Physical Geology

1) A reservoir rock can store fluids because the reservoir has pore space. That’s the spaces between the grains making up the rock, like marbles packed into a jar, we can still add water to the jar full of marbles. So what if we change out the marbles for golf balls or grains of sand? While we get more or less number of pores, do we get more pore volume (open space)? I say that as we decrease the grain size, getting more smaller pores, we get more pore volume (can hold more fluid). Prove me wrong, or correct. Note; fluids can be water, crude oil, or gas.

2) In light of your recent study of geologic time, possibly some 5+ billion years, consider that reefs have existed in our oceans for likely a billion years. As an example take New Mexico’s Carlsbad Cavern area, the Permian Age (280,000,000 years ago) fossilized reefs that are now thousands of feet above sea level. The marine environment changes along our coast lines over geologic time due to Plate Tectonic collisions and mountain building, but the reefs still exist. The question is, how do they move from shore to shore or continent to continent? Aliens maybe?

3) Construct a community response plan for a short term and long term human or geologically induced incident afflicting your community water supply. The size of your community can be just your home and family, Santa Fe, NM or the whole world, that’s up to you

4) Consider the current uses of Rare Earth Elements (REE), list them if you need. Start with the Toyota Prius (the batteries), then go to solar panels, wind farms, laptops, and your phone. Next, consider that China supplies 85% of the world’s consumption and temporarily cut off Japan’s supply, as used in the Prius. An old mine in Southern California is being re-activated, the Mountain Pass Mine. Possibly production could supply enough REE’s to keep us independent for a while.

Here at home (Santa Fe, NM), consider that the environmentalists want the Otreo Mesa, Wind Mountain REE mine by Geovic Mining not to happen. This would be a new mine; jobs, wages, royalty income, taxes for New Mexico. This would be a totally underground mine, a mine portal and a haul road. If China cuts off our supply of raw materials how do we get the REE’s we need for the items on your list if this mine is not allowed to happen? I hope the computer your using is on that list, because that could be the last one you ever have.

So, what will you do if all the tools (or toys) we have become used to using go away? Do we step back 50-years to when I was in my twenties? No cell phone, no laptop, no alternative energy sources. Submit your feelings; to-mine or not to-mine here and at Mountain Pass, California

5)

What happens to a floating object, a raft on the ocean, when weight is added or removed? How could this principal apply to changes in the elevation of mountains around the world?

6) How could the evidence of past glaciation in the Southern Hemisphere, located near the equator today; or plant fossils, coal, and fossil coral reefs, in Antarctica today, support the continental drift theory.