To find buried oil reserves, surveyors have for decades used gravity meters, or gravimeters, along with other instruments. Gravimeters are hypersensitive versions of accelerometers: They measure extremely tiny changes in the acceleration due to gravity. These nanoscale changes can happen because of the presence of subterranean geological features like oil wells. The best gravimeters in use today are the size of a shopping basket, weigh a few kilograms, and cost around US $100,000, which limits their use.
But a new postage stamp–size device developed by Scottish researchers could make oil exploration faster, easier, safer, and more economical.
The new microelectromechanical (MEMS) device, along with all of its electronics, fits in a shoebox. And according to Richard Middlemiss—the physics and astronomy graduate student at the University of Glasgow who, along with other researchers at the school’s Institute for Gravitational Research, created the gadget—it could be shrunk down to the size of a tennis ball.
Besides oil exploration, the smaller, cheaper gravimeters could open up many other applications, including monitoring volcanoes by measuring magma levels under the crust, and studying geological formations and buried archeological features. As Hazel Rymer of The Open University puts it in an accompanying news and views piece: “Once these instruments become commercially available, the applications will be limited only by the user's imagination.”
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