Scientists in Antarctica extracted rocks 1 billion years old

By Alimat Aliyeva

Scientists of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean named after Academician I.S. Gramberg have successfully implemented a project to extract rock samples from under the ice with an age of about 1 billion years, Azernews reports.

"The place chosen for drilling is located in the center of the magnetic anomaly, at the top of the local uplift of the bedrock (the solid surface of Antarctica). The source of this anomaly remains unknown. It is assumed that the anomaly is associated with the tectonic seam, which is the boundary of the fusion of Antarctica and India in the Late Proterozoic - at the time when the supercontinent Rodinia was born on the planet," he said.

To gain access to the subglacial surface of the tectonic seam, specialists had to overcome an ice sheet with a thickness of more than 550 m. To this end, 30 km south of the Progress coastal wintering station at an altitude of about 700 m above sea level, scientists drilled a well from which they managed to extract a 48 cm long core of rock, as well as a continuous core of Antarctic ice. The latter will help reconstruct the climate and the state of the atmosphere in Antarctica for at least the last 10 thousand years.

The analysis of the rocks obtained should help scientists understand the origin of the magnetic anomaly, which is caused by the thickness of rocks magnetized by the ancient and modern geomagnetic field of the Earth. The width of this space with a magnetic field different from the rest of the territories around it is about 4 km.