Message posted by Peter Merlin on October 21, 2006 at 11:54:28 PST:
There is no salt dome in the Groom Lake area. The new tower is built atop late Pleistocene alluvial sediments, consisting largely of reworked silt and clay that were first deposited in the older and larger lake of the Pliocene Age that occupied the same basin. The youger lakebed includes all the light-colored, fine-grained sediment below the highest beach line visible in the aerial/satellite photos. The thickness of the intermediate and younger lakebed sediments is unknown, but Groom lake probably contains sediments mostly ranging in age from the Pleistocene to Recent. They include Recent playa deposits (silt), dune sand (around the edges of the lakebed) and younger alluvium (washed down from the mountains). The area was probably well watered as recently as 10,000 years ago. In the early days of Area 51, they had trouble with water wells. Maybe they need to drill deeper to obtain useable (or uncontaminated) drinking water.
In Reply to: Re: New tower at Area 51 posted by Vince on October 21, 2006 at 9:31:17 PST:
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