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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/17/2008 9:49:23 PM | "The Kola Superdeep Borehole (Russian: Кольская сверхглубокая скважина) was the result of a scientific drilling project of the former USSR. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust. Drilling began on May 24, 1970 on the Kola Peninsula, using an "Uralmash-4E" and later an "Uralmash-15000" drilling rig. A number of boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole. The deepest, SG-3, was completed in 1989, creating a hole 12,261 metres (about 40,226 feet or 7.62 miles) deep,[1] which is still the deepest hole ever drilled. The longest hole ever drilled is the 40,320 feet (about 12,290 meters or 7.64 miles) long Maersk Oil BD-04A well at Al-Shaheen field in Qatar." ~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
This seemed like such a cool idea... and it sounds like it became a huge success for all kinds of science to learn more about the planet... Why haven't we super sized this idea and found ways to go deeper and learn more? You would think with everything we can build in todays times, we could find a way to drill in temps above 300.
James | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/17/2008 11:40:38 PM |
I suspect the problem is the Earth keeps expanding faster than we can drill, and this binds the drill shaft, causing repeated breakages.
Your pretty bent out of shape in my following and research of that very interesting theory arn't yah :) It's okay, I understand... after all through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of scripture. As sceince steps up to the plate as the worlds know it all I don't find it surprising that when new ideas go and question 150 year old scientific theory's that scientists get all bent out of shape over it... sometimes defending the research violently if necessary. And yet... a lot of that research was founded by people who also believed in the expanding earth...
Please keep Expanding Earth chat for that thread :) | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/17/2008 11:50:20 PM | It was a joke. I don't care. (and to be completely honest, I'll post where and when I wish... thanks, though, net-nanny.)
And you want to know WHY the 'expanding earth' theory fell out of favor as a competing theory with 'plate tectonics' over the last half-century or so? Because plate tectonics provided a better predictive base and fit the observed phenomena far better. Strangely, you've got the order of things backwards. Plate tectonics really only came into existence as a real theory, and then gained acceptance, in the 1960s. That there were a few holdouts who refused to move on after they'd staked their reputations and careers on the older theory is hardly surprising. I had professors like that all through grad school. Sad, really.
It's nice to see you're taking the effort to at least google some references, though. | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 12:50:51 AM | It's rejected in large part due to this question "where does the matter come from" everything we know about matter & Energy is that it 'must' come from some other matter and energy... it can't be created, only transformed (One of Alberts rules). The idea that it's being created somehow is about as far reaching as to say "The earth is round"
To accept that matter is being created in the core of earth (and ALL planets) flys in the face of just about everything we know about science. (can't have that)... So even some famous work done on the subject by Ott Christoph Hilgenberg... he made several earths in various stages of expansion and put them up for display in the school for students to see. They display was later removed by the administration because they believed it to be an overwhelmingly unacceptable theory.
Anyways, I was trying to research how much physical study we've done on the center of our earth, and truth be known... aside from some really cool tricks with radio signals we haven't done anything down there. For that matter... the world record for a drill is only like... 7 miles... thought that was pathetic considering how curious we are about this stuff, I thought people would have been dissecting our planet for years. | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 1:07:56 AM | Here is a cool write up I found on the hole from www.damninteresting.com
The Deepest Hole
Written by Alan Bellows on March 5th, 2007 at 4:19 am
From DamnInteresting.com
This is a classic Damn Interesting article which originally appeared on 20 June 2006.
The drill-rig enclosure, over 200 feet tallThe drill-rig enclosure, over 200 feet tallOver forty years ago, researchers in the Soviet Union began an ambitious drilling project whose goal was to penetrate the Earth's upper crust and sample the warm, mysterious area where the crust and mantle intermingle– the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or "Moho." So deep is this area that the Russian scientists had to invent new ways of drilling, and some of their new methods proved quite inventive. But despite the valiant effort which spanned several decades, the Russians never reached their goal, and many of the Earth's secrets were left undiscovered. The work done by the Soviets did, however, provide a plethora of information about what lies just beneath the surface, and it continues to be scientifically useful today. The project is known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole.
Beginning in 1962, the drilling effort was led by the USSR's Interdepartmental Scientific Council for the Study of the Earth's Interior and Superdeep Drilling, which spent years preparing for the historic project. It was started in parallel to the Space Race, a period of intense competition between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The survey to find a suitable drill site was completed in 1965 when project leaders decided to drill on the Kola Peninsula in the north-west portion of the Soviet Union. After five more years of construction and preparations, the drill began to nudge its way into the ground in 1970.
Inside the project's 200-foot-tall enclosure resides a unique drilling apparatus. Most deep-drilling rigs use a rotating shaft to bore through the ground– using a series of extensions which are incrementally added as the hole grows deeper– but such a method was unworkable with a hole as deep as Kola was planned to be. To overcome this, the Russian researchers devised a solution where only the drill bit at the end of the shaft was rotated. They accomplished this by forcing the pressurized "drilling mud"– the lubricant pumped down the drill shaft– through the specially-designed drill bit to cause it to spin.
Today, the deepest hole ever created by humankind lies beneath the tower enclosing Kola's drill. A number of boreholes split from the central branch, but the deepest is designated "SG-3," a hole about nine inches wide which snakes over 12.262 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the Earth's crust. The drill spent twenty-four years chewing its way to that depth, until its progress was finally halted in 1994, about 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) short of its 15,000-meter goal.
Core samples from 6 km below the surface Core samples from 6 km below the surface The Soviet's drilling rig was designed such that core samples would be provided along the entire length of the drill shaft, providing researchers on the surface with an intimate look at the composition of the Earth as the drill ventured further downward. Before the superdeep borehole project was undertaken, practitioners of Geology had reached a number of conclusions regarding the Earth's deep crust based on observations and seismic data. But as is often the case when humans venture into the unknown, Kola illustrated that certainty from a distance is no certainty at all, and a few scientific theories were left in ruin. One scientist was heard to comment, "Every time we drill a hole we find the unexpected. That's exciting, but disturbing."
To the surprise of the researchers, they did not find the expected transition from granite to basalt at 3-6 kilometers beneath the surface. Data had long shown that seismic waves travel significantly faster below that depth, and geologists had believed that this was due to a "basement" of basalt. Instead, the difference was discovered to be a change in the rock brought on by intense heat and pressure, or metamorphic rock. Even more surprisingly, this deep rock was found to be saturated in water which filled the cracks. Because free water should not be found at those depths, scientists theorize that the water is comprised of hydrogen and oxygen atoms which were squeezed out of the surrounding rocks due to the incredible pressure. The water was then prevented from rising to the surface because of the layer of impermeable rocks above it.
Another unexpected find was a menagerie of microscopic fossils as deep as 6.7 kilometers below the surface. Twenty-four distinct species of plankton microfossils were found, and they were discovered to have carbon and nitrogen coverings rather than the typical limestone or silica. Despite the harsh environment of heat and pressure, the microscopic remains were remarkably intact.
The Russian researchers were also surprised at how quickly the temperatures rose as the borehole deepened, which is the factor that ultimately halted the project's progress. Despite the scientists' efforts to combat the heat by refrigerating the drilling mud before pumping it down, at twelve kilometers the drill began to approach its maximum heat tolerance. At that depth researchers had estimated that they would encounter rocks at 100°C (212°F), but the actual temperature was about 180°C (356°F)– much higher than anticipated. At that level of heat and pressure, the rocks began to act more like a plastic than a solid, and the hole had a tendency to flow closed whenever the drill bit was pulled out for replacement. Forward progress became impossible without some technological breakthroughs and major renovations of the equipment on hand, so drilling stopped on the SG-3 branch. If the hole had reached the initial goal of 15,000 meters, temperatures would have reached a projected 300°C (572°F).
When drilling stopped in 1994, the hole was over seven miles deep (12,262 meters), making it by far the deepest hole ever drilled by humankind. The last of the cores to be plucked from from the borehole were dated to be about 2.7 billion years old, or roughly 32 million times older than Abe Vigoda. But even at that depth, the Kola project only penetrated into a fraction of the Earth's continental crust, which ranges from twenty to eighty kilometers thick.
The Kola Core repository in ZapolyarniyThe Kola Core repository in ZapolyarniyKola was not the first nor the last attempt at drilling a superdeep borehole, but it has been the most successful so far. In 1957 the United States embarked on a similar project dubbed Project Mohole, but that attempt to drill through the ocean floor was cancelled due to lack of funding. Today, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program seeks to penetrate the much thinner crust of the ocean floor to probe the Earth's lower crust.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole is still a scientifically useful site, and research there is ongoing. The huge repository of core samples are housed at Zapolyarniy, about 10 kilometers south of the borehole. Today the site is managed by the State Scientific Enterprise on Superdeep Drilling and Complex Investigations in the Earth's Interior as the Deep Geolaboratory.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=567 | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 10:28:36 AM | This seemed like such a cool idea... and it sounds like it became a huge success for all kinds of science to learn more about the planet... Why haven't we super sized this idea and found ways to go deeper and learn more? You would think with everything we can build in todays times, we could find a way to drill in temps above 300.
The reasons are fairly simple: (1) Deep drilling is technologically very difficult and expensive; (2) Deep drilling lacks any forseeable use which could be profitable; (3) In order to get funding for deep drilling as scientific research, a scientist first has to write a proposal that explains the scientific goals and estimates the likelyhood that his proposal will acheive those goals; (4) Since it IS expensive, that scientist will most likely need to convince a bunch of other scientists at many different institutions to join in on the project; (5) Since research is funds are finite, a proposal which gets funded necessarily results in others being rejected, so ultimately one has to decide between one very large and expensive project and many smaller projects in terms of how much science one gets for the dollar.
My guess is that a deep drilling project fails on most of those criteria. One may learn something, but no one knows what that might be to a great enough extent to justify the cost. The reality is that scientific research is not free from a cost-benefit analysis. | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 12:29:19 PM | Isn't their speculation to the core of the earth being made up of 1% gold... now I'm not an expert on math, but even at 1% that should be enough to coat every land mass of earth in gold knee deep.... They want money... find a way to drill deep enough to start extracting it :)
Diamond is carbon right? I imagine carbon pockets of gas are easily transformed into diamonds the size of buildings... how much would one of those be worth (this idea comes from the movie 'the core') :)
James | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 1:31:14 PM | Learn more about our planet? Screw that- imagine the energy we could produce through boreholes! Not to mention the boon we'd find on diamonds- they'd immediately become the cheapest resource on the planet, and finally end the issue with Blood Diamonds.
As for why- its pretty simple- we do not have the technology to either drill that deep or survive the pressure | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 2:27:41 PM |
As for why- its pretty simple- we do not have the technology to either drill that deep or survive the pressure
We can stick people on other planets and bring them back home, we can send satelites and probes to study distant worlds and report back to us. We can build weapons of unimaginable power. We can drill tunnels through mountains so big that they can buld a free way in it...
We don't have the technology to dig inside mantel? Oh I'm sure engineers could come up with something pretty quick if we wanted to do it badly enough... Just no one wants to dump the money into such a project. | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 9:40:48 PM | Nope! The Moon is not considered a planet- in order to be a planet, you must orbit a sun, not some smaller celestial body. Also, as Pluto has proven to us, you must be a certain size.
If you'd like to be exact, according to Wikipedia,the International Astronomical Union defines a planet as;
(1) A "planet"1 is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape2, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
(3) All other objects3 except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".
Mankind has, to date, never stepped foot on anything other than Earth, the moon, and the void of space | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 9:59:47 PM | | One of the purposes of the Deep Kola Peninsula Hole was to test a conceptual theory for 'abiotic oil'. The vast majority of hydrocarbons exploited today are the product of decaying plant matter; a buddy of mine is consulting for several oil companies on a theory that hydrocarbons may be originally sourced from upper regions of the earths mantle, and may have a magmatic component. I haven't seen much conclusive evidence for this theory (and haven't bothered to research it), however there is nothing the matter with testing new theories...that's how major scientific discoveries are made! | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/18/2008 10:18:01 PM | Holla that!
I make enuf $$$ on gold...plus petroleum geology is boring...
Here's some random geologists with random quotes about the theory
"It’s at least plausible that the 3.2 billion year old oil we found did in fact have an abiotic origin." -- Roger Buick, 2008
"Formation of higher hydrocarbons in the upper layers of the Earth's crust occurs only as the result of Fischer-Tropsch-type reactions in the presence of hydrogen gas but is otherwise not possible on thermodynamic grounds." -- Geoffrey P. Glasby, 2006
"Examples of the occurance of abiogenically-derived hydrocarbons have been recorded." -- Geoffrey P. Glasby, 2006
"It is possible to convert methane into a complex mixture of higher alkanes and alkenes at high pressures and temperatures but not carbohydrates, the fundamental building blocks of plants." -- Geoffrey P. Glasby, 2006
"It is generally recognized that the first pre-biotic organic molecules on earth and elsewhere in the solar system must have been formed by abiogenic reactions." -- Barbara Sherwood Lollar, 2006
"No one doubts that inorganic hydrocarbons may occur in association with hydrothermal systems." -- Michael D. Lewan, 2005
"Abiogenic gasses are a clear fact. I can make them on the lab bench today." -- Barbara Sherwood Lollar, 2005
"We’ve barely tapped, from the exploration point of view, the hydrocarbon potential that’s out there on this planet." -- Stanley B. Keith, 2005
"The methane is not that strongly fractionated but they still think it might be biological. At Lost City, you can't figure out if it's biological or not by the isotopes." -- James F. Kasting, 2005
"Most geologists resisted for several generations the idea that is now a key paradigm of their science, the theory of plate tectonics championed by Alfred Wegener (Oreskes 1999)" -- Vaclav Smil, 2003
"The subject of organic chemistry was wrongly taken by petroleum geologists long ago to mean chemistry of biologic origins. You can still have a book of organic chemistry that has nothing to do with organisms at all." -- Thomas Gold, 2002
"I don't think anybody's arguing that gas couldn't be generated from the mantle." -- Barry J. Katz, 2002
"I don't think anybody has ever doubted that there is an inorganic source of hydrocarbons." -- Michael D. Lewan, 2002
"There has not been any 'debate' about the origin of hydrocarbons for over a century. Competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological material since the last quarter of the 19th century." -- Jack F. Kenney, 2002
"Natural petroleum has no connection with biological matter." -- Jack F. Kenney, 2001
"Even though the biogenic origin theory leads to many inconsistencies, it is nevertheless now impossible in the Western world to conduct any research in petroleum geology that implies a questioning of this accepted position." -- Thomas Gold, 1999
"The industry will never run out of oil, not in 10,000 years. Some day, it may run out of customers. Every mineral industry is a perpetual tug-of-war, between diminishing returns and increasing knowledge." -- Morris A. Adelman, 1997
"Neither we, nor our grandchildren, nor their grandchildren will live to see the end of the oil era." -- Karl-Heinz Schult-Bornemann, 1997
"The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not controversial nor presently a matter of academic debate. The period of debate about this extensive body of knowledge has been over for approximately two decades (Simakov 1986)." -- Jack F. Kenney, 1996
"The human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When o*ne sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next o*ne can't get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort. And here again, it doesn't just catch ordinary mortals; it catches the deans of physics. According to Max Planck, the really innovative, important new physics was never really accepted by the old guard. Instead a new guard came along that was less brain-blocked by its previous conclusions. And if Max Planck's crowd had this consistency and commitment tendency that kept their old conclusions intact in spite of disconfirming evidence, you can imagine what the crowd that you and I are part of behaves like." -- Charles T. Munger, 1995
"Stable carbon isotopes are not a reliable criterion for distinguishing biogenic from non-biogenic petroleum." -- A.A. Giardini and Charles E. Melton, 1991
"The general concept of petroleum formation by biogenic mechanisms has been firmly entrenched for a long time, but there has been no accumulation of convincing experimental evidence in support of this belief." -- Charles E. Melton and A.A. Giardini, 1983
"The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time." -- Fred Hoyle, 1982
"Next to nothing is known about the sources of the volatile components of magmas or how they are distributed and transported between the mantle and the shallow levels of the crust." -- Howel Williams, 1979
"Geology is the prisoner of several dogmas that have had widespread influence on the development of scientific thought." -- William R. Corliss, 1975
“Ideas are the life blood of the science of petroleum.” -- Hollis D. Hedberg, 1969
"Statistical thermodynamic analysis has established clearly that hydrocarbon molecules which comprise petroleum require very high pressures for their spontaneous formation, comparable to the pressures required for the same of diamond. In that sense, hydrocarbon molecules are the high-pressure polymorphs of the reduced carbon system as is diamond of elemental carbon. Any notion which might suggest that hydrocarbon molecules spontaneously evolve in the regimes of temperature and pressure characterized by the near-surface of the Earth, which are the regimes of methane creation and hydrocarbon destruction, does not even deserve consideration." -- Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, 1968
"Geologists engaged in the search for oil and gas fields ought now to begin reappraising the facts at their disposal and analyzing them from positions of crustal fault tectonics." -- Ivan I. Chebanenko, 1966
"Actually it cannot be too strongly emphasized that petroleum does not present the composition picture expected from modified biogenic products, and all the arguments from the constituents of ancient oils fit equally well, or better, with the conception of a primordial hydrocarbon mixture to which bio-products have been added." -- Sir Robert Robinson, 1963
“Several times in the past we have thought we were running out of oil whereas actually we were only running out of ideas.” -- Parke A.****y, 1958
"The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths." -- Vladimir B. Porfir'yev, 1956
"Volcanology is one of the oldest branches of geology; it is also one of the least developed." -- Howel Williams, 1953
"Oil is the creature of direct action of common earth forces on common earth materials." -- Wallace E. Pratt, 1942
"All the petroleum, natural gas, and bituminous fields or deposits cannot be regarded as anything else but the products of solfotaric volcanic emanations condensed and held in their passage upward in the porous tanks of all ages of the crust of the earth from the Archaean rocks to the Quaternary. Nothing is so simple and therefore nothing so natural as this origin, and we will see that it can be abundantly proven." -- Eugene Coste, 1903
"It is a singular and notable fact that, while most other branches of science have emancipated themselves from the trammels of metaphysical reasoning, the science of geology still remains imprisoned in 'a priori' theories." -- Sir Henry H. Howorth, 1895
"It is obvious that the total amount of petroleum in the rocks underlying the surface ... is large beyond computation." -- Edward Orton, 1888
"The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depths of the Earth, and it is only there that we must seek its origin." -- Dmitri Mendeleyev, 1877
"It may be supposed that naphta was produced by the action of water penetrating through the crevices of the strata during the upheaval of mountain chains because water with iron carbide ought to give iron oxide and hydrocarbons." -- Dmitri Mendeleyev, 1877
"Whether naphta was formed by organic matter is very doubtful, as it is found in the most ancient Silurian [Ordovician] strata which correspond with the epochs of the earth's existence when there was very little organic matter; it could not penetrate from the higher to the lower (more ancient) strata as it floats on water (and water penetrates through all strata)." -- Dmitri Mendeleyev, 1877
"Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie." -- Alexander Von Humboldt, 1804 | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/19/2008 11:11:58 AM | What would happen if you drill through the mantle and crack the outer core of molten metal (if it is molten)?
Would this not lead to molten outer core stuff bursting out onto the surface via your drill hole, much like crude oil bursting forth when it is tapped?
Could that not lead to your original drill hole being progressively enlarged due to the fantastic pressures involved?
Wouldn’t the effect of the outer core stuff bursting onto the surface be the same as a volcanic eruption, or do you expect one gigantic initial burst out and then a settling down period that would result in a molten lake (small sea by this time), of toxic outer core stuff?
Could this sudden “deflation” of the inner molten core also lead to a collapse of the earth’s crust elsewhere with dire subsequent consequences?
It is entirely possible that such an adventure into the core could very well “destabilise” the planet in such ways such as rotation (gravity, moon’s position), axis, orbit around the sun and so many more things that I can’t fathom at the moment?
Perhaps we should conduct really extensive computer simulation trails beforehand as I did notice that these bore holes were started before computer added trails were even invented? Could well be prudent.
Just some thought's from "down under". No pun intended.
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/19/2008 3:27:27 PM | >>>
Could that not lead to your original drill hole being progressively enlarged due to the fantastic pressures involved?
Yes, its possible we could create the worlds first man-made Volcano- but if the location is chosen carefully, its unlikely to get worse. Mind you, this depends entirely on where its done- if its done along the San Andreas Fault, it might spread- if its done in Yellowstone, it might spread and destroy the entire continent of North America- if its done where there little tectonic movement, its going to create little backlash. The risks are great, but the rewards would be astounding
>>>Could this sudden “deflation” of the inner molten core also lead to a collapse of the earth’s crust elsewhere with dire subsequent consequences?
No more than if a new volcano were to appear in the world would cause serious damage
The great irony is that, for all our theories, we won't know for sure what is going on down there until we dig- so our simulations could be using flawed conclusions. | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/19/2008 7:06:56 PM | What's gravity like at the center of the earth.... our of curiosity... I was wondering about that as I was thinking about a hole large enough to work as an elevator for us humans to go down there and stand in a glass bubble (Not possible, I know, but this is how my brain works) what would the gravity be like?
James
UPDATE... lol... I looked it up, all kinds of great answers out there, but this one was my favorite
---
If you managed to get to the centre of the earth (and please note that travelling to the centre of the earth is not recommended for health reasons- it is so hot that you would catch fire and be compressed by the enormous pressure) you would be pulled equally in all directions at once...but you would experience it as being weightless.
When I tell you that you would be pulled in all directions at once you probably think of your arm being pulled one direction and your legs in another and you head being pulled in entirely different direction. This would not happen. Instead every tiny bit of your body would be pulled equally in all directions at once and the forces would cancel each other out. You would feel weightless because you cannot sense that there are these competing forces which are cancelling each other.
In conclusion, if you go to the centre of the earth you will catch fire, get squashed and will get space sickness because of the unusual sensation of weightlessness.
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/19/2008 9:44:46 PM | Would this not lead to molten outer core stuff bursting out onto the surface via your drill hole, much like crude oil bursting forth when it is tapped?
***nope....even if the technology existed to drill to such, the head pressure wouldn't allow the molten material to reach the earth's surface, plus it would likely cool and solidfy on ascent.
Wouldn’t the effect of the outer core stuff bursting onto the surface be the same as a volcanic eruption, or do you expect one gigantic initial burst out and then a settling down period that would result in a molten lake (small sea by this time), of toxic outer core stuff?
***nope, and nickel and iron, magensium and silca (outer mantle primary constituents) aren't toxic...they're common elements.
It is entirely possible that such an adventure into the core could very well “destabilise” the planet in such ways such as rotation (gravity, moon’s position), axis, orbit around the sun and so many more things that I can’t fathom at the moment?
*** nope...temperature convection at the core results in the same subtly variable dynamics as the earths crust...would have as much effect as dropping a piece of broccoli on a fat chick
Just some thought's from "down under". No pun intended.
***the world needs more down under...accept in Whistler! | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/30/2008 12:17:31 AM | | Unlikely- the center of the Earth is a suspected to be hotter than the surface of the sun; Wikipedia reports it as 5700 K- from my understanding, any machine we would plunge into the center of the earth would melt instantly- and I doubt the silcoin chips would last even half way down. | |
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| Kola Superdeep Borehole aka (Well to Hell legend)
Posted: 10/30/2008 7:37:46 AM |
Unlikely- the center of the Earth is a suspected to be hotter than the surface of the sun; Wikipedia reports it as 5700 K- from my understanding, any machine we would plunge into the center of the earth would melt instantly- and I doubt the silcoin chips would last even half way down.
Yah, this I know, I was wondering if we would be able to come up with a a heat shield or cooling system that could somehow counter that intensity. | |
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