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Drilling heard a mysterious scream to explore the deepest man-made drilling hole on earth

Drilling heard a mysterious scream to explore the deepest man-made drilling hole on earth

How deep is the earth? We can only find the answer from the book, which can not be realized in reality, but you know, the deepest borehole on the earth is the closest. From there, we can always hear mysterious screams. Let's have a look.

Drilling through the earth and witnessing the internal structure of the earth has always been a human dream, but so far this goal has not been achieved. However, in history, the closest to this dream is the Kola superdeep borehole. It is known as the real version of the 'gate of Hell'. It is said that the deepest man-made borehole on earth can hear the 'soul scream' from the depths of 'Hell'.

With lakes, forests, fog and snow, the Kola Peninsula in Russia, located deep in the Arctic Circle, looks like a fairyland in fairy tales. However, in this natural beauty, there stands the ruins of the former Soviet scientific research station, which hides the 'entrance to hell'. It is the Kola ultra deep borehole, the deepest man-made borehole on earth.

Kola ultra deep drilling depth of 12.2 kilometers, local people even claim to be able to hear the screams of the soul in the depths of hell. It took the Soviets nearly 20 years to drill to this depth, but when the project suddenly stopped after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the drill bit only drilled about 1 / 3 of the distance from the crust to the mantle.

Kola ultra deep drilling is not a unique human masterpiece. During the cold war, the United States and Germany also wanted to go as deep into the earth's crust as possible, even to the mantle. Now Japan also wants to try.

Sean & middot, project manager, Japan ocean and Earth Sciences agency; Sean toczko said: 'the ultimate goal of the new project is to obtain actual samples of the current mantle. In places like oman, you can find the mantle near the surface, but it was millions of years ago. It's like the difference between living dinosaurs and dinosaur bone fossils. "

If the earth is like an onion, the crust is like the thin skin of an onion. It is only 40 kilometers thick. Below it is the 2897 kilometer deep mantle, and below it is the center of the earth - the earth's core. Just like the space race, the race to explore this unknown 'deep frontier' can prove engineering strength and cutting-edge technology.

Scientists are going to places that humans have never been. The rock samples provided by these ultra deep boreholes may be as important to science as anything NASA brought back from the moon. The only difference is that the United States has not won the game this time.

The United States conducted its first exercise in the competition to explore the 'deep frontier'. In the late 1950s, the American encyclopedia society put forward the first plan to drill into the mantle -- the Moho plan

(project Mohole), which is named after the mohorovi I discontinuity between the crust and mantle.

Instead of drilling deep holes, the American expedition decided to start from Guadalupe, Mexico and take a shortcut through the Pacific Ocean. The advantage of drilling through the ocean bottom is that the crust there is thinner, but the disadvantage is that the thinnest part of the crust is usually the deepest part of the ocean.

In 1990, the German continental deep drilling program (KTB) was launched in Bavaria, and the final drilling depth reached 9 km.

Just like the mission to the moon, the problem is that the technologies needed for the success of these expeditions must be explored from scratch. In 1961, when the project Mohole At the beginning of drilling on the seabed, the deep-sea drilling of oil and gas had not yet appeared. At that time, no one had invented key technology such as dynamic positioning, which could keep the drilling ship above the oil well. On the contrary, engineers had to improvise. They installed propeller systems on both sides of the drilling ship to keep it stable above the drilling hole.

The biggest challenge facing German engineers is that they need to drill a hole as vertical as possible. Their solution has now become the standard technology in the world's oil and gas field.

Uli Hamm, who participated in the ultra deep drilling project in Germany in his youth "From the experience of the Russians, you must drill vertically as much as possible, otherwise you will increase the torque of the drill and cause kinks in the hole. The hole deviated from the vertical line by nearly 200 meters. In the late 1980s or early 1990s, when Russia became more open and willing to cooperate with the West, we tried to take advantage of some Russian technologies. Unfortunately, we couldn't Get relevant equipment in time. "

However, all these explorations ended in some degree of failure. Some were blocked at the beginning, some drilling machines encountered high temperatures deep underground, and other cost and political factors, all of which dashed scientists' dreams. At Neil Armstrong Two years before landing on the moon, when costs began to get out of control, the U.S. Congress cancelled funding for the project Mohole.

Then came the Kola ultra deep drilling. In 1992, when the temperature reached 180 degrees Celsius, the drilling work stopped. Its depth was twice as deep as previously expected, and it seemed impossible to drill further. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no additional funds to fund these projects. Three years later, the whole facility was closed. Now this desolate place has become a paradise for adventurous tourists.

The ultra deep drilling in Germany has been completely preserved. The huge drilling rig is still there. Now it has become a popular tourist attraction. In fact, it also acts as an observatory and art gallery.

When Dutch artist Lotte geevan When the microphone protected by the heat shield was placed under the ultra-deep drilling hole in Germany, the microphone caught a low rumble that scientists could not explain. She said: 'this sound makes me feel very small. This is the first time in my life that I saw this big ball that we live on waking up. That sound is unforgettable. Some people think it sounds like hell, others They think it's the breath of the earth. "

People will inevitably feel that the race to the mantle is like the famous novel Journey to the center of the earth Although scientists do not expect to find a hidden cave full of dinosaurs, they describe their project as' exploration '. Hammers said:' no one has been there before. You will always find something that really surprises you, especially when you go deep into the earth's crust. '

Damon teagle, Professor of geochemistry at the school of marine and Earth Sciences, Southampton National Oceanography Center, University of Southampton, said: 'these missions are like planetary exploration. They are pure scientific undertakings. You never know what you will find.'