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Australia is an unusual place no matter how you look at it. It is famous for having some of the weirdest (and most dangerous) animals in the world as well as being both a continent and an island.
One other thing that is unusual about Australia is that it has a massive magnetic anomaly under the Northern Territory. It has long been known that this oddity existed, but a new effort by CSIRO has helped to map it in greater detail than ever before.
The Northern Territory Government’s Bonney Well Survey had a plane equipped with advanced sensors fly back and forth over the area with about 400 meters (1300 feet) between each pass.
This allowed the instruments to pick up highly detailed readings from throughout the massive region.
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Once done, the team put the aeromagnetic data into computer algorithms to produce a map of the magnetic field produced. In a statement on the project, Dr. Clive Foss, who is the leader of the CSIRO research team, said:
“Magnetic data allows us to see through the ground and understand geological architecture that would otherwise remain completely hidden. By improving how we process and model these datasets, we can extract more geological information than ever before.”
This anomaly is most likely the result of geological structures hidden deep under the surface. Having a detailed map of the magnetic field will help to learn more about exactly what it is down there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t answer all the questions because these things aren’t static over time. Dr. Foss explains:
“Estimating the depth of the anomaly’s source and deciphering the direction of magnetisation can be complicated by remanent signatures preserved since the rocks formed. Australia’s shifting tectonic position, combined with periodic reversals of Earth’s magnetic field, means that remanent magnetisation often points in unexpected directions, demanding expert interpretation.”
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Still, this surveying project will help researchers better understand the continent and hopefully come up with a more accurate picture of its geographic history.
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