Chapter 419 Bad News and Good News
Weng Xuehai and others rested in the staff hotel for one night.
Early the next morning, the group arrived at the Geological Institute in Gobi City.
This geological institute is responsible for geological exploration work at the location of the Upper Suez branch and has relatively complete research equipment.
Brown, Weng Xuehai and others did not waste time and quickly started their scientific research work.
Brown was busy updating the magnetic field data analysis system. After he pressed the confirmation button, the system completed the update: "The analysis system has been updated. You can start analyzing the data."
"Yeah!" Weng Xuehai nodded, and he began to import the magnetic field data of the Upper Suez area for the past 200 days.
As the data was imported, a miniature holographic geological structure model of the Suez area emerged above the holographic projection device on one side.
Suddenly, Weng Xuehai's eyes narrowed and he looked towards the south side of the border between Suez and Numidia.
"This is... the orogenic area left behind by the hotspot ruins..." He looked at the location on the map and found that it was on the Great Gilef Plateau.
"Did you find anything?"
"There is a hotspot relic, which should be the remains of the hotspot volcano in northern Chad in ancient times."
Brown also came over and carefully observed the holographic model. He looked at it for a while, then picked up the tablet and flipped through the five cratons and fault zones in Africa.
"You also found the problem." Weng Xuehai asked.
Brown's expression became a little serious. "The activity of the African super mantle plume has increased." He turned around and ordered, "Yingmu, please retrieve the historical monitoring data of the African region from the magnetic field satellite and import it into the analysis system."
Haruta Eiki replied, "OK."
Soon, historical magnetic field data for the African region was imported.
Although it is not as precise as ground-based magnetic field radar, it can still roughly analyze some situations.
After reading the analysis results, Brown's face became even more serious:
"The hotspot volcanic activity in northern Chad has increased by 2.4% over the past seven months, and the underlying magma chamber has intruded approximately 0.3 km to the north."
"What do you think?" Weng Xuehai doesn't study volcanoes and mantle plumes very much.
Haruta Hideki, who was studying volcanoes and mantle plumes, explained with some concern:
"This intrusion is most likely caused by changes in the crust in the northern region, which reduced the mass pressure and allowed the magma chamber in Chad to push high-pressure magma through."
"Northern Chad?" Weng Xuehai looked at the map and found that northern Chad was the southern part of Numidia, and it was also the pumping area of the Numidia Great Artificial River Project.
Haruta Hideki continued, "To use an analogy, the current situation is like a tire filled with high-pressure gas. Part of the rubber on the surface of the tire has become thinner, which can cause bulges or even a direct blowout."
Everyone reacted immediately and their faces turned pale.
Especially when you think about the sudden eruption of the super mantle plume below, the scene is simply devastating.
Large-scale mantle plume eruptions have occurred throughout the Earth's geological history, such as the Siberian Traps event.
Compared with the relatively stable South Pacific super mantle plume, the African super mantle plume is not stable.
Once the Nubian aquifer is developed on a large scale in a short period of time, the ground pressure in the area will inevitably drop suddenly. The high-pressure magma in the mantle plume hidden underground is likely to invade the surrounding areas along the magma chamber of the hotspot volcano, triggering large-scale geological activities.
You have to know that groundwater extraction is somewhat different from oil extraction.
In oil fields where oil is extracted, except for a few high-pressure self-flowing wells, other oil wells need to be injected with fresh water to raise the underground liquid level of the oil.
Moreover, the amount of oil production certainly does not reach the level of tens of billions of cubic meters per year.
However, tens of billions of cubic meters of fresh water from the Nubian aquifer are extracted every year in places such as Numidia and Suez.
If it happens in other areas, over-exploitation of groundwater will at most cause ground subsidence, and in serious cases it will induce earthquakes.
But the situation in Africa is different. Under Africa is one of the two major super mantle plumes in the world, and it is an unstable super mantle plume.
If a mantle plume erupts, the consequences will be disastrous.
Brown plugged in a figure of 48 billion cubic meters of groundwater withdrawals this year and added a growth rate of about 5% per year to begin modeling the scale of mass loss from the Nubian Aquifer and the rate at which pressure would drop within it.
After more than ten minutes of simulation, the supercomputer came to a conclusion that a large-scale magma eruption will occur in northern Africa in about 37 to 52 years.
The scale of its eruption is probably as large as one-third of the Yellowstone volcano.
If the scale of groundwater extraction from the Nubian aquifer continues to grow at a rate of 10% or 20% per year, the volcanic eruption could happen even sooner.
Weng Xuehai smiled bitterly: "Humans are really good at destroying themselves."
"We must find a way to solve this problem," Brown said seriously.
After discussing for a while, everyone decided to report the matter jointly and ask the company headquarters to find a way to enter Numidia as soon as possible. It would be best if a fully authorized branch could be established in Numidia to reduce the scale of local groundwater exploitation.
After writing the emergency report, they were not too worried. After all, even if a super mantle plume eruption really occurred, it would still not be able to exterminate the Homo sapiens company, not to mention that it would take decades of accumulation.
They continued to study the seismic magnetic field data of Suez and surrounding areas.
In particular, the hotspot volcanic relics discovered by Weng Xuehai on the Dajilefu Plateau just now have become the focus of research.
This kind of volcanic relics often contain a lot of rare metals and precious metal minerals.
Through careful analysis of the area's seismic magnetic field, Weng Xuehai did discover a number of mineral veins hidden deep underground.
Although this is just a speculation and further field investigation is needed, Weng Xuehai is still very confident about these mineral veins.
The underground mineral veins of the Great Gilev Plateau are all intrusive igneous rock veins, mainly composed of aluminum, iron, copper, gold and rare earths, as well as some sulfur and arsenic minerals.
However, considering that the area around Suez is close to the African super mantle plume, he is more inclined to a conservative reserve plan in terms of mining opinions.
In addition, the Ministry of Geology is also organizing personnel to continue analyzing magnetic field data from all over the world, hoping to find some precious metal and rare metal veins that are suitable for mining and have relatively high reserves.
After all, with the application of electrothermal materials and low-temperature superconductors, Homo sapiens' demand for gold, silver and rare metals will become increasingly huge.
Finding new mineral veins has become an important task at present.
With the research data of Weng Xuehai and others in Suez, the efficiency of geological exploration has been greatly improved.
The Geological Division is actively looking for minerals.
The joint report by Weng Xuehai, Brown and others was also passed through layers and finally reached Li Qingye.
After reading the report, he also felt that the matter could not be left unattended.
After weighing the pros and cons, Li Qingye asked the Field Operations Division and the External Security Division to prepare relevant plans. In the next two to three years, a number of fully authorized branches will be established in the areas around the Nubian Aquifer.
As his orders were issued, the various forces of the Sapiens Company in North Africa became active.
Before we knew it, more than a month had passed.
It’s November 7th.
Li Qingye left his temporary home in the Shan Plateau and headed for Johor on Sing Island.
Just as he arrived in Kampung Town in Johor, Bagheera reported to him the good news.
