Hydrogen from deep under Iowa? State universities can help build a hydrogen economy
The geologists spoke in apocalyptic terms about Iowa’s distant past:
“A rift developed deep in the Earth, magma came up and tried to split the continent apart,” said Elizabeth Swanner, a professor of Earth, atmosphere and climate at Iowa State University. “This happened about a billion years ago in what is now Iowa, spreading from Kansas and Nebraska, then up and around Minnesota and Michigan.”
Yes, said Ryan Clark, the associate state geologist for energy and minerals with the Iowa Geological Survey based at the University of Iowa, there was molten rock flowing across Iowa.
“We don’t think of Iowa having volcanoes,” he said. “But a billion years ago this rift ran right through Iowa.”
This rift, now known as the Midcontinent Rift System, formed when “the North American continent almost ripped in half,” Clark wrote in an essay for the December 2024 IGS Geode, the Iowa Geological Survey’s annual report.
