Thursday, September 24, 2020

Magmatic ores

Every few days I check in on /r/worldbuilding/. Last night they delivered me to Artifexian's youtube. Here, the Irish-accented German host discusses ores. Mostly for Earth.

Other planets do not have plate tectonics. There is no surface water for it. Europa, ocean planet over an active core, is the exception: it might well have undersea plant-equivalents (but not photosynthetic!), so banded-iron and black-smokers. But, of course, we're here for Venus.

Without water nor free oxygen, as far as we know ever, crystalline ores are not available on Venus. But one process remains: magmatic.

A whip-'round the Internet turns up the "Great Dyke" in Rhodesia. It is not an earthwork; Old Zimbabwe did have those, but this isn't one. It is a "lipolith", an igneous intrusion layered-over. It all formed 2575 Mya - when Earth was more Venuslike. We did have oceans then, even with oxygen; but this craton didn't.

What the Dyke offered to the Rhodesians who found it was platinum-group metals. The most famed of these metals include gold, copper, and mercury. Considering how mercury amalgamates with the rest, I'm unsurprised at that. In Venus they'll probably be sulfides. The Dyke also has chromium, and nickel/ cobalt/ iron (sulfides).

On Venus, we look for similar in the tesserae.

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