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BERKELEY, CA — In a survey of the northern Basin and Range province of the western United States, geochemists Mack Kennedy of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Matthijs van Soest of Arizona State University have discovered a new tool for identifying potential geothermal energy resources.

Berkeley Lab geochemist B. Mack Kennedy used this mass spectrometer (foreground) to determine helium isotope ratios in samples of surface fluids from the northern Basin and Range. (Photo Roy Kaltschmidt)