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Kola Superdeep Borehole

atlasobscura.com

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The article kindly submitted here mentions

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kola-superdeep-borehole

as a source of more information.

Thanks. Changed from http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/05/08/kola_sup...

Submitters: please don't submit content that's lifted from some other source; submit the other source instead.

The Slate article has at least one photo not present on Atlas Obscura (at least, I couldn't find it).

The Atlas Obscura blog on Slate is by an employee (the head writer) of Atlas Obscura, so it isn't lifted. Either link is fine IMNSHO.

You're right, that's not as bad. But it's still better, IMO, to link to the original site.

Personally, I liked more the Slate version from an editorial point of view. Since there was no lifting involved and the Slate version is stuffed with links to the original version, I made a choice. Ironically the Atlas Obscura Facebook page links[0] to the Slate version.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/posts/1015244661763772...

I am not sure how these hosted blog deals work, but could it be that the author gets paid for clicks on the slate article but not on his own website? Would make sense for him to post a link to slate on his facebook page then. If so, changing the link probably took a good chunk out of his revenue on that article.

We'd certainly like to help authors of good material, but the thought of keeping track of all this is overwhelming.

xkcd had a comment showing relative depth of the oceans and lakes. The kola borehole was also on there.

https://xkcd.com/1040/

Amazing how far oil is underground.

Edit:

What things could we find 15-20 miles down?

I know there were an other XKCD about kola borahola: https://xkcd.com/1330/

Can someone explain the David Bowie and Freddie Mecury reference?

The two of them did a song called Under Pressure.

Much more at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole

If it is that hot down at the bottom - ~200 degrees C depending on where the bottom is, is there no way to economically generate power with some type of steam turbine dropped down the hole? If you could get the steam turbine to power the drill then you could make it all the way to 'China' by teatime...

That would be a heat pump: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

Not a heat pump, simply a heat engine (if you're taking the work) or heat source (if you're using the heat). "Pumping" implies going against the gradient.

Doing it at all, economically or otherwise, is something that is being worked on this very year:

http://iddp.is/

Summary article here:

http://theconversation.com/drilling-surprise-opens-door-to-v...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power

> If you could get the steam turbine to power the drill then you could make it all the way to 'China' by teatime...

You can't because to generate power you need both a hot side and a cold side, and this drill would only have a hot side.

Isn't that what Geo-thermal energy is :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy ? Hot springs are the same thing, only the conductor is water.

I believe the last time something like that was contemplated the analysis was that the energy you could extract would make for very very slow going (not surprisingly it requires a lot of energy to bore through rock and remove the excess). Assuming a return pipe to the surface the deeper it is the higher the boiler pressure you can support since you can use the cold water return column to pressurize the feed. Of course at some point your at the limit of your boiler as well.

Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's usage of Moholes for ore mining and energy production in his Mars trilogy:

http://kimstanleyrobinson.info/w/index.php5?title=Mohole

FYI: Exxon recently surpassed the depth of this hole while drilling in the Chayvo oil fields. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-I

Exxon's borehole is longer, but not deeper: Kola is 12.6km deep, and Sakhalin-I is 12.3km.

So how is the drilling actually conducted? Is there basically a miles-long, rapidly-spinning, articulated shaft with a drill bit at the bottom and a motor at the surface? What sorts of weird and wonderful engineering challenges do you run into with that sort of setup, especially as your giant drill grows larger than 10 miles in length?

Generally, the shaft would rotate with a drill bit at the bottom. But, it seems in the case of Superdeep Borehole, they developed a new mechanism to rotate only the drill bit at the bottom of the shaft[1]. They pumped pressurized "drilling fluid"[2][3] down the shaft to spin the drill bit.

[1]http://www.ritchiewiki.com/wiki/index.php/Kola_Superdeep_Bor...

[2]http://www.supertightstuff.com/03/18/featured/kola-superdeep...

[3]http://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-hole/

Watching Cosmos last week had me thinking about how deep we'd drilled to date. I meant to go look it up but didn't. Thanks for posting.

It saddens me/blows me away we've only gone 7.5 miles (into the 22 mile crust). It also reminds me how fragile our biosphere is and how little we really understand it.

Any picture of the Earth should have a giant fucking question mark right in the middle of it. That scientists and publishers egotistically declare their theories as truth actually drives any sense of wonder out of children contemplating a life of discovery. It's sick and irresponsible.

How has no one removed the cap by now? I would be extremely tempted to throw stuff down the hole.

I think it was welded shut precisely because they didn't want people doing that.

Why does it have a metal cap?

Falling in wouldn't be very pleasant, I suppose. :-)

That's a long fall, 3/4 of a minute if I'm not mistaken.

120 miles per hour is terminal velocity of a falling human being.

120/60 = 2 miles per minute

Skydive fall from 15K feet is over a minute free fall.

Repeatedly bouncing off the edges would probably slow the fall, and make it significantly more painful. That is, if the hole were wide enough to fit you.

It's less than a foot wide. You'd probably be more likely to trip over the rim.

There was a reddit comment where someone wrote, in poignant and graphic detail, about the slow death you would find if you fell in the hole.

Someone else replied, pointing out that the hole can barely fit your leg. The juxtaposition was pretty funny.

I guess they couldn't back-fill it? Which makes you wonder, what did they do with all the drill cuttings?

Science. The article: "The most intriguing discovery made by the Kola Superdeep Borehole researchers was the detection of microscopic plankton fossils four miles beneath the surface of the earth." and "The Kola Core Repository in the nearby town of Zapolyarny displays rock samples obtained during the drilling operation"

Unrelated: what surprised me reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole was that a more recent borehole drilled 10 km (horizontally) within 36 days. That's over 10 meters an hour, kept going for over a month.

A video about this, for folks who would rather watch/listen than read: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs

I can't help but remember a certain Art Bell episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvnxeX2SQso

Art Bell was awesome..

Thanks. Now I'm hooked clicking through different articles on this site.

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