Latest news with #geoscience
Yahoo
28-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
IMDEX Acquires Earth Science Analytics to Accelerate Digital Growth
Perth, Western Australia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 28, 2025) - IMDEX Limited (ASX: IMD) ("IMDEX") or the ("Company"), has acquired Norway-based Earth Science Analytics AS ("ESA") as part of the continued expansion of its digital orebody knowledge capabilities across multiple resources markets. This transaction will enable IMDEX to co-ordinate capabilities from existing offerings such as Datarock, aiSIRIS and Mineportal into ESA's EarthNET platform, facilitating the creation of an open platform for all earth systems and delivering enhanced AI-enabled geoscience solutions for our customers. IMDEX will initially acquire a 80.5% controlling equity interest for A$26 million (~NOK 173 million), with the remaining minority shareholding acquired after four years. The transaction is expected to close by the end of August 2025. About ESA Founded in 2016, ESA has developed EarthNET, a cloud-based, AI-driven geoscience platform. EarthNET enables ingestion and integration of vast datasets (predrilling geophysical surveys, drillhole sensor data, corefarm image data, sensor data, and laboratory data) to enable the application of machine learning models across such datasets in a cloud-agnostic environment. While ESA's current offering primarily serves the energy sector, its platform is highly transferable across all earth science datasets and has a track record of transforming industrial data into real-life business value, with productivity metrics such as: >90% reduction in interpretation time for geophysical datai, changing cycle times from weeks to hours; and >95% accuracy in rock property prediction accuracyii by using AI models trained on quality-controlled data. ESA's technology is at a crucial inflection point, having been through its development phase and now in early market adoption with oil and gas majors and national oil companies. Combining with IMDEX's digital portfolio will support ESA growing its existing customer base in the energy sector as well as accelerate expansion of the EarthNET platform into the minerals and mining market. Strategic Rationale Earth Systems platform that accelerates development of IMDEX's orebody knowledge solutions: EarthNET is a strategic digital platform enabling integrated resource workflows, with scalable applications across sectors including minerals, infrastructure, geothermal, CCS, oil & gas and offshore wind. Enhances AI capabilities for geoscience applications in all earth systems end markets: ESA's mature AI tools, combined with IMDEX and Datarock's capabilities, will deliver advanced decision-support solutions for geoscientists. Strengthens our Pre-Drill Intelligence: ESA's seismic and multi-physics capabilities complement IMDEX's drilling and corefarm technologies, improving orebody targeting and delivering increased levels of intelligence early. Enables rapid AI product development in minerals: EarthNET's open architecture enables seamless integration of IMDEX HUB-IQTM and third-party datasets, fast-tracking product development. Transaction Terms 80.5% acquired for A$26 million (~NOK173 million) primarily from non-employee shareholders. Remaining 19.5% to be acquired from founders after four years via a put and call structure, with a minimum payment of ~A$7 million. Potential uplift in payment based on performance over the four years. Funded via IMDEX's existing debt facility (announced 10 June 2025). Financial Impact Full P&L Consolidation from completion, with a 19.5% non-controlling interest recognised. Expected contribution of ~A$4 million revenue delivering a breakeven EBITDA margin for FY26. Recognition of goodwill and IP assets anticipated (final allocation to be confirmed). Estimated increase in FY26 finance costs of <A$1 million. Paul House, Managing Director and CEO, commented: "This acquisition is a defining step in the acceleration of our digital strategy across multiple end markets. By integrating ESA's talent and EarthNET platform with IMDEX's existing capabilities, we're significantly reducing time-to-market for our orebody knowledge solutions. EarthNET is a foundational technology - highly scalable, cloud-native and AI-enabled - that complements our portfolio alongside Datarock and Krux. Combined, these platforms will materially expand our digital offering in FY26 and position it as a primary growth engine for our business. Collectively these acquisitions are about maximising the use of the data for our customers that we have collected via our HUB-IQ connected sensors, that will ultimately facilitate a wide variety of data enrichment that benefits our customers." Dr Eirik Larsen, Chief Executive Officer, Earth Science Analytics said: "Joining forces with IMDEX marks an exciting new chapter for Earth Science Analytics. Together, we are well positioned to deliver even greater value to our customers across the energy and mining sectors. I'm deeply grateful to our talented team, whose dedication and innovation have made this milestone possible." Arne Froiland, Senior Director, Aramco Ventures (an initial ESA investor), said: "We are proud of what the Earth Science Analytics team has accomplished and the journey we've shared - from the early stages of development to EarthNET becoming one of the world's leading AI-driven geoscience platforms. We believe IMDEX is the right partner to take ESA forward and ensure EarthNET remains at the forefront of AI-enabled geoscience decision-making." Norwegian firm Aabø-Evensen & Co Advokatfirma AS is acting as lead legal counsel to IMDEX on the transaction. Advokatfirmaet Schjodt AS is acting for the vendors. This announcement has been approved for lodgement by the IMDEX Company Secretary. Investor Contact Details Philippa PerryMobile: +61 (0) 431 446 364Email: i Based on fault interpretation workflow using EarthNET with select seismic dataset (30GB) ii Based on predicting shear sonic logs from available wireline logs using ML based approach in EarthNET using a training dataset of 370 wells To view the source version of this press release, please visit Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists found what just might be Earth's oldest rocks
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, BGR may receive an affiliate commission. Researchers say they might have discovered the oldest rocks on Earth. The rocks in question are a belt of swirly, stripe-covered rocks found in the northeastern reaches of Canada. These rocks appear to contain some of the oldest minerals that we've ever catalogued. This outcropping of rocks is known as the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, and new dating analysis of the belt say that it could be as old as 4.16 billion years. That's nearly as old as the estimated age of the Earth itself. And these findings suggest that the belt could be one of the best locations for digging deeper into understanding our planet's earliest years. But researchers haven't come to this conclusion easily. The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt has been under scrutiny for over 15 years, geoscientists told Science Alert. Today's Top Deals Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Ring Video Doorbell deals Memorial Day security camera deals: Reolink's unbeatable sale has prices from $29.98 By confirming the age of these rocks, and that they might just be the oldest rocks on Earth, we're finally opening the door to new research possibilities. While there are likely other groups of rocks like this to be found elsewhere, the Earth's surface and crust are constantly in motion as tectonic forces meet with the weathering influences above. This creates a unique area for rocks and dirt to move and break down. As such, finding other places like the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt that are full of old and unique minerals is difficult. Places like this where the rocks have managed to survive the breakdown of time are extremely valuable for giving us insight into the past, which could hopefully one day help us determine where life on Earth originated from. The oldest rocks on Earth are especially helpful for scientists, as they contain Hadean minerals, which are minerals from Earth's first geological eon. This particular eon spans from the formation of Earth to just over 4 billion years ago. But dating the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt has been difficult because past attempts to date it returned inconsistent results, ranging from 2.7 billion years to 4.3 billion years. For this new study, which is published in Science, the researchers used two dating measurements on a type of rock known as metagabbro. Both tests returned the same results, suggesting that the researchers were on the right track. While they want to dive deeper into the analysis itself, the researchers say the minimum age of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt is 4.16 billion years. More Top Deals Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2025: Get $2,000+ free See the
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Something is ‘pulsing' beneath the Earth, scientists say – and could tear a continent apart
Scientists have detected deep pulses in the Earth beneath Africa – and it could tear the continent apart. The pulses are made up of molten mantle rock surging in rhythm, the researchers say. The plume of hot mantle is surging upwards in pulses that are like a heartbeat, they say. Eventually, the continent will be torn apart and a new ocean will be formed. That will take place over millions of years, as the tectonic plates are ripped apart at rift zones like those in the Afar region in Ethiopia. That is where scientists found the evidence of the unexpected behaviour. 'We found that the mantle beneath Afar is not uniform or stationary – it pulses, and these pulses carry distinct chemical signatures,' said Emma Watson, the scientist who led the study. 'These ascending pulses of partially molten mantle are channelled by the rifting plates above. That's important for how we think about the interaction between Earth's interior and its surface.' In the research, scientists gathered samples from the Afar region, where three tectonic rifts meet. Scientists have long thought that mantle was being pushed up making the crust extend, eventually giving birth to a new ocean basin, but did not know how it was happening. To better understand that process, they took those samples and combined them with existing data and models to understand the plume beneath the surface of the Earth. They showed that there is one asymmetric plume beneath the surface. 'We have found that the evolution of deep mantle upwellings is intimately tied to the motion of the plates above. This has profound implications for how we interpret surface volcanism, earthquake activity, and the process of continental breakup,' said Derek Keir, a co-author. 'The work shows that deep mantle upwellings can flow beneath the base of tectonic plates and help to focus volcanic activity to where the tectonic plate is thinnest. Follow on research includes understanding how and at what rate mantle flow occurs beneath plates,' The work is described in a new paper, 'Mantle upwelling at Afar triple junction shaped by overriding plate dynamics', published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Something Strange Is Happening 1,700 Miles Beneath Your Feet. Now We Know Why.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: Over a thousand miles from the surface, in Earth's D' layer—right on the edge of the liquid metal outer core—there is a weird acceleration of seismic waves. Experiments recreating the phenomenon in a lab found that this is the result of post-perovskite crystals, which form from perovskite. The alignment of these crystals determines their hardness, which then determines how fast seismic waves can move through them. Deep beneath Earth's surface are layers of soil, rock strata often embedded with fossils, gurgling magma, and—back up. Before your Journey to the Center of the Earth mission can get any further, you're going to have to get past flows of solid rock. The D' layer—located between layers of magma above and the liquid rock of the outer core below—has been mystifying scientists for decades. This is in part because if you were to plunge down 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles), you would be jump-scared by seismic waves that accelerate when they hit the threshold of the D' layer. It used to be thought the reason for this was the mineral perovskite, found in the lower mantle, morphing into a form known as post-perovskite close to the D' layer. But that still wasn't enough to explain the phenomenon. Geoscientist Motohiko Murakami wanted to investigate what could possibly be going on to cause the strange seismic wave acceleration known as the D' discontinuity. Because trekking to the core-mantle boundary (CMB) where the D' layer lies is obviously not an option, he led a team of researchers from Switzerland and Japan in running lab tests and computer simulations to find out what post-perovskite had to do with he unusual increase in seismic waves. Post-perovskite crystals are anisotropic, meaning their physical properties are different when measured in different directions. They have two different types of textures—one comes from transformation (the phase transition from the perovskite phase to post-perovskite), and the other is a result of deformation (when post-perovskite crystals turn to face in the same direction). Murakami and his team found out that it isn't just transformation that causes the rumbling. It actually happens with deformation. 'The deformation-induced texture forms when crystals undergo plastic deformation, causing their orientations to align in specific directions. It is mainly produced by dislocation slip or creep,' Murakami said in a study recently published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. How post-perovskite crystals are aligned determines their hardness, and the speed at which seismic waves move through them depends on how hard they are. Materials called perovskites can be created from any substances capable of being arranged into the same cubic crystal structure. Perovskite is a calcium titanium oxide mineral (CaTiO3), while post-perovskite is a form of magnesium silicate (MgSiO3) achieved at extremely high pressures. Its crystal structure is orthorhombic, meaning that the right angles of the cubes have unequal axes. For post-perovskite crystals to align with each other, the axes all have to be in the same position. Murakami used MgGeO3 to create crystals analogous to post-perovskite. Like perovskite, MgGeO3 crystals deform easily when pressure is applied, so how they behaved would reflect was is going on over a thousand miles underground. The crystals were heated by a laser, compressed, and heated again to synthesize post-perovskite. They were then exposed to high-pressure sound waves, and the wave velocity was measured once those waves passed through the crystals. It turned out that sound waves can experience a substantial increase in velocity when passing through aligned post-perovskite crystals. Researchers also discovered that the cause of this alignment—which determines the hardness of the material, and therefore the speed of sound waves in the lab and seismic waves deep in Earth—is convection. As hotter material rises, cooler material sinks, as it does in convective storms like hurricanes. Murakami thinks that convection of materials in the mantle (such as plumes rising and slavs sinking) is behind the deformation in the D' layer. This is the first time any evidence—even lab-based evidence—has been found for Earth's innards moving. 'While previous theoretical work has suggested that anisotropy could explain the observed seismic discontinuities,' he said. 'Our results, obtained through in situ measurements of post-perovskite velocities under high pressure, represent the experimental verification of this hypothesis, bridging the gap between theory and observation.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
How does a rockslide happen? 'The mountain that moves' was Canada's deadliest
A large rockslide in Banff National Park at Bow Glacier Falls left two hikers dead and up to 13 others injured Thursday, raising questions about how and why the disaster occurred. But a look at published research and archive news articles on rockslides provides some general information about the dangerous occurrences. A rockslide happens when a large chunk of rock detaches itself from the mountain where it sits and begins sliding down the slope. Why does this occur? Well, natural erosion or seismic activity can cause a rockslide, as can heavy rainfalls. Human activity such as excavation, construction or mining can also lead to a rockslide. As one chunk of rock begins its downward slide, it can quickly gain momentum and trigger massive amounts of other rock to also begin sliding, leading to devastating effects. notes a landslide or rockslide can occur 'when gravitational and other types of shear stresses within a slope exceed the shear strength (resistance to shearing) of the materials that form the slope.' Dr. Dan Shugar, a University of Calgary geoscience professor, said rockslides are a fairly common geological phenomenon, particularly in the Rocky Mountains, due to how steep the slopes are. The composition of rock is largely limestone, which is susceptible to water saturation, making the rocks heavier. 'Ultimately, the cause is gravity,' he said. 'Mountains get built up over geological time and then they get torn down. That's an entirely natural process. 'We see rockfalls, rock avalanches, rockslides — we see a variety of mass wasting in mountain environments all the time. They range from a small boulder that would hurt you if it hit you but wouldn't be that damaging to entire mountain sides collapsing, and everything in between.' A landslide occurs when sediment or loose dirt disengages from a hill or mountain and begins moving downwards. A rockslide, however, means solid rocks are also being swept down a slope during a similar type of event. Rockslides are also incredibly fast-moving, as they tend to move down a flat surface of a mountain. The Canadian Encyclopedia notes a rockslide can move up to 100 km/hr. The most horrific rockslide in Canadian history occurred in 1903 when a huge slab of Turtle Mountain crashed down onto the town of Frank and Crowsnest Pass (about 250 kilometres southwest of Calgary). At least 72 known residents were killed in the natural disaster, as were an undetermined number of others visiting or passing through the area. Some historians thus put the death toll closer to 90. An estimated 80 to 110 million tonnes of rock were involved in the deadly event that came to be known as Frank Slide. The rockslide only lasted about a minute and a half. Newspaper clippings and archive stories from the rockslide describe the horrific results that led to the deaths of men, women and children. As those clippings note, information about the state of some of the victims was disturbing, but shed light on how powerful the rockslide was: 'The leg and hip of a man was found lying fifty yards from the Imperial Hotel.' First Nations people in the area had noticed instability in the mountain decades earlier and even had a name for it that translated to 'the mountain that moves.' The geological structure of Turtle Mountain was said to be the primary cause of Frank Slide, but weather impacts and coal mining were also noted as factors in the deadly rockslide. An interpretive centre in Frank now tells the story of the slide and history of the area. Other Canadian rockslides of note include the 1841 rockfall in the Lower Town of Quebec City, killing 32 people and crushing eight homes, and the 1889 rockslide in the same area that killed more than 40, says the Canadian Encyclopedia. The worst rockslide worldwide was the Haiyuan Landslides of 1920 in China, when more than 200,000 people were killed. An earthquake caused those landslides. Apart from the Frank Slide, Shugar said Alberta has surprisingly not had that many significant rockfall events. He noted B.C. tends to get more, citing the Hope Slide of 1965 as an example. 'It certainly was a very big, impressive landslide right by the highway,' he said. The 680-tonne Big Rock, a type of quartzite, is an intriguing tourist attraction at Rocky Mountain House in Alberta, but how did this boulder measuring 9.7 metres by 9.4 metres by 5.5 metres get there? Well, the Rocky Mountain House Mountaineer reported the following 11 years back: 'Right around 20,000 years ago the Late Wisconsinan Glaciation was at its height; it was a glacier that could have been one kilometre thick. We know that all of the rocks in the Foothills Erratic Train come from the upper Athabasca drainage area south of Jasper,' said author and geologist Ben Gadd. 'A rockslide, almost certainly, dropped the rocks on the glacier. The glacier then eventually began to flow eastward until running into the Laurentide ice sheet (a glacier much larger than the one carrying the boulders) right around the Edson area. The larger glacier forced the smaller one to begin to move southeastward, right towards Rocky Mountain House.' Along with this Big Rock, another famous boulder that is part of the Foothills Erratic Train is the big rock in Okotoks, south of Calgary. The Okotoks Erratic is 16,500 tonnes in size, but was discovered in large pieces rather than a single stone. As the glacier, now on a new path, moved in the southeastward direction, it slowly began to melt. And as this process continued, the boulders that fell and became embedded in the glacier from the upper Athabasca drainage area began to drop from the flowing glacier. According to Shugar, the U of C geoscientist, the short answer is probably yes. The reason for that is due to how climate change is accelerating glacial retreat, which causes rock to become less stable. Temperature and precipitation changes are other components, as warmer temperatures can melt more ice and increased rainfall can change glacial mass or erode cliffs, making them steeper. 'These landscapes, as they become newly created or newly exposed by glacier retreat, they often are unstable,' Shugar said. 'There's a sort of relaxation time over which they adjust to this new paradigm, new reality for them. Quite often they're very steep because of glacier erosion and so they need time to relax back to a geographical equilibrium.' In glaciated mountains like in the Rockies, Shugar said that as glaciers retreat, we can expect to see more landslides. In the case of the Bow Glacier Falls rockslide, he suspects there have been side-effects due to the recent creation of a new proglacial lake, which formed just 70 years ago at the toe of the Bow Glacier. He suspects that over those seven decades, water from that new lake has been seeping into the rock, saturating it over the years and making it heavier. 'We see this all over the place,' he said. 'This isn't unique to this particular location, but I suspect part of the ultimate cause of this event yesterday (Thursday) was that saturated rock.'
