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The lakes, forests, mists and snow of the Kola peninsula, located in the depths of the Arctic Circle, may give the impression that this part of Russia looks like a fairy tale. Yet in the midst of this natural beauty lie the ruins of an abandoned Soviet scientific research station. In the middle of the ruined building is a heavy rusted metal cap embedded in the concrete floor, secured by a ring of thick, rusty metal bolts.
According to some, it is the entrance to hell.
This is the Kola Superdeep Borehole, the deepest artificial hole on Earth and the deepest artificial point on Earth. The 40.230-foot-deep (12.2-km) building is so deep that residents swear that you can hear the cries of tortured souls in hell. It took the Soviets nearly 20 years to drill until then, but the forest was still only a third of the way to the earth's crust, when the project stopped in the chaos of Russia post -Soviet.
The super-drilling of the Soviets is not the only one. During the Cold War, the superpowers were racing to dig as deep as possible in the Earth's crust – and even to reach the mantle of the planet itself.
Now, the Japanese want to try their luck.
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"It was the Iron Curtain at the time of drilling," says Uli Harms, of the International Scientific Drilling Program, who, as a young scientist, worked on the German rival of the Kola well. "And there was certainly competition between us. One of the main motivations was that the Russians were just not really open with their data.
"When the Russians started drilling, they claimed to have found open water – and most scientists simply did not believe it. Western scientists were used to hearing that the crust was so dense at 5 km depth that water could not penetrate it.
"The ultimate goal of [new] The project is to get live samples of the mantle as it currently exists, "says Sean Toczko, Program Manager at the Japan Agency for Earth and Earth Sciences. "In places like Oman, you can find a coat near the surface, but that's what it was millions of years ago.
"It's the difference between a living dinosaur and a fossilized dinosaur bone."
If the Earth is like an onion, the crust is like the thin skin of the planet. It's only 25 miles (40 km) thick. Beyond this is the mantle of 1,800 km deep and beyond, in the center of the Earth, is the nucleus.
Like the space race, the race to explore this unknown "deep border" was a demonstration of engineering prowess, cutting – edge technology and the "Good material". The scientists were going where no man had gone before. The rock samples that these super deep boreholes could provide were potentially as important to science as anything Nasa brought back from the moon. The only difference was that this time the Americans did not win the race. In fact, no one has really done it.
The Soviets began drilling in the Arctic Circle in 1970
The United States had launched the first exercise of the race to explore the deep border. In the late 1950s, the wonderfully named American Miscellaneous Society developed the first serious plan to break through the cloak. The club of society became alcoholic was an informal group composed of the personalities of the American scientific community. Their project of breakthrough in the Earth's crust up to the mantle was called Project Mohole, named after the Mohorovičić discontinuity, which separates the crust from the mantle.
Rather than drilling a very, very deep hole, the American expedition – observed by novelist John Steinbeck – has decided to take a short cut across the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off Guadalupe, Mexico.
The advantage of drilling at the bottom of the ocean is that the earth's crust is thinner; The disadvantage is that the thinnest crust areas are usually those where the ocean is the deepest.
The Soviets began drilling in the Arctic Circle in 1970. Finally, in 1990, the German Continental Deep Drilling (KTB) program was launched in Bavaria – eventually reaching 9 km.
As with the mission on the moon, the problem was that the technologies needed for the success of these expeditions had to be invented from scratch.
When, in 1961, the Mohole Project began drilling in the seabed, offshore oil and gas drilling was still a long way off. Nobody had yet invented essential technologies such as dynamic positioning, which allows a drill ship to remain in its position above the well. Instead, the engineers had to improvise. They installed a propeller system on the sides of their drill ship to keep it stable over the hole.
Two years before Neil Armstrong's moon landing, US Congress canceled Mohole project funding when costs began to spiral out of control
One of the biggest challenges that German engineers faced was the need to drill as vertical a hole as possible. The proposed solution is now a standard technology in the world's oil and gas fields.
"What was clear for the Russians' experience is that we have to drill as vertically as possible because otherwise we increase the torque on the drills and the deformations of the hole," says Uli Harms . "The solution was to develop vertical drilling systems. These are now an industry standard, but they were originally developed for KTB – and they worked up to 7.5 km. Then, during the last 1.5-2 km (0.9 to 1.25 miles), the hole was off the vertical line for nearly 200 m.
"We tried to use some of the Russian techniques in the early 90s or the late 80s, when Russia became more open and willing to cooperate with the West," he said. added. "Unfortunately, it was not possible to get the material on time."
However, all these expeditions ended in frustration. There were false starts and blockages. Then there were the high temperatures their machines encountered right down to the depths of the basement, the cost and the politics – all of which involved scientists' dreams of drilling deeper and breaking the record for the deepest hole.
Two years before Neil Armstrong roamed the moon, the US Congress canceled Mohole project funding when costs began to spiral out of control. The few meters of basalt they were able to bring cost about $ 40 million (31 million pounds) today.
When the Dutch artist Lotte Geevan lowered his microphone protected by a heat shield in the German borehole, he caught a serious roar that scientists could not explain.
Then it was the turn of the Kola Superdeep drilling. Drilling was stopped in 1992 when the temperature reached 180 ° C (356 ° F). It was twice what we expected at this depth and it was no longer possible to drill deeper. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was more money to finance such projects – and three years later, the entire installation has been closed. From now on, the desolate site is a destination for adventurous tourists.
German drilling has been spared the fate of others. The huge rig is still there – and is now a tourist attraction – but today, the crane is simply lowering the measuring instruments. The site has actually become an observatory of the planet, or even an art gallery.
When the Dutch artist Lotte Geevan lowered her microphone protected by a heat shield into the German borehole, a loud rumbling was detected, which the scientists could not explain, a roar that made her "feel very small; it was the first time in my life that this big balloon in which we lived was animating, and that seems to haunt, "she says. "Some people thought it sounded like hell. Others thought they could hear the planet breathe. "
"The plan was there to drill deeper than the Soviets," says Harms, "but we did not even reach our allowed phase of 10 km (6.25 miles) in the time we had. Drilling was much hotter than the Russians and it was pretty clear that we would have a lot more trouble going further.
"At that time, it was also the beginning of the 90s in Germany and there was no valid argument for raising additional funds because German unification was costing a lot of money. money."
It is hard not to forget the feeling that the race to the Earth's mantle is an updated version of the famous novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. Scientists do not expect to find a hidden cavern full of dinosaurs, but describe their projects as "expeditions".
"We thought of this as an expedition because it really took time in terms of preparation and execution," says Harms, "and because you are really going into no man's land, where no one has been before, and it 's really unusual today.
The thing about these missions is that they look like planetary exploration – Damon Teagle
"You always find something down here that really surprises you, especially if you go down to a very deep crust.
"And if we're talking about KTB or Kola Superdeep, the theories behind the project's goals were 30 to 40 years old when drilling began."
"The problem with these missions is that they look like planetary exploration," says Damon Teagle, professor of geochemistry at the Southampton National Oceanography Center's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton, strongly involved in the new Japanese study. project led by "These are purely scientific companies and you never know very well what you are going to find.
"At hole 1256 [a hole drilled by the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and Ocean Drilling Program (ODP)]we were the first to see the oceanic crust intact. Nobody had reached it before. It was really exciting. There are always surprises.
Today, "M2M – MoHole to Mantle" is one of the most important projects of the International Program for Ocean Discovery (IODP). As with the original Mohole project, scientists plan to drill the seabed where the crust only has a depth of about 6 km (3.75 miles). The goal of the $ 1 billion (£ 775m) ultradeep drilling project is to recover mantle rocks in situ for the first time in the history of humanity.
"To do this would be an incredible undertaking and would require a considerable commitment on the part of Japan," said Teagle, involved in the project.
Despite the importance of the project, the huge Chikyū drill ship was built almost 20 years ago as part of this project. The Chikyū uses a GPS system and six adjustable computer-controlled jets that can alter the position of the huge ship just 50 cm.
"The idea is that this ship would make contact and continue the work initiated by the original Mohole project 50 years ago," said Sean Toczko, program manager at the Japan Agency for Science and Technology. Earth and Earth. "Superdeep's drilling has made a lot of progress in telling us about the thick continental crust. What we are trying to do is find out more about the Crust-Mantle limit.
These expeditions are extremely expensive – and therefore difficult to repeat – Uli Harms
"The main problem is that there are three main candidate sites. One of them lies off Costa Rica, one off Baha and one off Hawaii.
Each of the sites involves a compromise between the depth of the ocean, the distance from the drilling site and the need for a shore base that can support a billion dollar offshore operation. every day. "The infrastructure can be built, but it takes time and money," adds Toczko.
"In the end, it's a cost problem," says Harms. "These shipments are extremely expensive and are therefore difficult to repeat. They can cost hundreds of millions of euros – and only a small percentage will be spent on earth sciences, the rest being for technological development and, of course, for operations.
"We need inspiring politicians to showcase the value of these expeditions."
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