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The Future Lies At Depth - It's a Good Time to be a Geologist · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Always ready to go.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: I woke up ready to go.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh, woke up at 9 45, ready to go.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: 9 45 a.m.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: 9 45.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: You've been up since 5.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: That's just not.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: Sundays are made for sleeping in, Jesse.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: Chris needs his beauty rest.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: I do.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: I absolutely do.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: I oh man.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: And even despite all the beauty rest, this is what we get.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you what the heck?
0:48
SPEAKER_02: That's oh man.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: To get to get insulted in this way by somebody like you is it's it's more hurtful than it ought to be.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh goodness.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Um today, Chris, today, part two in our to be determined series of why it's a good time to be a geologist.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Why is this why are you excited to be teaching geology to high schoolers?
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Why am I I'm really excited uh and thrilled to be a geology professor at this time, this current time period in earth history.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, not earth history, human history.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a really important time, and we're gonna cover part two here.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: Part two is building on where we came from.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: Chris has a thought.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: Um The first one of the day.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: Here we go.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: Something what you just said is like I am um we've talked about like you know how why you and I got into geoscience because it was just cool, you know, it was a natural attraction to the to the you know the power of the earth and the awesomeness of the of the beauty of it, right?
1:47
SPEAKER_02: And and then wanting to understand all of that and how it all happens.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh and I still teach that.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: I still teach that way, but I also am way more deliberate about the practicality of uh learning about geoscience in a way that 10 years ago I wasn't.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: It's definitely uh a different approach that I now have.
2:08
SPEAKER_02: And I I think that a big part of that, Jesse, is because of you and I doing this podcast together.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, I have a question for you, Chris, but let me let me give the the pitch in where we're going in this episode.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: So where we came from, if you haven't listened to our previous episode on this, there are sort of buy low, sell high style of episode that said basically what we went through in that is that geoscientists are needed at a baseline.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: So even if the world is not changing underfoot, we're gonna need more geologists or more geoscientists in the future just because of the mere fact that there are less being trained, and this is kind of a boom and bust industry, and it has been for the last 50 or 70 years, and we're in one of those lows right now, so it's a good time to go get a geology degree or geoscience degree, we think.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: What we're gonna move into is why we think this next event, the demand is gonna grow because the world's changing under our feet.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: And while a lot of the climate change impacts that we're seeing are at the surface, many of the solutions are at depth.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: And when you get hold on, hold on.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: We need to double-click on that because that's gonna actually be like we're gonna title this episode that.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: Right?
3:11
SPEAKER_02: Let's double click because I think it's really important.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: The problems that we have on Earth are mostly surficial problems.
3:18
SPEAKER_02: You talk about climate change, you know, transitioning to the green energy, um, all these different environmental things, water issues, and things like this.
3:27
SPEAKER_02: And then but the the solutions to these problems are at depth.
3:32
SPEAKER_02: And that's like a that's a powerful statement, I think.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a I love it.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: It makes sense.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a uh it makes sense why geoscientists or even traditionally geologists, what we would kind of think of as a geologist, is gonna be needed because the solutions are at depth.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna work through kind of that that thinking.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: But Chris, I have a question for you.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: You the summer science course, let's talk about what you the summer science institute class you've taught for what, how many years now?
3:58
SPEAKER_00: 20?
3:59
SPEAKER_00: This will be 25.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: This will be 25.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Is that a diamond anniversary?
4:04
SPEAKER_00: What's the uh what's 25 here?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: Um don't know what that's called, but 25, man.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: So this class, when I took it, it was you and a uh a biology teacher, high school biology teacher, who ran it.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I think uh the trip has been going on for before you took it over, and it kind of was biology, probably when when your dad was teaching it, and it was biology dominated, and then you kind of took over and it geology started to become more of a framework or structurally more important, perhaps.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and now you teach it with our good buddy Andrew DeWitt, who is in environmental consulting, right?
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, how much have what's the course content?
4:43
SPEAKER_00: I know he likes to talk about sort of the the societal impacts of geoscience on this trip.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Has that been a a good learning experience for you and for the students?
4:53
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: It's I think it's he brings that in, right?
4:56
SPEAKER_02: The he brings in in a natural way because uh for everybody.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: But Andrew is he got his master's degree in geomorphology.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: So he, you know, we got to make it sound fancier.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Fluvial geomorphic.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: I'm a fluvial geomorphologist.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: Um he does, he gets really he gets really uppity about that.
5:19
SPEAKER_02: But oh yeah, um, and so you know, we have two geoscientists that are running the program, and so it's evolved that way for sure.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: Now, Andrew brings in the practical side of a geoscience degree because that's what he does on a day-to-day basis.
5:35
SPEAKER_02: For instance, he worked on the Keystone Pipeline project.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: This was actually shortly after he began working for this company after getting his master's degree.
5:44
SPEAKER_02: He was offered this like, hey, come work with me on this massive project, the Keystone Pipeline.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, he was working in Washington, D.C.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: all the time because you know, his reports were were, you know, he was working with the lawyers for the Secretary of the State.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: So what on on that point, just when you're on the trip, has there been a change in the student response to the stuff Andrew talks about, like the societally relevant?
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Do you think students are more interested now than they were, I don't know, five years ago, ten years ago, whenever you know you and him started doing the trip together?
6:16
SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily I wouldn't say more interested, but what I would say is they're they come away equipped with, okay, I really like geoscience, and now I know that I can actually do I can do it for a living and actually earn a very good living doing it.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: And so they come away with that, which is so important because their parents don't have any idea, uh, you know, and that has to be a absolute absolutely.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: I'm not ripping on that at all, but that's a I think a lot of dinner table conversations have been had over wait a minute, you want to go into geology or geoscience, what the heck are you gonna do with that?
6:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, right, right, yeah, yeah.
6:53
SPEAKER_02: And and they come away with I think better answers for that.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: No, that's right.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, because uh especially, I mean, I got this a lot growing up in Michigan.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, what do you do?
7:02
SPEAKER_00: You look at rocks all day, and you know, that's what we do.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: My answer now is like, well, I mean, kind of, that's what I do, my job, but but that's not what most geoscientists do.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And there's actually you could go make a lot of money being a geoscientist, too.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the one of the very exciting ways, and this is this will come in later episodes.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: One of the really exciting things about the future of geoscientists is it's like, how how do you make more geoscientists?
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, you produce a bunch of rich geoscientists.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: People look at that and they're like, oh, I can go make a bunch of money being a geoscientist.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, yeah, sign me up.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: Where do I sign, right?
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: We're just not very good at advertising that.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: But let's come back to this solutions at depth.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: Like, and let's I'll look at we're just gonna flip through a couple slides here that I put together for a talk a while back, but but kind of convey this thing.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And the what do you what do we mean by the impacts are on the surface?
7:52
SPEAKER_00: So there's two aspects to this, Chris.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: We talked about last episode, we talked about this event four, the demand, the next peak demand in geos for geoscientists is gonna be big.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: We think that's gonna be big for two reasons.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: One, the impacts are at the surface.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: And we're, Chris, it's really interesting.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: We're seeing um a lot of people getting hired in earth science departments, geoscience departments, earth and planetary science departments, whatever you know that what used to be called geology is now called at various universities.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of, including at Penn State, a lot of people being hired in this kind of risk thing, geo-risk, geohazard risk.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's really interesting work they do.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of like economics, a lot of social, a lot of modeling.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: And actually, these people who are in this field, this isn't me, but people who are in this field are really interested in you know, students going into, for instance, the insurance industry.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Because, I mean, we hear a lot about insurance companies, right?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: And and with wildfires or all sorts of natural disaster type things, you know, insurance companies are in the news, let's say.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: They need to have risk assessments, absolutely.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and with people who understand rivers, who understand landslides, who understand cloud, you know, this this earth system thing that we talked about with Lee Cump, like the earth as a system.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: How are these things going to change in the future?
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Can we use the last hundred years of data or not?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Do we need to take that data and upmodel it, right?
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And say this is what it could happen in the future, the next 50 years, right?
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Like that's the horizon that that insurance companies need to be thinking about.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: So that's like a really important hiring pool, I think, for geoscientists who have these accessory skill sets that understand the earth.
9:33
SPEAKER_02: Now, Jesse, that probably looks like uh a consulting company getting hired by insurance companies, right?
9:40
SPEAKER_02: I think it could be both.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, I think it could be in-house or environmental consultants, risk assessors, you know.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: That I I think there's this is an industry in flux, it seems like.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: And I I I'm not in this industry, so you know, this is kind of second-hand information.
9:55
SPEAKER_02: But this is where that's where that's the kind that's the company this is what Andrew's company does.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they they are an environmental consulting company.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: So that begs the question, then.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: I think Chris, let me just touch on that real quick.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: That I think, you know, there's there's an the traditional view of environmental consultants is these are people who help companies navigate um EPA rules, laws on the books.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: They help them navigate the process of getting approval to build something somewhere or to redevelop a former gas station or whatever.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: Like they help them deal with the existing stuff.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: This future-looking stuff, this forward-looking stuff is kind of a different ballgame, I think.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: It's still in the same category.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: And I'd be curious if, you know, for instance, Andrew's company is hiring people who forward model risk like this or not.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know, but it's kind of a forward-looking versus like get it done this year kind of an attitude.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, anyway, sorry.
10:51
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you're no, no, I just that's okay.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: Uh my question is then, and this is something that you and I have talked at least on a personal level uh a lot about, is what is the value of a geoscience degree versus an environmental science degree then?
11:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, and because if these are environmental consulting companies, and you know, like we don't have data to show on the on the screen here to to back up what at least how I feel about it.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: But and and I don't know, at the risk of mm you know, maybe upsetting some people with this with this kind of statement is that geology emphasizes the study of the Earth's structure and processes and it solutions at depth, right?
11:32
SPEAKER_02: Environmental science takes a much broader approach, encompassing the study of the environment and all of its interactions.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's a lot of this earth system kind of thing.
11:41
SPEAKER_02: But uh what I uh come across when I look around online for this is that geoscience somebody with a geoscience degree, whether that's a bachelor's or or preferably a master's level degree, can do almost anything that an environmental scientist can do, but the opposite of that is not necessarily the case.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a really interesting point, Chris.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: And I I think this is like, you know, life advice kind of category.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: You can do whatever you want if you're exceptional, right?
12:09
SPEAKER_00: If you're just really good and you have an environmental science degree and you want to go do whatever, you can just do it.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Like there is no I don't think there's anything that's like limiting you from being very successful with one of those degrees.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: It's just a question of like which one sets you up better for a given job.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're kind of talking about here.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, there might be there there might be more geoscience the geoscience degree program, the typical one, might check more boxes in that way than than some of the other programs.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: So that might add a little bit of clarity.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: But you know, we really need we'll we'll talk to Andrew about this in an episode coming up here.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: But I mean it's an interesting conversation.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: What degrees should you pursue?
12:47
SPEAKER_00: And I I just I'm not sure if it matters as much as like the skill sets you're you're pursuing in addition to your degree.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: What kind of undergraduate research are you trying to pursue?
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Are you doing internships?
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Like all those accessory things I think matter perhaps more than the name of your degree, maybe, but I don't know.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that to be true.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: So let's so back to this like impacts on the surface thing.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, the impacts are on the surface, so we're gonna need geoscientists to kind of help figure out what the impacts of those are and model those in the future, and all sorts of industries are gonna need that.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: The solutions are at depth.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: This is the big thing for geologists.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Like we're talking about doing things in rocks and doing things to rocks at depth.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: And to me, Chris, this is a really interesting one.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Like depth is kind of the the final frontier on Earth in a way.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Think of like a geological map.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: We have a pretty good geological map of the United States of America.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: If you look at um what's the what's the app I really Rocked.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Have you used this app before, Chris?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Rocked R-O-C-K Apostrophe D, I think it's called.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: It comes out of Wisconsin, um, this big data science, geoscience, data science research project.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: But it's really cool.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Like you download it and you can see all the geological features in your area.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, you look at the the the click on the rock unit, it'll pull up like uh a little bit of publications on it.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: But you look at that geological map of the United States, and it's pretty covered.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have a lot of detailed mapping.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: There are some places that need more mapping for sure, but like it's pretty well covered on the surface.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, would you agree with that?
14:26
SPEAKER_00: You go out into some pretty unmapped places like the Wind River, you mentioned that.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Those are those are more remote and don't have as good of maps.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: But like what's the what's the what would the application be of this app?
14:38
SPEAKER_02: Like what talk about that a minute.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: Because I just I'm not familiar with it at all.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I I I mean I just use it casually.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Like I just say, okay, what what rock am I standing on right now?
14:47
SPEAKER_00: I get sometimes confused the stratigraphy around where I live.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, different ridges will be different units.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: If I'm on a hike, I'll pull it up and be like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm sitting on this sandstone.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: So it it just knows what you're standing on based upon what where you are, so it combines where you are with the geologic maps that have already been established.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it just pulls, from what I understand of it, it pulls USGS maps into the database and also the data that is linked to the map unit.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: So if you're on the Tuscarora sandstone, you can click on it and it'll pull up a little bit of information about that pulled from the publication from the map uh database.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: So it's actually really cool.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's I use it casually just for you know exploring.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: It's like you and me.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: When we used to go, uh this would have been amazing in our rock county days, going out in the black hills, and if we could just find the unk Papa.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: We're sitting on Unk Papa or not, right?
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: So that I mean it's it's that I use it for that kind of stuff.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: But oh my gosh, we got so you're right.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: We we sat on uh the Minicotta formation a lot, and we're wondering, is this is this the Unk Papa?
15:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, which throw did we turn on here?
15:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so good.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: All right, interesting.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: All right, yeah, okay.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean Jesse.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: So let me finish this thought real quick.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: As when we go down in depth, it gets a lot harder.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Like our resolution as geoscientists of understanding the earth, I think depth is kind of the final frontier.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: We we don't know what's happening down at depth.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does it require to figure out what's happening down at depth?
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, drill down is one thing, and there's people who've drilled a bunch of places, but like not everywhere and not that deep, and it's focused mostly in pretty simple basins, which are still utterly complicated.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: So if I want to know what is the basement under you in Michigan right now, Chris, not many drill bits have gone down that far.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: So it requires tectonics, it requires geophysics, it requires structure, petrology, understanding how the continent formed, the tectonics of accretion back in time, like that's a complicated problem, and we don't know a lot down at depth, especially in places that are not oil-rich basins.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: So depth is a really interesting kind of final frontier, I think.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: And and Jesse, I think like we should uh pick pick one, one of these solutions at depth kind of things, and and walk through it, right?
17:12
SPEAKER_02: Because we're looking at just some examples of of solutions at depth.
17:16
SPEAKER_02: We're looking at resources at depth, like lithium, right?
17:19
SPEAKER_02: Or you pick your ore, what do you want?
17:22
SPEAKER_02: Lithium, copper, all you know, all these the platinum metals.
17:25
SPEAKER_02: What do you want, right?
17:27
SPEAKER_02: Um, carbon sequestration.
17:29
SPEAKER_02: That's another solution at depth.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Geological hydrogen is another solution at depth, and and then geothermal energy.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: So let's pick one or two of them and go through an example of it.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so much we could talk about.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think probably the best way to continue.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: This is a a big evolving conversation, but I hope we will we will do this through through interviews with people.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Um lithium brines, extracting lithium directly from brines is a really important path forward.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: A smack over formation in Arizona.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Um in um in Arkansas is one of these like really popular uh places.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: The smack over formation, it's so good.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: The McDermott, you know, yeah, McDermott Caldera.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: So let's focus on copper real quick.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Because Chris, we've talked about this before.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: This is a big thing.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, Adam Simon, this is a while ago.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Is it a year ago now?
18:21
SPEAKER_00: More than a year ago.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure you had Adam Simon on.
18:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: I'm old.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: Time is everything was everything was uh 30 days ago.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: So is it pre-computer or post-computer?
18:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: All right, all right.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh Adam Simon, yeah, he came out to give his he talked about he's done a lot of work on this, like copper as the artery for the energy transition.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: Like we need more copper.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: I forget what the statistics are, but we need more copper for it is the limiting factor for making the green transition.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: We just need so much copper.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: So much copper.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: And so, Chris, this is uh the we'll zoom in on this, but this is uh this is from Visual Capitalist based on some research by benchmark minerals.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: But basically, it's a really cool image that just shows this is only by 2030.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: So this is not that far into the future.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: The point is that we're gonna need more mines, is what they're after, more resource mines.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: So if we look at copper, the current supply is 22.9 million.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: There's an excess, how much additional supply we need by 2030 is 3.7 million tons.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: And you can go through these nickel the same, graphite, lithium, a lot of these would be what we call quote unquote critical minerals or critical elements.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: But the important thing is we're gonna need more mines.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: And Adam Simon has talked about this a lot.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, we need more mines, but mines are getting harder and longer, taking longer to get initiated.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: So this is a really big societal conversation we need to have.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: Like, where do we want these mines to go?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: How quickly can we get them on the online?
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Because things like copper are needed for an energy trans, or they're needed at baseline, but it's gonna especially be needed if we want this energy transition thing to happen.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, we talked about this earlier, Jesse, with I think a number of these, that these rare metals are siderophiles, and so when Earth was differentiating, these iron-loving metals would glob onto the iron and just sink.
20:19
SPEAKER_02: And so these are they just but the point is that they get concentrated with depth.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: So we need to get better at finding these things, but also correct me if I'm wrong, but we've we've just learned a lot about the concentration of lithium, and we're still learning this.
20:35
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
20:35
SPEAKER_02: In turn, you know, different geologic processes that that concentrate these things.
20:41
SPEAKER_02: And I think there are there's a lot yet to be learned about the concentration of metals, and that's gonna that dramatically transform the landscape.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: You are absolutely right.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: This is the most this is this is like this is next episode.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're talking about next episode.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: This is a it's kind of a wild, wild west here when it comes to things like lithium, rare earth elements, manganese, graphite, cobalt, like all these things that have been kind of moderate resources, but not like super high interest necessarily.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden they're like, oh, we need more of these, we need to you know reshore our our supply lines, etc.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot we don't understand about them.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Like lithium, there are companies, a lot of companies starting up doing direct lithium extraction from basinal brines down at depth, and they're just sucking the stuff up, extracting the lithium, injecting it right back down.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And this is actually a really promising path forward.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't think anybody solved it yet.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a couple people think they have, but it's looking like it could be economical right now.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: And the smack over formation in Arkansas is one of these ones where people are focusing a lot of attention.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: So the answers are kind of at depth.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: For copper specifically, this is a really cool chart and an important one that Adam Simon spoke about this as well.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: But this is from uh research again by visual capitalists.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: I love what they've been doing on this topic, but this is in in support uh supported by BHP.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: So what exactly are we looking at here?
22:03
SPEAKER_00: What's this graphic all about?
22:05
SPEAKER_00: This is since 1900, major copper discoveries in time.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: So time is the x-axis, y-axis is depth.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: So as we go lower on this plot, the depth at the surface, the top of the plot is is at the surface.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: And the size of the symbols are the size of the copper deposit.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And so the important thing here is to show that since 1900 till 19, I don't know, 80, something like that, most of the big deposits, most of all deposits were discovered at the surface.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: And now, since then, we're finding smaller deposits and we're finding them at depth, 500 meters or even deeper, some of them.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Resolution is 1.5 kilometers down in the earth.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: It's a big deposit.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: So they're getting smaller and deeper.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Quite now a question for you then.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: All of these big, big copper deposits that were discovered and early in easy, because they were at the surface.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: At the surface, were these what was the tectonic setting for most of these copper deposits that we discovered?
23:07
SPEAKER_02: This was it was related to rifting, right?
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, a lot of these are copper porphyry, so they're kind of, I mean, some of the name I don't know about all of these.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen I don't know the database here, but the a lot of these are copper porphyry deposits.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: So you know, sitting above a paleo magma chamber, arc kind of related things.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Think of Nevada, um the Andes, things like that.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of um sort of older arc or accretionary type processes, I think.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they mostly are copper porphyry, so there's a very particular there's debate about the tectonic setting, but broadly arcs, I would say.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: But Chris, the the thing they're getting smaller and deeper, which means more expensive, which means harder.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: Reminiscent of yeah, it's a lot like the petroleum issues, you know.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And so what is needed is to have people who come in and help do this better.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: And this is why I I mean AI will help, perhaps, but AI is not going to solve this problem because this is a geological problem.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: We need to understand how the earth works, we need to understand how rocks evolve.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Can we extract copper down from an active porphyry system?
24:15
SPEAKER_00: There are fluid redox gradients all over the place, down at depth.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: We don't really know where they are, but can we extract copper directly from down there?
24:23
SPEAKER_00: If we could pinpoint, hey, there's a porphyry forming beneath our feet right here, you know, two kilometers down.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: That's the type of thing that's going to be important and interesting in the future because we're going to need to keep finding these things.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: We need to keep extracting copper and the and it's kind of a, I think, an exciting place to be because it's a problem.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: And if you can solve the problem, it's a you know, that's really good for you and for everybody else.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: So exactly.
24:47
SPEAKER_02: So the takeaway is that we don't we don't yet fully understand all of the ways that copper is concentrated.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: That's the next frontier.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: That's the next frontier.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And can we do it, you know, at depth?
24:59
SPEAKER_00: We need to have an understanding of what's happening in our planet down beneath our feet when we talk about this a couple kilometers down.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: In basins, we have a pretty good job because we punched a lot of holes looking for oil and natural gas down in those places.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: When you get to tectonic settings where copper is forming, less so, right?
25:16
SPEAKER_00: A lot less so.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: So we need to kind of understand this a little bit more.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's a really exciting time for people who are interested in solving some of these really big problems.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And Chris Lithium, you brought up uh McDermott caldera.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a that's like in the last 10, 15 years, I'd say, has been kind of a game changer of understanding lithium deposits.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: This is uh we know it occurs in pegmatites.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: You and I have been up in New England, Black Hills of South Dakota, these really like classic lithium pegmatite mines.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were mined for spodjamine back in the day.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: Um that we've known about lithium.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: I've got a I've got a fair amount of lithium in my yard.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: You do it might be a resource.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Blois's yard might be the next resource, it's got a lot of lithium.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: That's that's pretty good.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's a well-known resource, and these brines have been extracted from uh you know, for a long time.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, bring brine up, let it evaporate, extract the lithium out.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: I gotta go down memory lane a second.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: W when we asked the owner of the mine for permission, and he said, go ahead, take whatever you want, Eda.
26:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm not really sure he knew what he was saying.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
26:29
SPEAKER_02: He didn't he didn't get a good look at the truck I had and the trailer that we were hauling and big fifty with uh big diesel pusher, yeah.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: That was uh that was pretty good.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: I have a a big piece of beautiful spogamine, yeah.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: And uh, so good.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's cool.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: These are cool, cool, cool rocks, and I think that's why they're they're you know very fun to research and interesting to look at.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the brines in this volcano sediment packages.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: You brought up McDermott Caldera, which is part of the Yellowstone hotspot track.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it what which one?
27:04
SPEAKER_00: I forget which number in the you know, in the sequence it is.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: Is it uh yeah, it's it's it's one of the oldest.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, if it's not the oldest, it's one of the oldest.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: The oldest.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you know, early part of this Yellowstone Hotspot track, and this is a big lithium resource, but it's kind of volcano sedimentary, so volcano, big super eruptions, then weathering processes in this caldera generated lithium-rich clays in the the subsurface there that are really lithium-enriched, i.e.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: economic.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And so 15 years ago, I don't think we really understood that clearly, and now there's a lot of focus on these types of tectonic settings.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: So this is just representing that the game is wide open.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: It's still we don't know the result here.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna this is a wide open game, and I think it's really exciting when that when that's the case because yeah, when sorry, go ahead.
27:52
SPEAKER_02: It is it's the wild, wild west of of the geoscience world.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: We just don't know.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so much we don't know about these these elements.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: We know what elements we need.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: We know a lot about that, but we don't know where they are and where they occur.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: That's a really good point.
28:09
SPEAKER_02: That we do we know the elements that we need, but we also are gonna have to push that envelope too and find um acceptable um alternatives to some of the uh like in in the the charging stations and things like this, you you know.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: That's a great point, Chris.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: And I I've struggled with this um in a research sense.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: From you know, I I've I'm taking the research program in a more applied, applied, more socially relevant direction, right?
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And there's these decisions you have to make.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I want to research?
28:38
SPEAKER_00: Where are their big problems?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting, and and what could I add value to my skill set and my research interests?
28:45
SPEAKER_00: And I decided lithium pegmatites, they're kind of interesting.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: I like the rocks themselves.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: There's some interesting problems in them.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: It's probably, I wouldn't guarantee it, but it's probably unlikely that lithium pegmatites are the are the mine sites of the future that like we need to understand these just because lithium could replace be replaced by like sodium batteries or grid scale, there's like vanadium redox batteries.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: So there's there's technological stuff that's happening, and then we're kind of responding to that, but then the link is the resource, right?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: The link is the commodity.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: Um and so that yeah, that's in it's massively in flux.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: But what's gonna be required for all of these is people who understand geochemistry, who understand rocks, who understand broadly how the earth works, how it did work in the past, tectonics, structure, all of these really traditional geology skill sets are gonna be really, really useful.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: And we're talking niche skill sets, like mineralogy.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: I think that's the way that's mineralogy is very important for a lot of these things.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: Like that's interesting.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: That's one of the takeaways with this series.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: I think Jesse, at least for me, is that if you're gonna go into geoscience, that I don't think you should be afraid to go niche.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no, definitely not down and dirty and and in whatever your passion is, you can't do it.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: In the weeds absolutely wriggle down into the weeds and get comfy because that's where the answers are.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: And if you're down in the weeds in one place, you can, especially in my field in geochemistry, in mineralogy, petrology, if you understand a phase diagram, really complicated phase diagram for the granite eu tectic.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: If you understand that, you can think about problems in a thermodynamic sense when it comes to groundwater, when it comes to brine water fluid, you have like this the toolbox you have, you can pick that up and move it over to another house and start working on that other house because the toolbox is the same.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And so I think going deep and like really you have to go deep to develop that toolbox to get other tools in your toolbox, then you can use those tools in a in a variety of different ways, which is the the thing that's really exciting to me.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, I just came while you were blabbering there, uh I came to a conclusion.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: Okay, you know what I'm gonna do with my geoscience classes is I am I'm gonna bring back, I'm bringing in phase diagrams.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: Oh, good.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: Okay, bringing it into my class.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: I you absolutely should.
31:10
SPEAKER_02: I absolutely should.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: And and it's not I'm gonna do this because so Chris, hold on, real quick.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: What you need to do is you need to bring a toolbox into your class, and everything that that might be boring to them, have a wrench and label it phase diagrams and put it into that toolbox.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Have a something, you know, geochronology on a screwdriver, write that, put it into the toolbox.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Like to really drive what's really, really that's a good idea.
31:33
SPEAKER_02: That's a good idea.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: You know what?
31:35
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna do that.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go buy a toolbox.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: Yep, I am.
31:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm actually gonna do it.
31:39
SPEAKER_02: Go into your garage.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: You must have an old one in there you don't need.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: I I can't get rid of my toolbox.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: I have to buy a new one.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you probably need a tractor.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: You probably need some new attachment for your tractor for this, too, I think, don't you?
31:50
SPEAKER_02: Oh man, uh I yesterday I was a working machine with my tractor.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
31:56
SPEAKER_02: So good.
31:56
SPEAKER_02: So good.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: Cut a lot of wood.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: I did actually.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: I'm a little sore today, actually.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: Oh, is your seat not that comfortable?
32:04
SPEAKER_02: No, you have to you have to load the wood into the front end loader, into the bucket, Jesse.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: And that takes work.
32:10
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
32:11
SPEAKER_02: It takes work.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: So all right, we're back on track now.
32:15
SPEAKER_02: Why am I gonna bring back phase diagrams?
32:17
SPEAKER_02: Because that's a skill set that modern day students, and and I'm sure that you see this too, they struggle with data, with looking at graphs, with looking at data and making sense of it.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: It's not about the phase diagrams themselves, but phase diagrams are are they're fun to make sense of.
32:38
SPEAKER_02: You know, I think they are.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: It's like a puzzle, you know, and figuring that out.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: So it just gives me an opportunity to to make students look at data, look at graphs, and then make sense of it, and then talk about it from a geoscience perspective.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: So um I'm gonna do this.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: I I absolutely it's an opportunity.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great thing to do, Chris.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And because it is such, I mean, I think this this phase diagram stuff is so important because mineralogy is going to become more important.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: And they're not intuitive.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: That's the difficult thing, is phase diagrams are are difficult to understand.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, this is uh perhaps maybe embarrassing for geochemistry professor to admit, but I've thought I need to um bolster my quantitative geochemistry skill set.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm really good at understanding in a sort of a qualitative way.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Like I can look at a phase diagram and say, okay, it works like this.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: But when you start applying the math behind it to it, I need to bolster that skill set.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: I need to start working with some of these geochemistry programs a little bit more that are very quantitative.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: So that for my own value, right?
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I think I'm, you know, I need to do that.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Having high school students start to to play those games is really uh would be really valuable for them.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: I think so.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: Uh I I mean we're always being pushed at what skills are you trying to teach?
34:01
SPEAKER_02: What what are you not?
34:02
SPEAKER_02: It's you know, it's not about the content, it's about a skill set.
34:06
SPEAKER_02: That seems to be the focus right now in our educational process where I work is it's all skill driven, not content driven.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: And so finding the balance between because you need the content also.
34:20
SPEAKER_02: But we are definitely people coming out of you know our school right now are they're lacking in certain skills, and one of them is definitely data interpretation for sure.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, interesting.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, all right.
34:33
SPEAKER_02: Uh hey, anyway, Jesse, let's transition to another example, right?
34:38
SPEAKER_02: Can we talk real quick about a another solution at depth example, which would be geothermal?
34:43
SPEAKER_00: Chris, we have an episode on geothermal energy that I loved.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: I loved this episode, and this is probably the one that I recommend the most to people because it's such a fundamental thing, and I think people like you, you know, at all at all levels of of knowledge, a lot of people are kind of like, well, why is the earth hot?
35:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's like a really basic question that I think people maybe just they know it's hot, but they don't know why it's hot at depth.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: And so we we kind of answered that.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Geothermal energy is a really, really important resource in the future.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: So I recommend that episode to people, like in normal conversations, talking about a geothermal heat pump at their house or something.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, we got a podcast episode if you want to like understand the the science behind or not the science behind the heat pump, but everybody just got a little glimpse into a social gathering at the Rymank household right now.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're gonna talk about you know what kind of meeting unit you have in your house.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: Jesse's just sitting in the corner of the couch there uh trying to inject geologic conversations into the exact.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: You just gotta tell everybody how important you're hilarious.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh so but we have an episode on that, which is really great.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: But but geothermal energy is a very, very interesting and potentially really important resource actually going forward.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: And so this is a map here, Chris.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: This one we're looking at.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: This is a map that just shows this is the potential where dark reds are high and and light yellows and whites are low, the potential for deep enhanced geothermal systems, what are called EGS, enhanced geothermal systems.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: And basically, all the red is out west in Colorado, in Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, you know, Eastern California.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot of red out west, right?
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of white out in uh in where where I live and where you live, white and yellow.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: Not a high potential for enhanced geothermal.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: But what do you hold on?
36:38
SPEAKER_02: First of all, define that a second.
36:40
SPEAKER_02: What do you mean when you say enhanced geothermal?
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good point.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll skip ahead.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: Enhanced geothermal, this is fracking for heat.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Think of it that way.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: It's just fracking for heat.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: So go down, drill down, frack the rock around it, inject cold water on one side, that water percolates through hot rock, you suck up the hot water on the other side, and you're taking the heat out.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: You're you're mining for heat, you're fracking for heat.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: So that's enhanced geothermal in a really uh you know basic sense.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: Um hold on a second.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: I I think no, no, I you didn't do uh you okay.
37:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna give you a little bit more leeway here, okay.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: That we need to um paint a better picture of this a second.
37:22
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: For once you went too short on the detail here for one time.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: So the goal here is typically, I mean, uh as we drill down, we get hotter in Earth.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: That's universally it's a geothermal gradient, absolutely geothermal gradient almost everywhere.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Once you get past like a certain level, once you get past a couple hundred feet, it's getting hotter all the time, everywhere.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: It gets hotter at different rates, though.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: And that is to do with the geothermal gradient, the tectonics.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: Basically, it has to do with how thick is the lithosphere.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: How thick is that tectonic plate beneath you?
37:56
SPEAKER_00: The thinner it is, the hotter it is shallow.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: The thicker it is, the cooler it is deep, typically.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it has a has something to do with whether the rocks are producing heat, whether there's a lot of radioactive rocks down beneath your feet or not.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: But the goal of this enhanced geothermal is find hot, dry rocks down deep that we can drill into, fracture the rocks, produce fracture networks, and then basically, in a in a really simplistic way, pass water or fluid through there that gets heated up, and then extract that fluid out and use it to drive a turbine to produce energy as well.
38:34
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so when you said put it in cold on one side, draw it out hot on the other side, you're just sweeping a lot of water through highly fractured hot rock.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, basically what they're after is looking for hot rock down deep and hot, dry rock.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: But look at the temperatures on this plot.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: This is showing from the forge project out in um out west, where they're they're doing a lot of experimentation and testing these methods.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: What the goal is, you find a high geothermal gradient, meaning it gets hotter, shallower.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: That's what high geothermal gradient means.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: And we're looking at an engineered fractures that are 200 degrees C, 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: So this is hot.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: This is water that will boil, and that's the point.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: You want to get it to the boiling point so you can drive the turbines and stuff, or you can use it to produce more electricity.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: But this is hot.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: This is really hot.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: This is a metamorphic rock.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's low-grade metamorphism, Chris, but this is metamorphism, and you're injecting water into hot dry rocks.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: So hold on.
39:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, if you look at this map, then you're basically looking at, yes, back to the map.
39:40
SPEAKER_02: We were looking at the leading edge of the plate, of the North American plate.
39:46
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
39:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it looks like you know, not a lot of high geothermal potential on the east coast.
39:51
SPEAKER_02: That's the trailing edge, it's a passive continental margin.
39:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, all the action is on the west because that's the the direction the plate is moving.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: It but then there's a bit of a contradiction though, because the crust is thicker, the lithosphere is thicker there than it is in the east.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, where all this heat is, is it's thinner typically.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: This is basin in range.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: So this this is crust that has stretched by like two times.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: And so the so this is it used to be this, yeah.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: And now it's relaxing.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: It's right, it's relaxed.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: You got this basin in range extension going on, thinned everything.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps we've even lost uh mantle lithosphere beneath the crust.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: So there's hot rock upwelling there, and we get faults and we get hydrothermal features.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all the the hot springs and stuff are you could you can look at these things on the map.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Like hot hot springs are everywhere out west, you know.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: We we've been to a couple of them.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can see the Yellowstone plume on here, too, you know, and the plume track of Yellowstone.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of stuff that is producing really potentially really hot rock that's relatively shallow, which would be potentially good for this enhanced geothermal system, basically fracking for heat.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: And why is this interesting?
41:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a pretty rough scale map.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Again, like we need to know.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: If I go skip ahead to this image, Chris, here that's from the Forge project, like this Opal Mound fault that is running through here.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: Like, we need there's basin fill mapped on here, there's grenadic basement.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: This is a really simplistic overview.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: And if we want to know and do enhanced geothermal better, we're gonna need higher resolution maps.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: And mapping at depth is really hard because it's expensive to drill.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: So any bit of like geology knowledge that we can add that provides higher resolution understanding of what's going on at depth is really valuable and will be really valuable for this important resource.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: And then again, this leads us into the next episode where we're going to talk about solutions in the rocks.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: But the solutions are at depth.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, enhanced geothermal is creating perhaps metamorphic reactions.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: This is a prenat pampeliate grade or a greenshist grade, you know, metamorphic rock, especially when you add water to it.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: So it's a really interesting space that there's a lot of research and development going after because it could be a great solution.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: So you're talking about changing the rocks by circulating hot water through them.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: They're already hot.
42:17
SPEAKER_02: Now you're adding water and you're going to cause chemical reactions.
42:20
SPEAKER_02: Is that what you're kind of alluding to for the next episode here?
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Next episode, yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Which is additionally an expensive.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: I think it's super, super cool.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely exciting.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of potential for this stuff.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: But for this episode, we've sort of belabored on the point, but the solutions are at depth.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really, if we come back to that, like the impacts of climate change are at the surface, geoscientists are going to be needed for that, and are are being needed for that.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the solutions are at depth.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: And so geoscientists, geologists, maybe even dare I say geologists, will be, I think, in high demand to help answer questions like that.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: For big problems.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: Big problems.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: Copper supply, commodity supply, geothermal energy.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, we could go through a long list of these things.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: We could.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: We actually could.
43:07
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is we just hit really on two different examples of solutions being at depth and and how we need to learn more, and that's what geoscientists do.
43:16
SPEAKER_02: We study internal processes for Earth, and that's where the answers are gonna lie.
43:22
SPEAKER_02: We think, you know, I mean, for what's coming in the future.
43:26
SPEAKER_02: To meet and to be on the front end of peak four.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a very exciting time.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: I think it's I think it's a really exciting time to be a student, to be a graduate student or an undergrad even and be thinking about these things.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a there are wide open spaces that nobody's doing much in.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: And just it's a good time to be intellectually curious and get a good sort of background knowledge, and then go out and explore and learn and and do great things.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a really exciting time.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, yeah.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, Jesse, I think that's a wrap.
43:58
SPEAKER_02: Is that a good place to end?
44:00
SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably a pretty good place to end.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we got to have a question for me.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: Do I always have questions for you?
44:05
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you what have you been doing with yourself the last little bit?
44:08
SPEAKER_00: But but Chris How are you gonna do what phase diagram are you gonna teach students?
44:16
SPEAKER_00: What's the phase diagram that you'll use?
44:18
SPEAKER_02: I don't know yet.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: I don't know yet.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a phase diagram and which I don't know what which one that's.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: Have you done this before?
44:26
SPEAKER_00: No.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: Or not?
44:26
SPEAKER_00: No.
44:27
SPEAKER_02: I just thought of it today.
44:28
SPEAKER_02: Actually, when you were talking, I do that all the time, actually.
44:31
SPEAKER_02: When you start talking, I start thinking about different things.
44:34
SPEAKER_02: You uh Chris, it's called tuning out.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: It's what you it's being productive, though.
44:40
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm taking my time and I'm being productive with it.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: You're like, okay, Jesse's gonna roll for about five minutes straight here, so I got some time to get some thinking done.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: No, I think it like I think phase diagrams are they you know, you just have to stare at them, and you have to uh you have to orient yourself to the data set, and then I'm just gonna invent questions about the phase diagrams, and I'm gonna use this as like, okay, you know, Professor Bullheis has been up here talking long enough now.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: You know, go back in at the lab and and get with somebody and I want you to work out this phase diagram.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: I that's yeah, I think that I'm gonna do that uh starting tomorrow.
45:23
SPEAKER_02: I got work to do right now.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you got some you got some stuff to do, man.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: Get on it.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: I do.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: That's exciting.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Exciting stuff.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: I look forward to hearing how they how they do, how they handle it.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: I still I still also have to give um gosh, I can't remember.
45:39
SPEAKER_02: It was an ep it was an episode a while back where we had a uh data set about gosh, what was it?
45:47
SPEAKER_00: Earthquakes.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: Number of large earthquakes.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: No, it had to do oh man, I can't remember now.
45:53
SPEAKER_02: I anyway, I've got to go back a few episodes and um you at you wanted me to show my students this data set, but I didn't have them yet.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: No, I think it was something about it was in that episode talking about was it is geology getting worse?
46:07
SPEAKER_00: I think we called it.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: But it you know, there are more earthquakes today than there were over the last hundred years.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: Is that what you're talking about?
46:12
SPEAKER_02: Could be, could be.
46:13
SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't know.
46:14
SPEAKER_02: I'll find it and I'll let you know.
46:15
SPEAKER_02: I'll let you know what it is.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, stay tuned.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's a wrap.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned for our coming episodes.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna keep talking about this theme why it's a really exciting time to be in geoscience and and the societal relevance of it.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: And it I think it's an exciting time to be able to go out and do great things and you know, maybe even make some money doing it.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a wrap.
46:33
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46:36
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46:42
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46:43
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46:44
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46:45
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46:50
SPEAKER_00: We love getting that stuff.
46:51
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47:02
SPEAKER_00: So download that first link in your show notes.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: We appreciate it.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: Cheers.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: Peace.