BBC News reported on efforts throughout the 20th century to bore the deepest hole in the Earth's surface to reach the Earth's mantle. One of them was in Russia that was stopped in 1992 because of the intense heat (from the Earth's molten core), and people referred to it as the doorway to Hell. Here's the story about it and a short, fascinating video describing the project and the amazing discoveries it yielded! READ ON!
The Kola Superdeep Borehole: deepest hole humans have ever dug
BBC NEWS Dec. 2019
Drilling on the Kola Superdeep Borehole began in 1970, but it went completely unnoticed as the world was fixated on the space race. The Soviets quietly went about researching the best method for digging a really deep hole and then decided it was time to break ground. Researchers in both the USA and Russia began digging, not because it would lead to an amazing discovery, but just because they could.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole is the deepest manmade hole on Earth and deepest artificial point on Earth. The 40,230 ft-deep (12.2km) construction is so deep that locals swear you can hear the screams of souls tortured in hell. It took the Soviets almost 20 years to drill this far, but the drill bit was still only about one-third of the way through the crust to the Earth’s mantle when the project came grinding to a halt in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia.The Kola Superdeep Borehole. Drilling was stopped in 1992, when the temperature reached 180C (356F). This was twice what was expected at that depth and drilling deeper was no longer possible. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union there was no money to fund such projects – and three years later the whole facility was closed down. Now the desolate site is a destination for adventurous tourists.
The Soviets’ superdeep borehole isn’t alone. During the Cold War, there was a race by the superpowers to drill as deep as possible into the Earth’s crust – and even to reach the mantle of the planet itself. If the Earth is like an onion, then the crust is like the thin skin of the planet. It is only 25 (40km) miles thick. Beyond this, is the 1,800-mile deep mantle and beyond that, right at the center of the Earth, is the core.
Now the Japanese want to have a go.“The ultimate goal of the [new] project is to get actual living samples of the mantle as it exists right now,” says Sean Toczko, programme manager for the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science. “In places like Oman you can find mantle close to the surface, but that’s mantle as it was millions of years ago. Other deep hole drilling projects continue around the world. Today, “M2M-MoHole to Mantle” is one of the most important projects of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). As with the original Project Mohole, the scientists are planning to drill through the seabed where the crust is only about 6km (3.75 miles) deep.
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