International earth scientists gathered in Sudbury Sept. 17 to 20 to launch a deep drill project to study the geology of the Sudbury area. The Sudbury Deep Drilling Project, billed to be the largest earth science project in Canada, will gather information to be analyzed by Laurentian University’s Virtual Reality Laboratory and formed into a 4-dimensional model of Sudbury’s geological evolution.
The Willet Green Miller building at the Sudbury campus was the site of the planning workshop. The plan is to drill two or three scientific drill holes several kilometres deep in the rocks of Sudbury, and combine that with information collected by local mining companies, the Ontario Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada.
Sudbury’s rich igneous complex of nickel and copper ore deposits was believed to be the result of a major extraterrestrial impact, likely a comet, about 1.85 billion years ago causing a crater 250 kilometres in diametre.
Organizers of the event say the project will provide advances into the scientific understanding of Sudbury’s geology, as well as the framework to plan and carry out the mining of Sudbury ores into the future.
