In June of this year, ABC told you that on the same day that China sent its first civilian into space to launch the Tiangong space station, it also launched “a much more mysterious mission to Earth.” The communist government had begun digging a vertical well with the aim of reaching a depth of 11 kilometers in the middle of the desert. Specifically, in a region that is rich in oil through the earth’s crust and, according to the brief statement from the state news agency Xinhua, will extend into the Cretaceous period. That means rocks that are up to 145 million years old.
To give you an idea of the size of the hole, oil wells typically reach depths of between 1,000 and 1,600 meters, although they can reach depths of up to 2,000 meters. More than 5,000 meters is something extraordinary. The 11 kilometers planned by the Beijing government is a brutality that they want to achieve in 457 days. Still, it is not the deepest ever dug.
On May 24, 1970, the Soviet Union began drilling a well in Pechenga, a sparsely populated district of the Murmansk region in northwestern Russia. The work lasted until 1989 and reached 12,262 meters, a depth never reached by man before or since. Not even China will dare go there now, although current technology, engineering and security measures are much more advanced than in Soviet times.
This project was called “Kola’ super deep good. The idea arose in 1962 and supervision was given to the Interdepartmental Scientific Council for Earth Exploration. The exact location of the drilling was selected in 1965, 10 kilometers from the town of Zapolyarny. The most surprising thing is that the original goal he set was to descend to 15,000 meters. The difference between this and other deep holes is that the others were intended for the search for oil, while the Soviet one, also known as SG-3, was intended exclusively for exploring the lithosphere.
A confusing goal
According to initial information, the Chinese drilling will be used to test underground drilling machines and collect data about the Earth’s interior. What is not so clear is what the communist giant wants to achieve in the long term. The project is part of the deep earth exploration program announced by President Xi Jinping in 2021. The head of state claimed that studies need to be carried out to identify energy resources and raw materials and to assess the risks of natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
The president of the Illustrious Official College of Geologists (ICOG), Manuel Regueiro, told Isabel Miranda on ABC that he thinks it is more plausible that the project is actually related to oil or the search for geothermal energy, since that comes from geothermal energy outgoing heat The core of the earth is now a source within the reach of a few countries, such as: B. Iceland, where high temperatures prevail in almost superficial layers of the subsoil due to its volcanic activity. However, it is not so easy to achieve the 150 °C required to drive electric turbines.
To understand the prosperity of the USSR, we must situate the experiment in the years of the Cold War, a time when the space race between the Kremlin and the United States achieved everything that could be achieved in the field of science. Exploring the depths of the Earth, both powers began to organize their experiments in the 1950s with the aim of reaching the Mohorovicic discontinuity, the boundary between the Earth’s crust and mantle.
Well covered, left and sealed
The accident
The United States took the lead in 1958 with the launch of Project Mohole. The operation took place near the city of Guadalupe in Mexico and was carried out by a team of engineers who drilled a hole more than 180 meters deep through the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Those responsible had assumed that this would not be possible on the Earth’s surface, while it would be more feasible in the open sea, for the simple reason that the Earth’s mantle is much closer to the seabed. However, due to high costs, it was discontinued in 1966.
Then it was the turn of the USSR, which got to work in 1970 with 15,000 meters on the horizon. At first they used Uralmash-4E drills, and later Uralmash-15000. Several wells were opened from a central branch, with SG-3 being the deepest of all. Nine years after work began, on June 6, 1979, the depth record held by the Bertha Rogers well in Washita County, USA, was broken at 9,583 meters.
Four years later, in 1983, the depth was exceeded at 12,000 meters. At this point, the excavation was stopped for a year to allow several specialists and authorized personnel to visit this fascinating site. They picked it up again in 1984, although at a much slower pace. But on September 27, 1985, when they reached 12,066 meters, a terrible accident occurred in which part of the well collapsed and 5,000 meters of earth were filled. This was a big disappointment because they had to drill again from a depth of 7,000 meters. They had to step on the gas again and reached 12,262 in 1989.
15,000 metros
The optimism of those responsible skyrocketed. They were convinced that they would reach 13,500 meters in the late 1990s and 15,000 meters in 1993, but as the drill moved towards the center of the Earth and reached this record depth, a completely unexpected change occurred. During the first 3,000 meters, temperatures inside the borehole had risen to about the level the researchers expected, but then the heat shot up much more quickly. As the drilling approached the original target, the hole had heated to 185°C, twice as much as expected.
That was not all. The researchers also discovered that the rock at these depths was much less dense than they had thought, resulting in a constant flow of mud and hydrogen that seemed impossible to manipulate. Because of these temperatures, the material found reacted in strange and unpredictable ways. Those in charge concluded that the team would not survive under these conditions and decided to shut it down shortly before the fall of the USSR. They closed it permanently in 1995. The hole remains closed to this day, and no one has managed to cross this mark.
Still, the researchers were able to learn some fascinating things before sealing the “Kola Superdeep Well.” For example, at a depth of around 6,400 meters there were tiny fossils of marine plants. These plant treasures were completely intact from the time they were trapped beneath several kilometers of rock. They are believed to have been more than two billion years old.
At the far end of the hole there was an even more impressive find. By measuring seismic waves, experts had previously predicted that the rock beneath our feet was changing from granite to basalt about 3 to 6 kilometers below the surface. However, they found that this was not the case, at least on the Kola Peninsula. Even at the deepest part of the well they only found granite. They eventually discovered water flowing several kilometers underground, at depths where no one had predicted it could exist. Although some of the most imaginative theories suggest that this discovery is evidence of the biblical floods, it is believed to be the result of strong pressure forcing the oxygen and hydrogen atoms to come out of the rock and later become trapped in it to remain form of water beneath the surface.
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