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Deep into the evening at the International Workshop on Neutrinos and Subterranean
Science (NeSS) held in September in Washington, a noted geoscientist in a room
full of fellow scientists and geoengineers expressed exasperation at the thought
that an underground laboratory could not be put in place relatively quickly
and inexpensively at 8,000 feet below the surface. “The mine is already
there,” he explained. “If we give you the specifications about what
we want, what is the problem with building it?”
Across the table sat one of the world’s premier tunnel designers, a member
of the National Academy of Engineering. “Are you aware that in the history
of civilization, there has never been a functional space for humans to work
and socialize at a depth of 8,000 feet?” he said. “We have no idea,
within current engineering practice, how to ventilate, how to provide fire egress,
even how to keep the temperature at a comfortable level.” He went on to
say that these challenges were not showstoppers, but that the engineers would
have to work with the geoscientists and physicists to make a functioning underground
laboratory.
The merging of geoscience and engineering comes to the fore of any discussion
over the potential for an underground laboratory. The development of any underground
facility requires detailed and specialized engineering practice. The knowledge
base for this practice has as its basis the geosciences. Constructing a deep
laboratory facility requires integrating the best of both worlds. My first exposure
to these different perspectives came upon my appointment as the director of
the Geotechnical Board at the National Research Council. (I came out of the
“above-ground” arena of architecture and construction engineering
research.) One of the first studies undertaken through the board’s U.S.
National Committee for Rock Mechanics was a comprehensive look at rock fractures
and fluid flow. The study committee included experts in rock mechanics, civil
engineering, geophysics, geochemistry, geology and geohydrology. It took months
for the committee to simply agree on terms, including what really is a fracture.
The committee’s report, issued in 1996, called for an underground facility
for research on fractures from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint. Although it took
much effort, the committee realized that issues of great importance intersect
the various disciplines.
Disciplinary stovepiping is not exclusive to the intersection between engineering
and geoscience. Within engineering, the same tendencies are evident. I now manage
the American Rock Mechanics Association, a professional society of members who
have an interest in working with or studying rocks. Our members come primarily
from the civil, petroleum and mining engineering fields. Each year, when we
begin to plan the technical program of our annual symposium, the interests within
these fields must work to assure that commonalities and differences are included
on the agenda. Participants at the symposia state that they attend to find out
what’s happening in other fields of application. If a civil engineer can
learn one new drilling technique, for example, from engineers working in the
oil patch, then the conference is worthwhile.
The challenge of cooperation between engineers and geoscientists is even greater.
But it is also a crucial challenge to meet. Why? The first reason is practical,
perhaps even political. It is better to weigh in on an issue with 50,000 backers
than with 500. In the 1990s, Congress decided not to fund the proposed Superconducting
Supercollider, an important project — and proposed underground laboratory
— for the physics community. I have always believed that one reason this
project was cancelled was that the physicists did not bring in geoscience and
engineering professionals to take advantage of the tunneling part of the project.
Bringing in the geoscience and engineering communities would have brought more
backers to the program and shown that an underground laboratory can serve a
large variety of science.
The second reason is a recognition of a changed world. In his article last May
in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Eugene Skolnikoff of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, notes the effects of technological developments, which
he calls the “bedrock” of research. Such developments include the
World Wide Web and the other communication systems that tie global networks
together, as well as systems of international finance and energy. These developments,
Skolnikoff says, have “expanded in size and scale the systems on which
society depends.” They can also facilitate collaboration among laboratories,
universities and other research institutions. It is now easier to undertake
cross-disciplinary work, and the benefits are showing up in multiple applications,
such as biotechnology. As these technological developments become more ingrained
in scientific and engineering practice, it is inevitable and almost unavoidable
that cooperation between the geosciences and geoengineering will increase.
Soon after our late-night exchange at the NeSS workshop, I noticed that the
words “geoscience and engineering” began appearing together in the
draft research agenda texts. The workshop participants were collaborating and
were finding — as their colleagues on the National Research Council’s
committee on fractures and fluid flow did a decade ago — that the interesting
issues required a scientific as well as an engineering point of view. As Brian
McPherson points out in this issue with the story “EarthLab,” if you
want to take full advantage of an underground laboratory, you have to bring
in the disciplines of both geoscience and engineering.
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