potential for long-term storage of nuclear waste. A deep underground laboratory would provide a field site for studying these interactions over multiple decades, leading to models that couple the interactions of biology, chemistry, hydrology, heat and rock deformation.
The rock exposed in DUSEL is likely to be of several types, all subjected to hundreds of millions of years of tectonic stresses. Detailed analysis of the current state of stress in the rock, using stiffnesses measured on laboratory specimens, could provide valuable insights into the long-term viscous processes associated with the tectonic phenomena. The underground environment would provide a low-seismic-background opportunity to study the earth's interior by analysis of the behavior of seismic waves that have been propagated from natural events globally. Experimental study of the coupled processes of slip on (small) faults can also provide insights into the mechanics of earthquakes. Although the depth of DUSEL is a minute fraction of the 6500 kilo- meters of the earth's interior, it contains the depth that holds all of the accessible mineral resources, including groundwater, upon which civilization is critically dependent.
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