The mineralogy and geochemistry of Paleocene shales and interbedded siltstones in the southwestern of Ahar town (NW Iran) were studied by optical microscopy, XRD, SEM, XRF, and ICP-MS techniques. The mineralogical composition, mainly characterized by calcite, quartz, feldspar, dolomite, muscovite, magnesiohornblende, chlorite, illite, montmorionite, palygorskite, and koninckite, suggests relati...

Introduction: One difficulty in explaining the lunar late heavy bombardment (LHB) lies in identifying a source of impactors that survives at ~3.8 to 4 Gyr, so long after planet formation [1,2]. A leading theory is that the LHB was triggered by events in the outer solar system [3,4]. Any model that invokes an outer solar system source for the lunar LHB will also produce an intense bombardment on...

X-ray microtomography was used to image, at a resolution of 6.6 µm, the pore-scale arrangement of residual carbon dioxide ganglia in the pore-space of a carbonate rock at pressures and temperatures representative of typical formations used for CO2 storage. Chemical equilibrium between the CO2, brine and rock phases was maintained using a high pressure high temperature reactor, replicating condi...

Morokweng is a large, 145 Ma impact structure in the Northwest Province of South Africa. The impact origin of this structure and its melt rock has been confirmed by ample evidence of shock metamorphism in clasts within the melt rock and samples from granitoid basement below the melt body. The age of this structure is indistinguishable from the biostratigraphic age of the Jurassic-Cretaceous (J-...

Underground rock masses have shown a general trend of natural balance over billions of years of ground movement. Nonetheless, man-made underground constructions disturb this balance and cause rock stability failure. Fractured rock masses are frequently encountered in underground constructions, and this study aims to restore the strength of rock masses that have experienced considerable fracturi...

We have developed seismic velocity models for the heated rock surrounding a tunnel in Yucca Mountain tuff and compared the results with field data obtained at the Yucca Mountain drift scale test DST facility from 1998 to 2002. During that time, the tunnel was heated to replicate the effects of long-term storage of decaying nuclear waste and to study the effects of extreme temperatures on the su...

The ability to determine the pyrrolic nitrogen compounds, which present in trace quantities in oils, exhibit changes in both absolute and relative concentrations that correlate with migration distance. Such molecules appear promising as empirical but quantitative indicators of the relative distances of oils and present a first step towards true source to oil reservoir distance indicators. Quant...