Costa Ricans beware they are digging in to show how tectonic plaques are going to collapse there

[link to joidesresolution.org]

The Costa Rica Seismogenesis Project (CRISP) is designed to better understand the processes that control large earthquakes at subduction zones. CRISP involves the only known erosional end-member of convergent margins within reach of scientific drilling. With a low sediment supply, fast convergence rate, abundant seismicity, and subduction erosion, CRISP offers excellent opportunities to learn causes of earthquake nucleation and rupture propagation. This expedition will focus on understanding the boundary conditions of lithology, fluid flow, and thermal structure that trigger unstable slip in the seismogenic zone along a drilling transect at two slope sites. These slope sites might also serve as pilot holes for potential future drilling projects to reach the aseismic/seismic plate boundary.



[link to www.welovecostarica.com]

Scientific Ship Drilling in Costa Rican Waters 50% Owned by Company Responsible for Gulf Oil Disaster
Scott Oliver - 13th April 2011

In the 23rd March 2011 edition of the National Geographic News, in 'Scientists to Drill Earth's Mantle, Retrieve First Sample?' Richard A. Lovett writes: "Scientists are planning to drill all the way through the planet's miles-thick crust to Earth's deep, hot mantle and retrieve samples for the first time. The samples, they say, would rival moon rocks for sheer scientific import--and be nearly as hard to get."

Lovett believes that the earth's mantle holds the clues to earthquakes and the origins of planet Earth. "Between Earth's molten core and hard, thin crust, the roughly 2,000-mile-thick (3,200-kilometer-thick) mantle contains the vast bulk of Earth's rocks. But we don't know much about them, because all we have are bits that have come to the surface via volcanoes or been trapped in ancient mountain belts."