How to prove Gravity increases above sections of the crust that contains large amounts of heavy rock?

juliana asked:


This is true but what experiment or what would have been done to prove this?

Elijah
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 at 1:57 pm and is filed under heavy rock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “How to prove Gravity increases above sections of the crust that contains large amounts of heavy rock?”

  1. Brian Says:

    Logan

    Measure the force of gravity over an area of dense rocks, such as a massive sulfide deposit. Measuring gravity is a common exploration tool used by mineral exploration companies, and they use a gravimeter. It can be done on the ground or from an aircraft.

  2. Zachary Says:

    Lily

    I’m not sure what you’re asking but I believe you may be confusing gravity with density. We know there are certain area’s of the crust that are more dense than others, just by the observation that we have subduction and volcanism. Gravity comes into play in some areas where mafic (which are usually more dense) intrusions underlie more felsic (which are less dense) crust. Over time, these intrusions create a gravity high zone where a basin begins to form as the dense rock pulls the overlying crust downward.

  3. Alex Says:

    Austin

    You should read about the GRACE satellites!

    The best research of Earth’s gravity field is currently being conducted by the GRACE mission!

    Here are some gravity anomaly maps of the Earth, produced by the GRACE satellite measurements, showing you which regions have stronger or weaker gravity:

    (The red and yellow areas depict regions where Earth’s measured gravity field is stronger than normal (positive gravity anomalies) while the shades of green and blue indicate areas where the gravity field is weaker than normal (negative gravity anomalies))

    ( It’s easy to see that there are positive gravity anomalies at regions wherever there are mountain ranges with large amounts of rocks. )

    Here’s a good summary of how the experiment works:

    Here’s a more detailed summary of the whole experiment:

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