The Rotondo Granite is a late

Variscan The Variscan orogeny, or Hercynian orogeny, was a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea. Nomenclature The name ''Variscan ...

granitic

intrusion In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety of forms and com ...

located in the

Saint-Gotthard Massif The Gotthard Massif or Saint-Gotthard Massif ( or ; ; ) is a mountain range in the Alps in Switzerland, located at the border of four cantons: Valais, Ticino, Uri and Graubünden. It is delimited by the Nufenen Pass on the west, by the Furka ...

in the

Swiss Alps The Alps, Alpine region of Switzerland, conventionally referred to as the Swiss Alps, represents a major natural feature of the country and is, along with the Swiss Plateau and the Swiss portion of the Jura Mountains, one of its three main Physica ...

. Its name comes from the

Pizzo Rotondo Pizzo Rotondo is a mountain in the Lepontine Alps. At 3,190 metres above sea level, it is the highest mountain lying on the border between the cantons of Ticino and Valais, as well as the highest summit of the Lepontine Alps lying between Nufene ...

Description

It shows as a fine to medium-grained

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

. Unlike other granitic intrusions present in the Gotthard Massif (Gamsboden Granite and Fibbia Granite), the

foliation In mathematics (differential geometry), a foliation is an equivalence relation on an topological manifold, ''n''-manifold, the equivalence classes being connected, injective function, injectively immersed submanifolds, all of the same dimension ...

is only very weakly developed and is mostly visible in ductile

shear zones sinistral shear sense'', Starlight Pit, Fortnum Gold Mine, Western Australia In geology, shear is the response of a rock to deformation usually by compressive stress and forms particular textures. Shear can be homogeneous or non-homogeneous, ...

Radiometric dating Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is used to Chronological dating, date materials such as Rock (geology), rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurity, impurities were selectively incorporat ...

showed an age of 294 Ma. On surface, it outcrops over an area of 20–25 km². The Rotondo Granite forms at least part of Monte Prosa.

Bedretto Underground Laboratory for Geoenergies

The Bedretto Underground Laboratory for Geoenergies which is located in the Bedretto Tunnel (in German "Bedretto-Fenster"), is performing research on deep

geothermal energy Geothermal energy is thermal energy extracted from the crust (geology), crust. It combines energy from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay. Geothermal energy has been exploited as a source of heat and/or electric power for m ...

in the Rotondo Granite. The underground laboratory is operated by the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology The Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology are two institutes of higher education in Switzerland (part of the ETH Domain): * Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Sw ...

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

(

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

). The site was selected, among other reasons, because of the similarities that this rock shows with

basement A basement is any Storey, floor of a building that is not above the grade plane. Especially in residential buildings, it often is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the Furnace (house heating), furnace, water heating, ...

rocks that are expected to be encountered at a depth of 4–5 km below the Swiss Plateau.

References

{{coord missing, Switzerland Granite Mountains of Switzerland Underground laboratories

Description

Bedretto Underground Laboratory for Geoenergies

See also

References