I was painting the picture of an upside down elephant just to stimulate the discussion. The 2 pipes (East and West) have been proven to be actual pipes, so I called them 2 of the 4 feet of an elephant...plus a trunk as the potential 5th "pipe", just in case we need to explain the findings of 5 pipes all together in Albany.

It's supposedly an funny picture, but something people could use to discuss this kind of deposit where some explosive force is created from a heat source in contact with liquid. We have may examples of steam explosion created by molten metals interacting with water resulting in stuff flying out in every direction, e.g. aluminium foundry mishaps, depth charges for submarine hunting/killing. In the case of a geological event like this one because of the constraint imposed by the rock layers above, the mixture would try to find the path of least resistance to relieve the pressure, weak rock areas. Usually there would be a dense core of the breccia material surrounded by a halo of lower grade stuff (overprinting?).

ZEN was certainly conservative by drawing only 2 branches from the main pipe. But there are no reason for this to be limited to 2 and I would be bold enough to venture a guess that these pipes would occur in clusters, 3, 4, 5?, who knows. Only an aerial survey can give some hint about the potential occurence of a deposit underground (the pink blobs, shown in Slide 10 of the Corp Presentation). Unless we are lucky enough to have a large number of high-grade outcrops in the the pink areas, the only way to prove the existence of a deposit is to sink the drill bit below the overburden. Only the drill can speak with authority... We can only speculate, even with more data available.

Also, I would speculate further that there is a larger body down below above the magma chamber and below the branches (the pipes). This elephant body is equivalent to the reservoir (mentioned in hoov's explanation).

It's also my guess that the event eons ago in Sri Lanka was less explosive with the molten stuff "oozing" to the top, through narrow cracks (say ~10cm) in the rock, driven by "a more well-behaved" pressures (as opposed to the pressure caused by an explosion...it could be a pulsing pressure). Because of the confinement by the narrow cracks (no scattering buckshot effect) the graphite grade and purity of the Sri Lanka are much higher than those for the Albany deposit.

Folks, just my explanations and speculations as a non-geo for non-specialists. Feel free to speculate.

goldhunter