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alright um so today I'm going to talk to

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a little bit more about our key and

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hydrothermal systems part of a project

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that I called amp the dome anchor at

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mine project i found that acronyms are

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incredibly important in astrobiology so

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what i'm doing here is characterizing an

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anchor at horizon at the dome mine in

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Timmins Ontario now anchorites an iron

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carbonate so as you can see this is my

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field site underground in the gold mine

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this is myself in an undergrad assistant

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and so presumably by now you guys heard

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a lot about our key and hydrothermal

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systems why they're really interesting

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and why carbonates are pretty cool in

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the context of Mars so what my

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motivations behind understanding this

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system primarily our understanding our

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key and habitable or potentially

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habitable paleo environments with

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applications for interpretation of

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Martian paleo environments and the

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search for biosignatures and then also

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looking at biomarker preservation

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potential and detection and ancient

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carbonates so the region i'm working in

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is called the abitibi greenstone belt

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this is a largest and best-preserved

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greenstone belt in North error in the

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world sorry and it is right here in

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Northern Ontario and Quebec and it's

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been several hundred kilometers across

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as you can see it is host to multiple

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world-class gold deposits so these are

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primarily hydrothermal or well they're

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all hydrothermal pretty much but

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seafloor VMs deposits and quartz

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carbonate deposits so the area i'm

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working in is right there so this is the

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porcupine gold camp this is the most

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prolific gold camp in the world as you

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can see it's kind of your standard or

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for those use it our geologists your

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standard green stone sequence so what I

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mean by that is you've got a series of

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mafic and ultramafic results and

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sediments that are highly folded these

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will essentially come from the sea floor

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where you had a subduction zone and a

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hydrothermal alteration going on they've

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been squished heated and pushed up into

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the middle of Canada so what I'm looking

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at right here is this region right here

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the dome mine now the don't mine is the

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longest operating underground mining

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operation in North America it's been an

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operation since 1910 it's what we call a

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late archaean greenstone hosted quartz

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carbonate game gold deposit so it's

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hosted in green stone the salts

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and the gold is in quartz carbonate

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veins so this is structurally controlled

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hydrothermal alteration so the

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geologists eat it up this is the only

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strats x you're going to see i'm not

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going to discuss it too much what I want

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to get across is the area i'm interested

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in is in here right here in the middle

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of these two point seven billion year

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old volcanics and it's hillsdale

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assemblage here these are where the

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anchorite veins or anchorite horizon

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depending here talking to you so these

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are somewhere between 2679 and 26 90

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million years old and they're massive

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they run 500 meters and strike 900

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meters vertically and up to two metres

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in width so that's why they call it

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anchor at horizon because it pretty much

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is conformable between volcanic flows so

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it was in place to sometime around the

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time when we had this gigantic

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sedimentary assemblers a porcupine

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assemblage which if you can imagine

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formed in a big basin so you've got a

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sub seafloor volcanics and then you have

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this big sedimentary unit forming in a

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basin at the same time you have this

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carbonate forming so why would we want

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to understand this carbonate well

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primarily we want to know what the

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depositional context was we want to know

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how did it form what were the

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environmental conditions again what were

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the environmental conditions how did

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they vary spatially this is a huge

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horizon it's almost a kilometer long was

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it uniform in terms of conditions and

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this will dictate whether or not it was

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habitable and whether or not we'll find

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any bio signatures there or biome

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organic biomarkers I should say so

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deposition originally in both the 70s

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like I said this has been worked on

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we've been mined for a hundred years so

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a lot of works been done people thought

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that this could be in a sin volcanic

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chemical executive from a sea floor vent

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system so basically this you've got sea

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floor fluids coming up in probably more

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of a white smoker system you're

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precipitating carbonate almost like a

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blanket of carbonate on top of volcanic

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so that's why they call it a horizon a

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conformable horizon but more recently we

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found this is just a math of the

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twenty-first level of the mine so these

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are your volcanic sequences all this

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green stuff is volcanic this is a later

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intrusion and these are your sediments

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up top so you can see these are the mine

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workings here and if we overlay the

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anchor at horizons here they are they're

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pretty much conformable along volcanics

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between volcanic flows but we've

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actually found because there's been so

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much mining down here

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is that there is an anchor of Ian that

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actually cross cuts the volcanic so this

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is some evidence against a sea floor

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deposition unless this is just kinda

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like a conduit but then also it's more

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interesting is there is a one horizon

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that cross cuts a later intrusion so

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this tells us that it's most likely not

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a sea floor deposition because it cross

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cuts something that was in place later

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so what are we proposing probably sin

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tectonic subsea floor deposition so what

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you have is a situation kind of like

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this you've got volcanic rocks is some

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sort of sedimentary cap what I call an

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aquitard so the fluids are flowing and

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they can't get up to the surface so

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they're flowing along with illogical

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boundaries between the volcanic layers

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where there's less competent rock there

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so you end up with this seemingly

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conformable horizon that actually cross

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cuts so what we're doing is taking a

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mind and micron approach to understand

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this anchor right so basically coming

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from the mine scale i'm lucky i can go

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underground and see the entire horizon

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you can see it cross-country

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cost-cutting different lithologies so

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here's the carbonate here here's the

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sediment unit you can see that and then

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taking sub-samples like this one for

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instance the hand sample scale you can

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also see para netic relationships like

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this later cross-cutting quartz vein

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here and then looking down to the micron

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scale SEM analysis things like that

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carbonate carbon or oxygen isotopes you

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can tell more about para genesis fluid

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conditions and fluid source because

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ultimately we want to understand the

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mineralogy in geochemistry because this

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will allow us to constrain the

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environmental conditions so we're taking

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a multiscale multi technique approach

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this is one technique am using

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spectroscopy this would be kind of

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comparable to chrism data this is UV vis

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near-ir i did this include asus lab in

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winnipeg just an example of several

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spectra so what we see here is we've got

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this feature here around 2.5 and 2.3

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microns this is a carbon and oxygen

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feature this tells us we have carbonate

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present that's what they used to

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carbonate on Mars do that same feature

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here we see these iron crystal field

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transitions we have an iron rich

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carbonate it's an anchorite we also see

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an o H feature here she tells us we have

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something hydrated some sort of water

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and new crystal lattice in the mineral

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we also have a metal Oh age feature

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this is probably I think magnesium o.h

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this tells us we have a mica this is

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what they use to detect phyllosilicates

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on Mars so we have a carbonate mica

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assemblage now we can also do this is a

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information that i got from micro x-ray

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diffraction so like x-ray diffraction

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what was shown earlier but you can do it

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in CA Choo so I did a transect all these

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little red dots are spots that I did

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micro xrd on and you can see the general

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mineralogy here so you've got anchorite

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or dolomite and some pirate that's kind

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of everywhere I say anchorite slashed

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all night because they're Isis

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structural it's basically can't really

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tell an xrd which is which it's just to

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solve a solution series of iron

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magnesium calcium carbonate then you've

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got a little bit of calcite but this is

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one of the few samples that actually has

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any calcite quartz kind of threw out

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some mica so that's a fellow silicate

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and then some different types of

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sulfides Galena but then also tourmaline

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so this is telling us we have some sort

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of sedimentary and put into the fluid to

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provide the boron Fitzwilliam so we've

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got multiple fluids and then down to SEM

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analysis these are backscatter sem

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images showing different types of

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sulfides that we see so here we've got

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pyrite and molybdenite got sphalerite

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which is a zinc sulfide some more pie

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right Galena calcio products we got lead

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zinc copper sulfides these will all form

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at different temperatures we know we

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have different fluid sources in

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different temperatures but what does

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this all tell us about the geochemistry

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and the potential habitability well

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firstly we have carbonates aracite or

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potassium this is low salinity co2

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dominated fluids so a pretty monday and

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hydrothermal fluid but then we see

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variability and accessory middles and

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trace metals so accessory minerals like

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different types of sulfide species rue

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tiles things like that n trace metals

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like titanium vanadium chromium

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molybdenum some of which are really

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important we talk about metal catalysts

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for life and enzymes we also see

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multiple fluid sources which partially

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we attribute some of this trace metal

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variability to episodic magmatic fluid

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input so little pulses of these metal

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rich really interesting fluids into this

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pretty you know just carbonate rich

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fluid providing areas of fluid mixing

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which is really interesting you got

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different fluids different temperatures

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you're creating potential for redox

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gradients and pH gradients as we know

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are important for life so what we're

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doing now and working on is trying to

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further understand this fluid source and

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mixing so looking at carbon and oxygen

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stable isotopes I will start running

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them as soon as I get back to London and

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then I've done some synchrotron x-ray

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mapping and speciation of pyrite grains

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to look at trace metal speciation and

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abundances and correlations between

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different trace metals and gold for

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instance and yeah primarily gold it sits

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in a mind the gold company wants to know

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where the gold is from but I get to get

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cool samples and do awesome science is

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kind of again it's a trade off and then

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we won't understand flu temperatures

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this is what I'm excited but we're going

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to do some clumped carbonate isotope

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thermometry this will allow us to

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elucidate what temperature this

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carbonate was precipitated at and then

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also to fully understand the timing and

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pear genesis the rock record ins area is

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pretty well understood a lot of things

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have been dated it's been worked on for

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you know 100 years but if we can put

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this hydrothermal alteration in two

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contexts with when the basin was forming

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what intrusions were for me we can

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better understand what's going on on the

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large scale so we're going to do either

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some monocyte or molybdenite dating

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having decided yet with that I would

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like to thank my sponsors and everyone