02.12.2008 - The core has arrived!
This week CGB researchers took delivery of 90 boxes or 800 meters of drill core collected during the Barberton Scientific Drilling Project in South Africa earlier this year.
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The timing was serendipitous because this week CGB was hosting a workshop involving international partners from South Africa and elsewhere who are studying this unique material. This summer’s 800m of core were split lengthwise in half, one half staying in South Africa at the Africa Earth Observatory Network (AEON) at the University of Cape Town and the other half coming to Bergen.
Rehana Dada, a free-lance South African journalist, was also with the team. She made a film of the 2003 fieldwork called “Reading Rocks” and is making a sequel of this summer’s drilling activities. (read more about Rehana and science journalism)
Professor Harald Furness leads the Early Earth and Biosignatures effort in Bergen. He hopes that specialists at CGB will be able to further investigate the biological nature of the unusual signatures found in parts of the drill core.
Many of these rocks formed on the Archean sea floor and will enable CGB scientists to learn more about the nature of seafloor hydrothermal activity in the Archean period. Parts of the drill core contain data that will help to support or reject theories of a possible glaciation at this time; as well as more detailed information about the nature of the Archean ocean and atmosphere.
