The most incredible scars given to the earth

From: http://speedywap.com/
By: Mirny Mine

Image: Zhivun

With explosions and massive machines scraping into the earth’s crust like a bad case of scabies, it’s small wonder open cast mining has made what many see as an unpleasant impact on the planet’s surface. The face of the earth is beleaguered with giant scars, scoured out in our ongoing bid to the plunder the planet of its natural resources. We’ve selected 10 of the holes most needing a bit of environmental ointment – where rehabilitation of the land could take some time.

10. Kalgoorlie Super Pit

Image: Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines via ABC

Kalgoorlie Super Pit is what it says on the tin. Irishman Paddy Hannan first saw the glimmer of gold here back in 1893, and this gigantic pockmark in Western Australia is now its continent’s largest open cut gold mine at 3.5 km long, 1.5 km wide and 360 m deep. It’s huge. And it’s growing. At least, that is, until 2017 when it is expected to cease being productive.

Threatening to devour the town: The Super Pit, Kalgoorlie

Image: The Super Pit

While the Super Pit has the pull of a benign black hole for tourists into good hole-some fun, air pollution, water usage, noise and vibration issues and mining waste are all bones of contention for local residents. Still, as well as coughing up almost 30 tonnes of gold each year, the pit provides work and silver for around 550 employees.

9. The Big Hole, South Africa

Image: johnbullas

Another open pit whose name leaves little to the imagination, the Big Hole in Kimberly, South Africa, is said to be the largest hole excavated by hand – despite recent claims that the nearby Jagersfontein Mine holds the some might say dubious title. While it was closed in 1914, during its 43-year lifetime, the 50,000 workers who broke their backs using picks and shovels shifted 22.5 million tonnes of earth, yielding almost 3 tonnes of diamonds for their jolly bosses, the de Beer brothers.

Water-filled earth wound: The Big Hole, Kimberley

Image: Irene2005

The Big Hole is 463 metres wide and was dug to a depth of 240 m – though infilling and water-accumulation have left just 175 m of the hole visible. It’s now a show mine complete with a restored old town. Quaint.

8. Diavik Diamond Mine

Image: johnbullas

Diavik Diamond Mine is located in Canada’s charmingly named North Slave Region – hopefully no reflection on the way the 700 workers here are treated. This is an open cast mine like no other. Gouged into a 20 square km island, 220 km from the Arctic Circle, there are particularly jaw-dropping views of this cold spot when the surrounding waters freeze over.

Snow hole: The Diavik Mine encircled by ice

Image: johnbullas

Connected by a treacherous ice road, this remote mine takes some getting to and so even has its own airport big enough to accommodate Boeing 747s. With a lifespan of 16 to 22 years, the owners will be happy as long as this yawning hole continues to throw up 8 million carats (1600 kg) of diamonds a year.

7. Ekati Diamond Mine, Canada

Image: All About Rocks

Another giant crater in the grizzled face of Canada, the Ekati Diamond Mine is North America’s first commercial diamond mine – having opened in 1998 – and those still dazzled by diamond rush fever no doubt hope it won’t be the last. It’s actually only a stone’s throw from the Diavic Mine just 20 km closer to the Arctic Circle – ensuring things here stay colder than a penguin’s pecker.

Iced up: The Ekati Mine in freezing winter temperatures

Image: whutch1 via Weather Underground

Like its brethren blemish in Diavic, the Ekati Mine is accessed by hair-raising ice roads and got its 15 minutes of fame on The History Channel’s Ice Road Truckersprogramme. Darned crazy canucks? Driven mad perhaps by the 40 million plus carats (8,000 kg) of diamonds the steady scouring has so far produced.

6. Grasberg Mine, Indonesia

Image: Alfindra Primaldhi

Opened in 1973, Indonesia’s Grasberg Mine is the world’s biggest gold mine and third largest copper mine. This industrial eyesore in the mountains of Papua employs a staggering 19,500 workers but is majority owned by smiling US subsidiaries. Built with permission it was not really the Indonesian government’s to give, the mine was attacked by the rebel Free Papua Movement in 1977.

Putting things in scale: Astronaut photo of the Grasberg Mine

Image: NASA

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These days, steep aerial tramways ferry equipment and people in and out. In 2006, the mine coughed up 610,800 tonnes of copper and 58 tonnes of gold, but it doesn’t take much digging to find environmental controversy surrounding the site, with water contamination and landslides heading the list of concerns. Contentious.

5. Chuquicamata, Chile

Image: Luiswtc73

Chuquicamata in Chile is a colossus of a mine that has churned up a record total of 29 million tonnes of copper. Despite almost 100 years of intensive exploitation, it remains among the largest known copper resources, and its open pit is one of the biggest at a whopping great 4.3 km long, 3 km wide and over 850 m deep.

Strangely beautiful sight: Chuquicamata Mine from high in the air

Image: Owen Cliffe

Copper has been mined for centuries at Chuquicamata, as shown by the 1898 discovery of a mummy dated around 550 AD found trapped in an ancient mine shaft by a cave-in. A great influx of miners was sucked in by ‘Red Gold Fever’ after the War of the Pacific, when at one stage the area was covered with unruly mining camps where alcohol, gambling, prostitution and even murder were rife. Yee-haw.

4. Escondida, Chile

Image: Minera Escondida

The Minera Escondida Mining Co. runs twin open pit mines cut into the skin of the copper capital of the world that is Chile. Construction began in 1990, and this sucker recently overtook Chuquicamata as the world’s largest annual copper producer, with its 2007 yield of 1.48 million tonnes worth US$ 10.12 billion – a whole lot of dollar.

Escondida from space: The mine is at the bottom of the picture

Image: PD-USGOV-NASA

Environmental impact aside, Escondida has become a key part of the Chilean economy and employs some 2,951 people directly. A strike in 2006 broke out because workers felt they were not sharing in the super high profits being made on the back of record copper prices. After wrangling for pay demands, the union briefly blockaded the road to the mine. Testy stuff.

3. Udachnaya Diamond Mine, Russia

Image: Alexander Stepanov

Like the Sarlacc Pit on Steroids, the Udachnaya Mine in Russia is a gigantic open-pit diamond mine that plunges more than 600 metres into the earth’s crust. Yep, it’s one heck of a hole. Located in Russia’s vast but sparsely populated Sakha Republic, just outside the Arctic circle, it seems that mining for these precious stones demands a good set of thermal undies.

Into the depths: The Udachnanyay Mine from its southern side

Image: Russian Author

The nearby settlement of Udachny was named after the diamond deposit, which was discovered in 1955 just days after the Mir (below). The Udachnaya pipe is controlled by Alrosa, Russia’s largest diamond company, which boasts that it plans to halt open-pit mining in favour of underground mining in 2010. Glad to hear it.

2. Mirny Diamond Mine, Russia

Image: USMRA

Siberia’s Mir Diamond Mine comes close to taking the cake as numero holie. The largest open diamond mine in the world, this Russian monster has a surface diameter of 1.2 km and is 525 m deep. The size of the hole is such that wind currents inside cause a downdraft that has resulted in helicopters being sucked in and crashing. Good to know the area above it is now a no-fly zone.

Earth vortex: The Mir looks as if it might suck in houses as well as helicopters

Image: USMRA

After its discovery in 1955, workers at the Mir had to endure incredibly harsh temperatures that froze the ground and everything else in the winter, making car tires and steel shatter. The mine ceased operations in 2001, having produced 10 million carats (2 tonnes) of diamond per year at its peak. Our survey says: ka-bling.

1. Bingham Canyon Mine, USA

Image: johnbullas

So here it is, the carbuncle supremo, Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, the world’s biggest manmade pit. This mammoth mine measures 4 km wide and drops a stomach-churning 1.2 km into the ground, the result of extraction begun in 1863. The ore-inspiring fruits of its labour include more than 17 million tonnes of copper and 715 tonnes of gold – a mental load of metal.

The biggest yet: Bingham Canyon Mine laid bare

Image: Elmhurst

In the early 1900s, mining camps lined the steep canyon walls, but several of these were swallowed up by the ever-expanding mine. Now it employs 1,400 people and 50,000 tonnes of material are removed from it each day. What’s more, this giant earth scar and National Historic Landmark is growing – and will continue to until at least 2013.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Super-Hard Diamonds Found in Meteorite

The ultra-hard rocks may not end up on your finger, but they could help scientists learn how to create harder diamonds in the lab.

By Larry O'Hanlon |

It didn't look quite this dramatic, but ultra hard diamonds were discovered in a meteorite that fell over Finland in 1971.
iStockPhoto

Researchers using a diamond paste to polish a slice of meteorite stumbled onto something remarkable: crystals in the rock that are harder than diamonds.

A closer look with an array of instruments revealed two totally new kinds of naturally occurring carbon, which are harder than the diamonds formed inside the Earth.

"The discovery was accidental but we were sure that looking in these meteorites would lead to new findings on the carbon system," said Tristan Ferroir of the Universite de Lyon in France.

Ferroir is the lead author of a report in the new diamond in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

The researchers were polishing a slice of the carbon-rich Havero meteorite that fell to Earth in Finland in 1971. When they then studied the polished surface they discovered carbon-loaded spots that were raised well above the rest of the surface –- suggesting that these areas were harder than the diamonds used in the polishing paste.

WATCH VIDEO: Find out why iron meteorites are particularly sensitive to even the slightest bit of moisture - including the touch of a finger.

"That in itself is not surprising," said diamond researcher Changfeng Chen of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. He explained that sometimes during the shock of impact graphite can create jumbled "amorphous" zones that can resist diamonds, at least those coming at them from one direction.

But what apparently happened in the Havero meteorite is that graphite layers were shocked and heated enough to create bonds between the layers -- which is exactly how humans manufacture diamonds, Chen explained.

Ferroir's team took the next step and put the diamond-resistant crystals under the scrutiny of some very rigorous mineralogical analyzing instruments to learn how its atoms are lined up. That allowed them to confirm that they had, indeed, found a new "phase" or polymorph of crystalline carbon as well as a type of diamond that had been predicted to exist decades ago, but had never been found in nature until now.

"The new structure is very interesting," Chen told Discovery News. "It gives us some clues so we can try to make it in the laboratory, and then investigate it."

Among the things that would be interesting to learn, Chen said, is how hard are the new kinds of diamonds. The sample from the meteorite was far too small to test for hardness, except to show that it is certainly harder than regular diamonds.

"The only evidence we have for a higher hardness than diamond is the fact that we polished the rock section with a diamond paste and that our polymorph and polytypes were not polished by this material," said Ferroir. "This why we do think that its hardness is harder than diamond."

However, there is no way at the present to compare them to the artificial ultra-hard diamonds known as lonsdaleite and boron nitride, Ferroir said.

Milwaukee Man Accidentally Buys Stolen Meterorite for $10

The 50-pound hunk of metal Tom Lynch had been using to hold up his grandson’s basketball hoop is actually a meteorite, by some estimates worth as much as $100,000.

This story begins not in a galaxy far away, but at a Milwaukee rummage sale a few years ago. Tom Lynch paid $10 for an odd hunk of metal he figured might be copper or bronze with potential salvage value.

He had no idea it had dropped from space into the Arizona desert some 50,000 years ago.

"For the last two years, it kept my grandson's basketball hoop from blowing over in the yard. It weighs 50 pounds," said Lynch, a retired foundry and General Motors worker who lives in South Milwaukee.

Recently, he saw a show about meteorites on the Travel Channel and realized that's probably what he had. It was curious, he thought, that the thing never oxidized in the weather. Following advice from the TV show, he held a magnet up to the object and it stuck.

He took his 4.6 billion-year-old find to the Milwaukee Public Museum and then to Chicago's Field Museum last month. The scientists got excited. Yes, they said, it's a meteorite.

He got one offer from a collector for $10,000, but soon had a sense from Internet research that a meteorite with this unique basket shape might fetch closer to $100,000.

Before he could get too excited, a call came from Jim DuFoe, a minerals expert he had consulted. Bad news, DuFoe said. The meteorite was stolen in 1968 from the Meteor Crater Visitor Center near Flagstaff. He had himself a hot rock.

DuFoe remembers Lynch's reply: "We can't sell what we don't own."

D.B. King photo

Tom Lynch’s rock traveled to Earth with the Canyon Diablo meteor, which created Meteor Crater in Arizona about 50,000 years ago.

So Lynch plans to toss the meteorite in the car and personally deliver it to the visitor center on the crater's edge.

"It was going along pretty good there for a while. I've been really lucky in my life, so this doesn't faze me," he said.

"I've got mixed emotions. I'm glad it's going back and a lot of people will be able to see it. And I'm feeling sorry I didn't get $100,000 for it."

Lynch, 62, is more of a car buff than a space nut, but he's getting a kick out of his meteoric leap into the geological realm.

Conversation piece

On Tuesday, he invited me to see the meteorite at Market Place Café, a restaurant he likes in Oak Creek. The deceivingly heavy chunk of mostly iron and nickel sat on a table in the basement banquet room, and a stream of customers and employees came to see and photograph it.

DuFoe was there, and so was Peter Sheehan, curator of geology at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Sheehan said he regularly is approached by people who think they have a meteorite. It's usually slag from the foundry process.

"I think in 30-some years I've identified one other, maybe two," he said.

At the Chicago museum, where they sawed off a little piece for analysis, they were similarly thrilled by Lynch's find. "It was like a 'Tom and Jerry' moment. Eyeballs bulged and jaws hit the floor," said DuFoe, who runs a business out of Rockton, Ill., called Geoscience Collections Services.

The 10-inch-tall meteorite is brownish with knobby protrusions and little caves and dents and what looks like a handle. It traveled here as part of the massive Canyon Diablo meteor, which strayed from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and said hello to Earth with a crater not quite a mile wide and 550 feet deep. Most of the meteor vaporized on impact.

More than 250,000 people a year visit the site, which opened as an attraction in 1942, said Brad Andes, president of Meteor Crater Enterprises.

The basket meteorite now held by Tom Lynch was found by a rancher three miles from the crater and permanently lent to the Meteor Crater facility. Because of its novel shape, it was a favorite piece, and in fact was featured on a postcard the museum used to sell (which now is peddled on eBay).

On Aug. 12, 1968, someone walked away with the meteorite, according to an article in the Yuma newspaper. At the time, the value was placed at $5,000, and the Coconino County sheriff issued a nationwide bulletin for its return.

About five years ago, Andes received a phone call from a lawyer who said he represented the family who had the piece. "He wouldn't give me his name. The people were really paranoid about the legal ramifications of having that in their possession," Andes said.

The lawyer hinted at a reward, but Andes said thieves don't deserve that. The man never called back. Lynch does not remember where the rummage sale was where he made the find.

Lynch said the visitor center is rewarding him with $1,000, which he is happily accepting. Andes said Lynch is doing the honest thing and the decent thing, which is no guarantee in the world of meteorite collectors. "That says a lot about his character," Andes said.

A tribute to Lynch will be posted at the museum, and the basket meteorite will once again be displayed. Under glass this time.

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or e-mail at jstingl@journalsentinel.com.