From Magadan to the Polar Ural
Awesome powerful compression zone of the Main Ural thrust, on which the ancient rocks “pressurize” the younger. Breed crumpled like puff pastry in the hands of skillful housewife. The oldest rocks of the deep Earth to the surface affect its magnificence. Amazing, rare beauty pyroxenes and amphiboles compose whole blocks of rocks. Bronzite, jadeite, jade, rubies – sounds like music to the geologist. These minerals and rocks and replenished now my home collection. I always pick up pieces of chromite, were scattered among the tracks and lost from the wagons “Kongor-Chrome”. In Magadan in the 30 years I have never seen chromite. But Kolyma gold nuggets are no match for local zolotinkam in streams. When my Karalveemskom mine in 1973, learned in the process of sinking shafts ore nugget “Golden Idol” weighing 36 kilograms. It is now possible to see in the Diamond Fund.
I started collecting minerals, rocks and fossils of plants and animals around the fourth grade. My sister accidentally gave the book by Alexander Tamm Fersmana Tales of gem “, later I read his” Entertaining mineralogy “and was just fascinated. Special pride overwhelmed me, when his father, a professional military, showing my collection of his colleagues who came to visit us.
Total minerals found several thousand species, and each year are found and synthesized new. Plus, it still rocks, earth, and arrived from space. Vast variety of fossils. Ancient raindrops, leaves, tree trunks, the skeletons of various creatures. The geological museum association “Magadangeologiya” are stored, even petrified tens of millions of years ago, fly and mosquito. In general, the geological collection – is the whole world. I will tell only about some of the displays in my home collection or those with whom I have had adventures.
Thunderous boom
I was in Saratov and the last seven years prior to my arrival at the Polar Urals taught at Saratov University. Neighborhood Saratov – a sand, clay, mold – siliceous marine sediments. 2,5 kilometers of marine sediments have to drill down until they begin the breed, which is under our feet. Some Saratov layers on the surface just an abundance of fossils. First of all, it belemnites (from the Greek “belemnon”, which means “arrow”). They are also called “devil’s fingers” or “thunderous boom”. They are composed of aragonite – the calcium carbonate making up the mother of pearl shells and pearls. Belemnites caught up to 27 centimeters and a diameter of up to three centimeters, often small, literally to the size of needles. This is an internal shell of extinct about 40 million years ago marine mollusks, similar to an octopus, but with ten hands-tentacles. Shell played the role of the goods, to shellfish could be submerged to a depth. In the vicinity of Saratov them so much, especially on Bald Mountain, that the old-timers tell how, after heavy rains the streets along with the flow of water used to rolling belemnites. Indeed, belemnites better to look after the melting of snow and rain, when they are exposed on the surface of the sand and they can collect like mushrooms.
In Saratov the sands of the seas centuries ago there are teeth of sharks. They are looking for a sieve sifting the sand. Hundreds of millions of years the lives of many living creatures left petrified and selection. In national geological tion literature for many years shamefully did not write about them. In fact, they left behind a large quantity generators of geological strata and the body, and scientists call them “coprolites”.
Fish Pearls
Generally, in living organisms formed by many different minerals. Recently I made a collection of minerals from the ears of fish. Did you know that the most delicious in fish – the head?
When I ate small roast navaga completely straight, then crunch on the teeth considered incidental sand. And in Saratov, missed navazhke, fry pan, and in his head made out of food fishes. On hand were two beautiful pearl rakovinki about one and a half centimeters in length and about one and a half millimeters thick, which I initially called “fish pearls”. To my surprise, “fish pearls” was in each fish. Moreover, these stones are found in all fish of different varieties, although in a river of smaller size than in the sea. It turned out that this long-known specialists, biologists ear stones – otoliths (otherwise known as “statolity”, or “stones provisions”). These stones are there and we have with you, and all vertebrate animals that have a number of invertebrates, such as a jellyfish. One biologist, studying the crayfish, said that after molting they collect sand and lay me in the ears. ” Biologist conducted an experiment. He replaced the sand grains of magnetite (natural magnetic iron oxide, often forming deposits of iron in the Polar Urals). And when crayfish changed armor and laid himself in the ears “of magnetite, it creates a magnetic field above the aquarium.
When the magnetic field is switched on, as if on cue crabs were overturned and floating belly up. Ear stones were part of the natural orientation of the vestibular apparatus in the gravitational field. The stones are surrounded by sensitive receptors, which indicates pressure on a living being, where the land, attracting these stones.
About gold – be silent!
The first major gold came across my second year of work after graduation, at Karalveyem-ments of gold deposits. Came to an abandoned generation, struck with a hammer on a quartz vein. And a broken chunk of quartz did not fall, but hung. Hung on gold.
Was a funnel in the vein volume in three-liter jar whole literally soaked in gold. Tentatively, we have calculated in this volume, five kilograms. Gold deposited in the local expedition, and a few samples I took in Magadan in the museum. Chief of my expedition was very happy and decided to please this gold exploration of the last general management Dalstroi NKVD Israel Yefimovich Drabkin. Please be there. Regularly on the Kolyma began panic – ends in gold. Panic caused the failure of the plan production. But plans were serious. Tens of tons of gold (maximum reaches almost 100 tons) had to get every year.
Joyous, we enter the general. But then began the unimaginable: the General opened his eyes, jumped up and began yelling that used for this shot, and now my boss can not escape whipping. The smile faded from the face of my head, and he signs began to show me: come on, say, back up.
It turns out I was supposed to bring the samples sealed with feldsvyazyu. The old instructions no one has repealed. General raged in earnest. I was with my boss threatened to investigate the KGB and other official harassment. But nothing happened. On the other hand, if the rich gold deposit to follow the instructions, the work would be busy. All the time take away the weighing and sealing of the samples with visible gold.
On the major discoveries of gold in the Polar Urals is yet too early. Gold, of course, is. The Polar Urals can be detected very large gold-sulphide deposits with reserves of gold in the hundreds and thousands of tonnes, similar to Maisky Suholozhskomu deposit in Chukotka and Irkutsk region. However, today the search volume of the precious metal are insignificant.
Working in 80-ies of the last century, at the May gold-sulphide deposits in Chukotka, I have noticed an abandoned underground workings under the bright beams of the roof mirror. Mirrors in geology called brilliant literally a mirror surface, created by friction of rocks in the fault. And then the mirror in the ore. My friend is engaged in post-ore advances, split, and take away the ore and therefore of particular practical interest. Dai, I think, will be pleased with his mirror on the ore. With great difficulty broke out a piece, brought under a binocular magnifier. Something seemed strange. In the piece revealed a lot of wolframite (tungsten oxide and iron) and a soft, shiny mirror mineral, filling all cracks and films covering the open surface. He gave, just in case, the X-ray analysis. Turned out to be a rare mineral – sulfide, tungsten – tungstenite. The sixth discovery in the world. Posted on tungstenite in the reports of the Academy of Sciences. Silence. Replied one. Frenchman Claude Guillaume, professor at the National Mining School in Paris. Asked to send in a collection of the sample. I went to send. Stop, requires permission from the KGB. He received permission, sent. Overjoyed, the Frenchman sent me a gift in an agate bowl.
In 1995, I mined gold ore at the mine Maldyak Susumanskiy district of Magadan region. Bobi famous for the fact that it developed the placer gold in the 30-ies concluded: Future General Designer Sergei Korolev missiles and war hero, Army General Alexander Gorbatov. In the dashing 90’s mine died. Miners predators demolished log houses, cut down old power lines. The tree had to be that in severe frosts pyatidesyatigradusnye mine gold. Summer prevents water extraction. Mines divert water. And the predator is not possible to withdraw water. And he loves to dig for gold in the winter, when the mines life fades, in the taiga in freedom. This is done with pozhoga: fire warmed the ground, and rowed her pass shafts, reaching out to the gold layer. Sometimes this layer is at a decent depth of tens and even hundreds of meters. But if after the autumn frosts cut bulldozer side of the valley of gold-bearing stream, then later pozhogom can go directly to the horizontal development of gold-layer. Then they got the rock with the gold is washed in a flip at the stake.
We are team of comrades caught gold-rich ore. Ore pit, we also took place in winter in severe frosts with pozhogom. Ore was in tectonic fissures, the whole was fragmented and cemented just the ice. After pozhogov is easily destroyed by a crowbar. We loaded it with shovels in the bucket, lifted to the surface and there was loaded in the tractor sledge.
Putting it in the ruins of the wood for pozhogov, I discovered that the houses and poles remained insulators.
Love of insulators, or choosing the color of biscuits
There is one of the diagnostic properties of minerals, which requires to determine the biscuit. Yes, do not be surprised, dear reader, I do not slip, it was cake. True, this nothing to do with sponge cake does not. Biscuit is also unglazed porcelain. To detect the color of the mineral powder produced special plate of biscuits. But if no records, no trouble. Go to the nearest power line, and there, at the poles, will always find a broken porcelain insulator.
Porcelain generally has a direct bearing on the geology, because it consists of a mixture of natural minerals of kaolinite, quartz, feldspar, crushed into flour, mixed with water.
Normal geologist can not safely ignore the broken porcelain insulators, because the prison reminded him of his very first steps in geology. So, it was in the Magadan region. We were caught in winter placer gold. Putting it in the ruins of the wood for pozhogov, I discovered that the houses and poles remained insulators. They were different. Different years, different countries and from different materials. Insulators for internal wiring were often carved from the local Dahurian larch, and there were many small and large insulators made of dark glass. Unprepossessing, crooked, they nevertheless performed his task successfully.
From ash
I already knew that near Magadan from the prewar era explored multimeter thick white ash, brought by winds from erupting for millions of years ago, Kamchatka volcanoes. Volcanic ash can be transported by winds across vast distances. In 1956, during the eruption of the volcano on the Kamchatka Unnamed volcanic ash had reached the UK, and in 1883 the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Krakatau volcanic ash circled almost twice around the Earth.
If the Polar Urals say “go to the ground, then the Kolyma said” go to the mainland. ” Despite the fact that the Magadan region is located on the mainland, the absence of the railroad makes people isolated from the mainland, both from the mainland. Previously traveled by steamer. Five days at sea, then by rail across the country. Now fly airplanes. Eight hours of flight. Flies to eight in the evening from Magadan, on the same day at eight o’clock in the evening arrives in Moscow. Flying, overtaking time.
So, this cutting and forced to develop local resources. At the base of the deposit of volcanic ashes in the river valley Khasyn glass factory was built, the only one in the world at such a unique commodity. Grown p Glass. And they began to shed the only glass factory in the world insulators, bottles, Christmas toys, utensils. Glass get dark and lighter than conventional quartz sand.
After the war began to bring the trophy insulators, and still later, our, domestic production. At the isolators are hallmarks of producers and year of production, that is very important for collectors.
The first Communists hanged …
My friend, a classmate from the University of Saratov Yuri Nekhoroshkov, nutty toponymy and regional studies, spoke about the telegraph line pre-revolutionary Okhotsk-Gizhiga. It was built along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea for navigation and communication with our far-off lands. It was said that the pillars of the ineradicable Dahurian larch well preserved. And the pre-revolutionary poles hanging insulators with imperial eagles. Jura sent a note about my collection in Komsomolskaya Pravda. Well, in this article, bitingly inscribed “The first Communists hanged …” already the journalists of “Komsomolskaya Pravda” attributed to that I say, I dream to get to these Gizhigin pillars.
After the newspaper came two responses. One person from Kazan sent me a gift with the royal emblem of isolation. Another boy from Tver asked me to send him pictures of unknown larch and vulkanopeplovyh insulators. It turns out that there are collectors of insulators. I thought I had to organize a new direction in collecting and call it “filoizoltiya” – love of insulators. But then fate brought me to Magadan in Saratov, and now has led to the Polar Urals.
And what do you think? And here I was greeted like a brother insulators. First, there are many abandoned lines, and secondly, abandoned mines, such Harbeysky molybdenum. In the Polar Urals had a chance to find the plastic and porcelain insulators for internal wiring of the fifties, Bulgarian and Korean insulators period of the socialist commonwealth of the sixties and seventies with the Soviet eighty literally for years.
Glass and porcelain insulators at very different forms. There is in them something personal: some resemble the man in Napoleon’s cocked hat, the other – the shepherds in cloaks to the ground, the third – mushrooms …
Incidentally, practical Americans, when they began to use electric power, initially as insulators used just the necks of the bottles.
Stove in the African desert
When my collection in 1998, told by the Magadan television, familiar geologist George P. Demin remembered and told me a story about an African insulators. It was in Mali. In this desolate African country, our geologists have searched for Malians gold deposits. One found Kalala even investigated the field. And intelligence – is a serious matter. Need electricity for compressors and other needs. “And now – he says – came once to visit us, our geophysicists in the desert, and seeing we have boxes of insulators, were asked to pick them up if we do not need. We gave up. Not in Russia, to carry them back! Then again, the case brought to geophysicists, who were invited to the bath. And then we saw their insulators. They played the role of stones in the stove. Indeed, where else in the sandy desert to find the stones for the heater. But even with such excellent properties – to withstand high temperature, it does not break down and do not change their properties! ”
Future exhibit collections of insulators seems to me such an energy in the form of the historic tree, and bristling with a variety of cells, interconnected by various cables: copper and copper covered, iron and aluminum in tissue sheath and plastic, and rubber polihlorvinile …
With electricity, by the way, the human race long ago became acquainted. In the Baghdad museum were stored bronze pitchers with graphite rods, flooded with asphalt. Why not dry batteries? Age of discovery around 4500 years. During the last war in the Iraq Museum was looted. I do not know whether to keep pitchers.
It seems not far off the time when the electricity will not have to drive by wire to the insulators. And only the museum guide will tell that it was a time when the electricity to the poles with electrical insulators passed. And there were these insulators in different colors, shapes, made of porcelain, glass, plastics, wood and other materials. And all this in different years, different manufacturers – and so pretty, well, just a work of art! I was in them something personal …
Author: Valery Olszewski, Ph.D. in Geology and Mineralogy (excuse me for quality of translate!)