Dear Bernhardt

Thank you for the question - an interesting one. 

From my perspective there are not any step change geophysical technologies on the immediate horizon.  Likely developments are in the foreseeable future are tensor potential field systems and EM systems capable of lower base frequencies and so hopefully better penetration.  This will certainly improve things but its my opinion that at present the weakest link in the exploration chain is our ability to interpret the geoophysical data.  For this reason here at UWA we've started working on the petrophysics of the mineralised environment and in particular the integration of the petrophysics with mineralogical and geochemical data.  Its early days but its clear that just thinking about the problem in terms of lithological controls only (as is common in most petrophysical studies) is not the right way to go. Alteration is very important especially in mafic and umafic rocks.  Apart from serpentinisation the petrophysical consequences of common types of alteration is hardly studied at all.

I am actually quite concerned about how geophysics is currently being used in mineral exploration, in particular the creation of 'geologically realistic' models of the subsurface.  These frequently have a level of complexity inconsistent with the resolving power of the geophysical data.  And then there's ambiguity.  For these reasons, another line of research we're pursing here is finding a way to represent uncertainty and resolution in a sub-surface physical property model.  Which parts of the model are most reliable; which parts are not well constrained etc?

So to summarise, I don't see any geophysical silver bulletins on the horizon and a short term objective  is to make better use of what we already have.  

Regarding the original question about discoveries and resources.  Are you aware of the work of Richard Schodde?  Richard has compiled a lot of data of this kind and its accessible in summary form on his website.  It would be great to include something similar in the new book with emphasis on geophysical discoveries but as I've already found published data are often contradictory, there is often dispute about how deposits were actually discovered and data on resources is commercially very sensitive for obvious reasons.  So its a tough question to resolve at the moment.