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Hole Drilled to Bottom of Earth's Crust
AtariAmarok writes "A new article is up on LiveScience about a hole drilled into the Earth's crust to explore the layers of our planet's substrate. The hole gets closer to the mantle than any other efforts that have gone before. The hole might reach the "Moho" (division between Earth's brittle outer crust and the hotter, softer mantle) within a few years." From the article: "The depth of the Moho varies. This latest effort, which drilled 4,644 feet (1,416 meters) below the ocean seafloor, appears to have been 1,000 feet off to the side of where it needed to be to pierce the Moho, according to one reading of seismic data used to map the crust's varying thickness."
Is the link at the bottom which talks about the idea of using a nuke to drop a probe to the earths core.
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> bottom of this hole is only a scant 1000 feet
> away from the firey liquid mantle of the Earth
> itself...when I detonate a small nuclear device
> at the bottom of this hole, Operation Glory-Hole
> will create a gigantic super-volcano
Would any geologists care to comment whether it is possible to create an artificial island this way?
Didn't the Doctor already save us fom this madness back in the 1970's? Doesn't anyone remember what a disaster it was?
Viv
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No need to drill holes, there are several places on the earth's crust where the Moho is spilling right out...
Damn near killed us all as I remember it.
Well here seems to be someone who knows a bit about geology and drilling in particular so let me pose a question and see if you might have the time to reply.
If these guys can drill a hole this deep in a mere three weeks and nearly hit the Earth's mantle, doesn't it seem that it should be possible to directly harness the abundant heat energy in these holes? I mean if you can make one in a few weeks it would seem you could make dozens, if not hundreds, in a year. There's got to be enormous heat if you're a thusand feet from the upper mantle and you're right next to vast reserves of cool water as well. This seems the ideal environment for a heat cycle engine.
While not identical, the situation seems somewhat similar to the question of why we don't harness the heat energy of volcanoes. The answer I've always gotten is that it's too difficult to control a volcano.
Certainly that's reasonable in the case of a volcano on land like Mt. Saint Hellens, but what about these mid-oceanic ridges just like where JOIDES is drilling here. In this case, it seems you can create a sort of controlled volcano. In fact, that seems to be what they're describing. Doesn't this seems like a fairly accessible source of thermal energy?
That's interesting -- there'd have to be some formulas (math guys insert shit here) to determine how your property boundaries narrow as they descend. Like if you had a 1x1 acre plot on the surface, and drew a line from the corners of your plot down to the center point of the earth, your plot in three dimensions would be a four sided pyramid with a base of one square acre and height of 6,000+ miles. If your surface plot was a circle, your plot in three dimensions would be a cone.
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I'm not sure if I imagined this or actually read about it.
A 20,000 foot hole was supposed to have been dug near where I live during WW II in a desperate effort to find oil. There is oil and gas around here, and there has been some exploration in the last ten years Sable Island to the south and Hibernia to the East (apparently a bullseye for US rocket debris!).
Here is the area:
Hillsborough Bay map. Near Govenor's Island (switch to map from Satellite image to see names.)
Once again, the movie studios have already made a prediction about projects of this nature. The movie "Crack in the World" was released in 1965 and used then state of the art special effects to demonstrate what would happen if the Earth's core were penetrated.
Of course, like most Hollywood productions the science behind the script was malarkey. But it was still a pretty good movie for its' time.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The pressure inside the balloon is much greater than the pressure outside the balloon
The pressure outside the balloon is the same as the pressure inside the balloon. The reason balloons expand when you fill them with air is so that they equalize the pressures. Since the balloon is made of an elastic material without a rigid structure, maintaining equal pressures on either side of the membrane is the configuration that requires the least energy. As the balloon becomes really inflated, the latex can't stretch easily, and it does compress the air inside--but not much, just 5 or 6 mm of mercury.
when you prick it, the pressure equalizes, causing the balloon to pop
The "pop" isn't really related to the pressure equalizing. The latex is under high hoop and axial stress, and when it gets pricked, the hole that forms breaks lines of stress and the latex gets pulled away from the hole. This tears the latex, very rapidly--considerably faster than the speed of sound. The ends of the latex are under so much stress that they contract as fast as the tears occur, and create a small shockwave/sonic boom. When put scotch tape on the balloon where you prick it (before pricking it, of course), the strain around the hole isn't enough to start the tears, since that also requires tearing the scotch tape (or tearing away from it).
However, you're very right that we can't compare this to the earth, because the crust of the earth certainly isn't under high uniform elastic tension attempting to maintain internal and external pressures.
Unless you live in Chile or Argentina. Check out the antipodes map to see where you'd end up.
Click here for info on how this story really came about.
Someone finally did the leg work to track the story down. On the other hand, I would like to find the source of the Audio Clip.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"..the use of a nuclear explosion to cause or prevent a significant earthquake is considered science fiction." A nuke can create very minor earth tremors, but the main effect is to liquefy rock and create a big hole.
Cannikin - a 5 megaton ABM warhead detonated underground in Alaska - caused the equivalent of a 6.5+ earthquake, with part of the island it was detonated under being permanently raised, and a long section of coastline falling into the sea.
The CGS and USGS play this down a bit, and I'm not entirely sure why.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
With all the challenges that space exploration represents it is still only a 1 atmosphere difference with the pressure at the surface of the Earth. When you (or any piece of machinery) goes under water we are talking an extra atmosphere every 10 meters. I don't know the pressure gradient in the crust, but it must be of the same order of magnitude. In other words, it is quite a challenge to work at these depths... well... ok, I know more about ocean physics than geology, but I am sure the pressure is a very problematic obstacle.
Because this did not happen. There was no earthquake. There was a ground wave produced by the blast which, close to the site, was similar to the ground wave which would have been detected over a much wider area if there had been an earthquake, but there was no quake, either locally or elsewhere.
There were many, many aftershocks after the main one. It's been about a decade since I took a geology course, but I have difficulty envisioning how this could occur if there wasn't some sort of tectonic activity involved.
As for a section of the coastline falling into the sea - I can find no evidence or reports of this anywhere.
You can see footage of it in Atomic Journeys (the third film in the "Trinity and Beyond" series). It also has some excellent shots of the huge cracks opened by Faultless.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
and 80% of that is profits, when it costs $3 to dig oil in iraq and sell it for $55.
Now the average cost is probably more in the $10-$15 range.
So where does all this money go ? an amazing 1.4 trillion dollars???
Well... just like a cool movie plot lets follow.
1. Dig and pull out lots of oil in the middle east etc...
2. Sell it on the market for US DOLLARS
3. The buyer needs US DOLLARS, so they source it, buy it or sell current bonds whatever assets they have.
4. The US DOLLARS then go to the middle east companies/governments in the billions yearly
5. What to do with tonnes of cash, its pretty useless. (wish i had that problem), you invest it in something secure, ie buy US Tbills/Bonds so the cash goes back to USA
6. Billions of cash gets sent to USA
7. USA then uses that cash to "LIVE" on a daily basis and pay debts , ie rates on the tbills/bonds.
So its a vicious circle, money going out of usa, to the east, then back to usa, repeat and rince.
The high price of oil is really whats keeping USA alive, without it, mega cheap oil would not bring in much cash ($400billion yearly) to fund usa's terminal corpse on life support. So basically half the world is funding usa's debt problems, or at least helping it keep a float by rotating credit. Its like a fission reactor, if you reduce the cooling its going to go thermal fast, ie mega inflation/rates for all.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
when did quotes from friends become obligatory? what site is this?
3.2 km drilling for seismic research.
They have finished phase one at 10,000 ft.
They have been posting news regularly from phase 1
--keith