A MODERN MARVEL

Hokitika Guardian, 1 June 1928, Page 1

A MODERN MARVEL

GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING. /'SYDNEY, Alav 17. Air A. Broughton Edge, a famous English consulting geologist now visiting Australia on an important mission for the Commonwealth, is an expert. in what is known as geophysics, and he is about to embark on one of the largest experiments ever promoted in Australia. The cost will run into thousands of pounds, but the return, if the experiment is successful. will run into millions. As a result. it is hoped that tho rich mineral resources of the country, hitherto discoverable only by hardship and hazardous exploration, will be positively known. It is considered that wealth that will make the fabled riches of Aladdin look insignificant lies underneath the soil. Some of it has already been tapped. Hundreds of millions have been dug from the ground in the very circumscribed areas already worked. Alultiplied rewards await the day when certainty of location shall make the winning of mi-! told values a matter of steady perseverance and determination.

Geophysical prospecting is expected to bring about this certainty. Gold, silver, copper, and lead ore are yet to be discovered in Australia in areas that have not been touched. One authority stated recently that Australia had been playing a game of “blind man’s bluff” over hundreds and thousands of square miles in a hit-or-miss fashion at the cost of

many lives ami great treasure. Tt is difficult to explain in popular terms the methods which have revolutionised prospecting in other parts of the world. Delicate instruments have to be devised, capable of being worked only by trained experts, by which the secrets of the earth are able to be wrested from it. A marvellous instrument known as the Eotvos Torsion Balance is used in the examination of the flat, or moderately nn delating, areas, where large massive mineral deposits or oil pools are likely to occur. It has been particularly successful in oil prospecting in Persia, Burma, and in North America. The abolition of toilsome bore prospecting, where hope changes to despair as the money dwindles, is certainly to be welcomed. The Instrument is used for the first method, the gravito-metric, involving the measurement of small differences of the specific gravity of rocks in the area to be prospected. The instrument talks a language which tells the scientists the secrets that lie beneath. In the case of country holding magnetic. ores, the magnetic method is used, .where the effect on the delicate mechanism is analogous to that .whit'll