https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/
Technique now possible due to improvements in lithium batteries which power monitoring equipment
Improvements in lithium batteries are one of the major reasons a new mineral exploration method could soon take off in northwestern Ontario.
Lakehead University will host PACIFIC (passive seismic techniques for envoirnmentally-friendly and cost-efficient mineral exploration), an international group of universities, government agencies and private companies which want to develop new exploration tools.
“It’s getting harder and harder to find mines,” said John McBride, a project geologist with Stillwater Canada, one of the companies involved in the project.
“The easy ones have already been found. So, we’re looking deeper, we’re looking in more difficult terrain, more difficult areas to access, and we need the right tools to be able to do that.”
McBride said the new technique uses recording equipment, which looks like a metal paint can, to record naturally occurring waves in the earth. Where an anomaly in the rock occurs, the wave is altered, which is picked up by the equipment.
For the rest of this article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/thunder-bay-pacific-new-exploration-1.5172168