A Vancouver-based company, with support from the government, says it is ready to commercialize a technology that harnesses invisible cosmic rays to stare deep into the earth and identify where the richest mineral and metal deposits are located.
Called “the world’s first Earth X-ray discovery platform,” Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster announced in November it had invested $5.6 million in a group of companies, led by Vancouver’s Ideon Technologies, trying to pioneer muon tomography.
At a basic level that means studying the path of subatomic particles emitted by cosmic rays, which are known as muons, in order to glean insight about the geology of the earth.
If successful, Ideon says it can provide an image of the earth, up to one kilometres deep, that’s similar to an X-ray or an MRI, which mining companies could use to help identify untapped metal and mineral deposits located far below the surface.
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