Development and prospect of deep Earth science and <italic>in-situ</italic> detection for geology in time
Abstract
<p indent="0mm">The deep Earth, deep sea and deep space are equally important as the national “three deep” strategy. It is an inevitable trend and a significant strategic demand to explore new mysteries of deep Earth science, expand new knowledge of deep Earth engineering technology, reveal the evolution process and mechanism of deep <italic>in-situ</italic> environment, and lay a theoretical and technical foundation for important engineering practices such as deep Earth energy resource development. In this work, the latest research progress in deep earth scientific exploration was reviewed, and the academic connotation of “deep Earth science and geology in time” was proposed. In response to the fundamental scientific question of “the correlation mechanism and law of deep geology in time and shallow geological response”, focusing on the two frontier directions of “the law of deep geology in time” and “the correlation mechanism of deep and shallow for geology in time”, according to the “one center and multiple nodes” detection layout based on the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, the innovative research and frontier exploration of deep Earth science and geo-information detection experiment (GeoDEX) was carried out. Based on the world’s deepest Jinping ultra deep chamber group, GeoDEX conducted the multi-physics field detection and pre-research experiments at a depth of kilometers, including vibration, magnetic field, and micro deformation. It was found that the Jinping deep experimental site has extremely low environmental background interference conditions (2 orders of magnitude lower than the surface), which can greatly improve the sensitivity and reliability of precision instrument detection, and achieve “clear and accurate detection” of time-varying weak information in deep rock masses. The future development trend of <italic>in-situ</italic> detection in deep Earth science was elaborated from four aspects. GeoDEX is expected to realize precise detection of deep Earth multi-field time-varying signals and shallow time-varying response information, reveal the weak multi-field signal propagation and evolution laws for geology in time, detect the steady-state/nonstationary evolution response processes of geological bodies at different time and space scales under the action of internal and external forces, promote the field of deep Earth science to achieve original, breakthrough, and disruptive discoveries, explore the frontier technology of deep underground engineering, which has great scientific significance and research value.</p>
