Other attempts have been made through the years by other countries including Germany, Austria and Sweden. The drill site was officially shut down and the hole sealed in 2005. Drillers had no choice but to discontinue the effort, falling short of their 9.3-mile (15-kilometer) goal. These temperatures were beyond the capabilities of their drilling equipment, and although the Soviets pressed on until 1992, they never got any deeper than the depth reached in 1989. That, paired with the extremely high temperatures, made the rock behave more like a plastic than a solid, rendering drilling virtually impossible. That was a drastic difference from the 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) they were expecting.Įngineers also discovered, as they plowed past the first 14,800 feet (4,511 meters), that the rock had much more porosity and permeability. But beyond that point, as they drilled deeper, the heat intensified until it reached temperatures of 356 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius) at about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) down. The temperature gradient conformed to what scientists had predicted down to about 100,000 feet (30,408 meters). The resulting drill pattern resembles a Christmas tree of sorts.Įngineers plowed on, but the deeper the drill went, the hotter Earth became. "As a consequence, several drill paths were drilled until a pretty vertical was finally achieved," Harms says. That's when temperatures in the well increased from the expected 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) to 356 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).Īs a result, drill bits broke and the team had to change the direction of the drilling several times. In 1989, drilling reached a depth of 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) vertically below Earth's surface. By 1979, the project had broken all world records for man-made holes when it surpassed about 6 miles (9.5 kilometers). The goal was to go as far as possible, which scientists at the time expected to be about 9.3 miles (15 kilometers). In total, Kola only penetrates about a third of Earth's crust and 0.2 percent of the entire distance to the center of Earth. So, while the deepest artificial point is impressive, it is surprisingly shallow compared to Earth's depth. The outer core extends about 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) before reaching Earth's inner core, a hot, dense, mostly iron ball with a radius of about 758 miles (1,220 kilometers). The next layer, the mantle, continues for another 1,800 miles (2,896 kilometers). It's also deeper than the deepest point of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 36,201 feet (11,034 meters) below sea level.įor perspective, Earth's outermost layer - the ground we stand on - called the continental crust, is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) thick. For perspective, the hole's depth is the height of Mount Everest and Mount Fuji placed on top of one another. The Kola Superdeep Borehole runs about 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) or 7.6 miles (12.2 kilometers) into Earth's surface. Underneath - and virtually unseeable from ground level - at just 9 inches (23 centimeters) in diameter, is the world's deepest man-made hole. It resulted in the deepest hole in the world. While the United States and the USSR were focusing on space exploration during the great space race of the 1960s, the Americans and Soviets were also vying for supremacy of another kind: one to the center of Earth, or at least as close to it as possible. Despite the significant depth achieved, the drilling faced challenges like increasing temperatures and rock densities, leading to the project's discontinuation in 1992, with the hole being sealed in 2005.The drilling project, initiated by the Soviets in 1970, revealed unexpected findings such as the absence of the "Conrad discontinuity" transition from granite to basalt, the presence of liquid water at unexpected depths, and microscopic fossils from single-celled marine organisms dating back 2 billion years.The Kola Superdeep Borehole, located in Russia, is the world's deepest man-made hole, reaching a depth of 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) or 7.6 miles (12.2 kilometers), surpassing the depth of the Mariana Trench and the height of Mount Everest.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |