Slashdot Mirror
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."
Good day, gentlemen...as you are no doubt aware, I have drilled a gigangtic hole straight through the Earth's crust. This hole will allow me to usher in a glorious new era of total world domination; for this reason, I have dubbed this latest caper "Operation Glory-Hole".
You see, gentleman, the 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, radically altering the Earth's climate and laying waste to civilization...that is, unless you pay me...
ONE HUNDRED MILLION BILLION JILLION DOLLARS!!!
Gentleman, you have my demands. Peace out.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Check this baby out, dug me a hole!
--Joey Tribbiani
I for one, welcome our moleman overlords.
Is the link at the bottom which talks about the idea of using a nuke to drop a probe to the earths core.
Why clone Unix when I can clone Windows instead. http://www.reactos.org
im unsure about the wisdom of opening up a hole to the mantle.
correct me if im wrong but isnt the mantle under some pressure, and opening a hole will relieve that pressure and cause a large amount of it to flow out?
So how many turns does it take to get to the center of the Earth? *crunch*
There's no tampon made than could contain the leak that would create.
Bad Scientists! Bad!
+6 energy
WARNING: Significant negative ecological impact
Dante would be proud
If his wife answers, ask to borrow one of hers.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
And then you come to the caramel lower mantle, then the delicious chocolate core.
music lover since 1969
Pfft. I nearly made it from my sandbox to China with nothing but buckets back in my preschool days!
Sometimes you've gotta roll the hard six.
> 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?
...it says "Bruce Willis woz here".
Jonathanjk.com
Why waste all that time and money drilling a new hole, when they could just use the one that leads straight to hell, AKA Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location" bunker? Just look under the rock he crawled out from.
--
make install -not war
...this Dr. Evil hole is the greatest threat that mad-science presents to us.
What happens if when they finally penetrate the crust the whole planet pops like a balloon?
LIKE A BALLOON!!
Think of all that crazy magma spewing out all over the place and our beloved globe zooming randomly all over the solar system before finally falling flacid and empty to the floor somewhere near Mars.
When will these insane "geologists" learn not to poke holes in our Mother Earth.
-Pinkoir
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Hwo do you think we got Hawaii?
I am just hoping they drill where the white beaches will be nice a warm, in few million years.
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
Gmail invites for ip
EOS covered this recent work just recently. The problem with offset drilling is that it does not provide the same informatio as a continuous core. These cores are obtained from 'windows' in previous flows and there is a problem with correlation between boreholes when horizons are not sampled widely. This complicates the historical interpreation and genesis of the oceanic crust.
The demand for advanced drilling technology is one problem with the current Moho sampling efforts. Exploration drilling of the kind used for oil production is not well suited for the work that the ODP is engaged in. Bit designs for the lithostatic loads that these dense rocks develop at depth require a different approach than those used to drill continental sediments buried at depth beneath the ocean.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Previous communications in this journal have indicated that "O.B. ultra-absorbency" type tampons are the most effective.
Start drilling from the other side NOW...
Would be fun to enjoy the world's largest magnetic seasaw.
Imagine that the Earth is a Pop Tart. The crust is analogous to the frosting on a Straberry Pop Tart. The mantle is much like the delicious gooey interior of the aforementioned Pop Tart. When the Earth's crust is breached, much like a Pop Tart left too long in a toaster, hot magma will shoot miles into the sky in all directions until the fire is extinguished, or all the Earth is consumed. Stop these mad scientists now!
No need to drill holes, there are several places on the earth's crust where the Moho is spilling right out...
"Our incredibly expensive uber-drill has pierced through to the earth's mantle! Now let's get it home before the magma damages.. oh crap.."
Wait a minute...
Are you trying to tell me that this whole damn time, we've never broken through the earth's crust and seen the mantle for ourselves? We can send something 8.7 billion miles away but we can't drill two miles down? Doesn't this strike people as a bit odd or disconcerting?
Personally I'd like to learn just as much about the earth under my feet as the stars above my head.
I'd like to see this get more funding and see us reach the mantle in the next few weeks instead of waiting for some time in the "coming years."
Don't forget the hole's only natural enemy is the pile
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
It's a bit harder to walk across the yard than to walk an equal length straight down.
So you say we can make HawaIII this way?
That's what I was thinking. But since it's underwater, wouldn't the magma be allowed to cool, and then inspected?
Here's a diagram of Earth's layers:% 20tectonics/Earthcore.jpg
http://earth.usc.edu/~stott/Catalina/images/plate
My only question is what if the enormous amount of pressure from the mantle forced tons of lava to shoot into the ocean? Or in reverse what if the pressure of the ocean was greater and we open a giant drain in the middle of the atlantic?
Would the lava/water contact just harden to rock instantly and allow nothing more through?
Probably quite ignorant fears, but still worth asking.
--
Fairfax Underground: Message boards and Chat for residents of Fairfax County and Northern Virginia
The same way we got the Dakotas. We walked up to the natives and said hey, lets have a treaty...
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Surely they will hear the sounds of hell itself?
http://www.snopes.com/religion/wellhell.htm
"Oblgatory?" "Grammer?" No capitalization at the beginning of your sentence? No punctuation at the end of it?
I guess the Grammar Nazis have adopted the "Do as we say, not as we do" policy.
No...everyone knows we reach China before anything else.
Damn near killed us all as I remember it.
Funny...I came here to ask the same question.
I think it would not make it to the other side because of air friction. Theoretically, I think the object would ping pong back and forth through the shaft until it came to rest, weightless, smack in the middle of the planet.
I'm no physicist, though, so I'm probably wrong. What do others think would happen?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
But how smart is drilling into the core of the earth? Aren't they asking for one huge volcano?
No, as magma is coming up to the surface all the time all over the world in holes much, much larger than the borehole.
If someone who was hell bent on one HUGE suicide bomb, what is to stop a country from picking 4 or 5 places around the world, dig deep, and pack a nuke. Blow up the nuke, and the earth is rearranged.
Nothing much would happen. The energy already being released by normal volcanoes and earthquakes is far more than we could produce with nuclear weapons. For example, the Mount St. Helens volcano released energy in just one day (18 May 1980) equivalent to 400 million tons of TNT - about 20,000 Hiroshima bombs. That is a significant fraction of the entire world's current nuclear arsenal - from just one volcano! A few nukes exploded around the world is not going to do anything.
it's nougat, not chocolate core. >:E
I mean, wasn't it in the 1800's when this was first attempted?
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
Aw, man! Does this mean that we're going to have to deal with Primords? At least the BBC has prepared for this by bringing Dr. Who back...
Aren't they asking for one huge volcano?
No. Well, maybe in the movies.
Think about it for a second. All over the world there a thousands of holes that already lead to the molten material, and yes- they are volcanoes.
BUT, how many of those are constantly spewing molten rock? Relatively few. And some of those are so consistent in their eruptions people live on them. Hawaii for one, Iceland another.
When a volcano like Tambora (largest recent) or even Fish Canyon or Yellowstone (28 million and 1.3 million YA, respectively) went off, the earth wasn't "rearranged." Sticking a nuke in a relatively tiny hole wouldn't even really have a major impact on the local area. It certainly wouldn't cause the kind of damage you're talking about. How many times have nukes been tested underground, or even above? The damage to the earth was minimal. It was all the things around the blast that suffered damage.
Worst case scenereo and the USA is relocated to the moon.
Unlikely, Fish Canyon only ejected about 5000 cubic kilometers and it was in the USA which is, obviously, still here.
R(k)
I doubt it, worst case scenario? They create a new volcano. Volcanos usually start underwater and build up in time when it flows and cools into new layers. There are small underwater volcanos all over the ocean.
should THE CORE OF THE EARTH STOP SPINNING
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/
You know, I think this post is kind of lame too, but how is it "overrated" if it hasn't got any other moderation?
Such a bore hole is typically only a few centimeters (10-15) across for a depth of several kilometers, the rising lava would cool down and solidify within a few hundreds of meters.
And what about terrorism.
If you'd read TFA you would have known this drilling is a very high tech exercise.
Doing it at several places simultaneously would require the worlds best equipment, even the CIA might notice...
But then, during the cold war some of the worlds largest nuclear explosions were already set off at the bottom of bore holes (a.o. in Nevada) and so far without much damage to anything more than a few kilometers away.
By the way, the story is weird in calling a 1400+ meters hole the third deepest ever drilled.
The oil industry routinely drills more than 6000 meters below the sea floor.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Shouldn't you instead be comparing the energy released by normal volcanoes and the energy released by volcanoes initiated by a manmade charge (if indeed a charge in such a bore-hole could produce any such effect)?
If it were possible, for example, to crash the fault in the Bahamas with a nuclear charge, the resultant super-tsunami would also cause more damage to the US than the original explosion(s) relocated from the Bahamas to the US east-coast would, wouldn't it?
Yeah, you'd think so, but I really wonder if it wouldn't damage the drill first? I mean, magma is pretty damn hot, by any standards. It's been a long time since I've looked into my chemistry texts, but wouldn't the temps and pressures required to melt rock be more than sufficient to put an end to any metals used in the construciton of a drilll? Just a thought. I guess at best you'll end up with your drill embedded in a magma flow. Then you'd need a SECOND drill to retrieve it.
I am wondering if a hold of this kind would cause a massive pressure release. Much like the way a volcano works?
Now all we need is an unobtainimun ship to drive down there
-Ghost
Probably because it was already overrated at 0.
Your tax dollars at work. How much money did this cost?
Here we go again.
In order to avoid these inevitable comments that appear in every thread with a scientific topic, I suggest that no international research project be allowed to proceed unless it has been cleared by a panel of Anonymous Cowards who have been convinced after watching the teevee for too long that all science is really a scam to squander their tax dollars on foolishness like basic research that shows no promise of an immediate economic benefit such as a drug that makes your peepee harder.
In response to your question, you might be able to maintain a botched occupation for a few hours with the money.
What if it leaks and horrible lava spreads over the planets crust, covering us all?!
That is...unless we make good use of our parents basements...could be a good excuse to stockpile beer and pr0n for while the lava cools.
Big fat hairy deal.
... And at that depth, they hit the target they were looking for!
A small mining / exploration company in British Columbia, Canada recently drilled a full kilometer deeper (~2600m) trying to find a new extension to the old Sullivan mine, a base metal mine that operated for ~100 years.
They weren't drilling into ocean crust, so the moho is much deeper, but they had not much trouble getting to the depth they were at.
It's not as hard to do as its made out to be.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The stuff that comes out of volcanoes is not pure mantle material. In fact, usually it's melted crustal material. Or some mixture of mantle and crustal material. Only occasionally do volcanoes cough up a hunk of mantle. More usually, we can look at pieces of mantle that may have gotten caught up in some tectonic process and been uplifted for us to see. But that's rare, and the rocks are often altered by other processes.
That one went down 12 km. Or is this just effectively deeper because it's being drilled through the ocean floor?
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.
Do you love freedom??? Do you love freedom!!! DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!
For example, the Mount St. Helens volcano released energy in just one day (18 May 1980) equivalent to 400 million tons of TNT - about 20,000 Hiroshima bombs.
Although I think your criticism of the parent is probably correct, this isn't a very helpful comparison. It's also true that a barrel (42 gallons) of oil contains more energy than a ton of TNT, and a ton of coal contains around 7 times as much. (see this table). A ton of TNT makes a lot bigger hole in the ground, though. What needs to be considered here is not just energy content, but rate. How fast was the energy liberated? Mount Saint Helens was not equivalent in explosive power to 20,000 Hiroshimas, so that bit of trivia is a little misleading.
First they pearce the crust, then they reach the mantle? Did I get that right?
Almost. First they PIERCE the crust.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/episodeguide/i nferno/
Be afraid. Be VERY afraid, of a planet that can bleed for 4.5 billion years and doesn't die.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
How long before Wal-Mart and/or IKEA uses drilling holes through the Earth to reduce supply-chain management costs. I envision, there could be a hole going from China to California and/or Seattle.
How much heat can those RFID tags resist anyways??!
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.)
See this article for more information. :-)
Join Tor today!
How fast was the energy liberated? Mount Saint Helens was not equivalent in explosive power to 20,000 Hiroshimas, so that bit of trivia is a little misleading.
It is a good indication of scale. One or two individual nuclear weapons would have virtually no comparable effect, no matter how fast the energy was released (after all, much of the energy release from St. Helens WAS explosive!)
The parent is not an AC it's Doc Ruby, idiot!
If you want to be really scared just look a few comments up in the thread. A Friends quote (with Joey no less!) has got a +5 Funny.
/. indeed. I think the balance has finally tipped. /. officially now has more AOLers than geeks.
Sad times for
400 Megatonnes or about 7 Tsar Bomba yields (I thought the yield estimate had gone up for this one but 57Mt stands apparently).
The worlds nuclear arsenal is designed for destroying on the scale of cities and miltary targets, if we wanted to destroy continents we would build different sorts of nukes.
Nuclear scientists reportedly have designs for much bigger nukes (this was 1961 technology after all), but there is no motivation to build such devices.
A handful of nukes within our current technical abilities probably could create TEOTWAWKI
Shouldn't you instead be comparing the energy released by normal volcanoes and the energy released by volcanoes initiated by a manmade charge (if indeed a charge in such a bore-hole could produce any such effect)?
No, because energy is energy! individual pressure releases from magma chambers can be pretty much equivalent to the effect of nuclear explosions.
If it were possible, for example, to crash the fault in the Bahamas with a nuclear charge, the resultant super-tsunami would also cause more damage to the US than the original explosion(s) relocated from the Bahamas to the US east-coast would, wouldn't it?
Well, yes, but that is not what the original poster was saying. This would neither produce a man-made volcano, or would it 'blow the USA to the moon'.
Also, how would you 'crash' the fault?
To quote from the California Geological Survey:
"..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.
Holy crap - maybe they never thought of that - do you think someone should tell them?
A handful of nukes within our current technical abilities probably could create TEOTWAWKI
Hardly! Every day there is more energy released in thunderstorms than in a handful of nukes. The human race has survived ice ages and supervolcanoes. Our nuclear arsenal is feeble by comparison.
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 Hiroshima bomb was nothing compared to the current nuclear weapons technology. When the Soviets detonated the Tsar Bomba, the yield was conservatively estimated at 50 megatons. That's only 1/8th the energy released by Mt. St. Helens. I wouldn't be surprised if even more powerful devices exist.
...by Arthur Clark.
This is the first thing that came to my mind when I have read this article. When people try to map the interior of the earth using advanced techniques they discover something more than they expected.
IMHO a must read and a trully great short story by the famous English author.
Unless you live in Chile or Argentina. Check out the antipodes map to see where you'd end up.
-1, ignorant fucktard
This sig is false.
and all our other garbage... screw land fills... put the crap back where it came from.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
"If it were possible, for example, to crash the fault in the Bahamas with a nuclear charge, the resultant super-tsunami would also cause more damage to the US than the original explosion(s) relocated from the Bahamas to the US east-coast would, wouldn't it?"
That works great in the movies, but movies use an alternate universe of physics and geology.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
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"
Sony demands "access codes" and sends fleet of AIBO machines to prevent further digging.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
yes, but that's not the point.
A single continuous drill hole ~2600m long is a very difficult thing to do. Many things can go wrong to block the hole or damage the drill string forcing abandonment of the hole.
Mine workings like the South African example are not easy by anymeans, but are very feasible since you are advancing 10 feet or so at a time in , shoring up everything as you go, and can easily replace any broken equipment, and work around most ground problems.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
No, as magma is coming up to the surface all the time all over the world in holes much, much larger than the borehole.
A smaller pipe?
That means more pressure...
So they're not asking for a huge volcano, but for a high pressure volcano...
That's not very reassuring!
You can't take the sky from me...
Indeed. We can also test the Infinite Monkey theorem by making an uncharted desert isle and waiting to see how long it takes to recreate Gilligan's Island.
(Hawai-three? Sounds like a 'clever' film sequel title.)
--
"'Sonic 3 the Hedgehog'? What a dumb title."
"It's 'Sonic the Hedgehog 3'."
"No it isn't. The number's the same color as the 'Sonic', so you read it first."
"..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
I think you'd hit terminal velocity long before you hit midpoint. Likely you'd miss the other top by a LOT.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
A smaller pipe?
That means more pressure...
So they're not asking for a huge volcano, but for a high pressure volcano...
That's not very reassuring!
It does not mean more pressure, as the borehole is so small that there would be enormous friction. Magma is not like water or oil - it is a viscous, lumpy fluid.
Also, even if there was high pressure, the small diameter of the pipe would be that there would be an extremely small volume of flow.
When all of mankind's problems could be fixed with either a nuclear bomb or a nuclear reactor. If only things had stayed so simple.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
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.
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.
Of course a small part of the island close to the blast was raised - this is what happens with underground explosions! But, the main effect was a 40-foot deep crater. As for a section of the coastline falling into the sea - I can find no evidence or reports of this anywhere.
no need for bombs, just get down to areas over 100 C and drop some containers of water
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Uh oh... as soon as they get these Moho mines running, the Krogoths will kill us all!!! C'mon, you know you played it...
"The hot liquid Mag-Ma......."
Nuclear proliferation is a serious business becuase it wouldn't take much to cause destruction on a global scale if a few of the world's powers got into a fight.
Nuclear proliferation is a serious business because nuclear weapons are unpleasant and messy and could cause millions of deaths, but as for global destruction, we haven't a chance of doing anything serious. Every few million years we get hit by asteroids that have more energy than all of our nuclear weapons combined. These events cause little long-term damage either to the Earth or the diversity of species. Occasionally something big hits, like the dinosaur killer. That had an energy about 20,000 times greater (equivalent to 300 million nuclear weapons). It did a lot of damage, but life survived.
We have the capacity to make life very unpleasant for humanity, but we have nowhere near the capacity to cause anything like global destruction. If we had a nuclear war, most life on earth would barely notice it. (If you are worried about the radioactivity, consider the rich and life-filled forests that are happily coping with the environment around Chernobyl).
it was not my intent to be a troll, i used to work on oil drilling rigs in west Texas in the 1980's and seen a few blowouts firsthand, so i know mother nature is not something to take lightly...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You're right, this money should have gone to a "Faith-based organization", then at least it would have done some Good(TM)! Damn scientists always mucking around in things they shouldn't! Hey... I hope you weren't being sarcastic, heathen.
Power to the Peaceful
Duh! He wasn't digging straight down.
"Moho" (division between Earth's brittle outer crust and the hotter, softer mantle)
Not to be confused with Soho, NY where the bitchy upper crust and the hot artsy type meet.
http://www.preparationh.com/
The facts speak for themselves.
Which is why I provided some. All the information I gave is freely available and accessible via the web, with independent verification. The energies of the collisions and extinction rates are available for anyone to look up.
Anyone else remember that Dr. Who episode Inferno, with the drilling project and infectious goo?
"The Eve of RUMOKO" by Roger Zelazny, included in _MY NAME IS LEGION_ . His "man off the grid" investigates who's trying to sabotage a project to use atomic bombs to artifically create an island chain by breaking through to the mantle.
I think I saw that in a movie once. Except they used a thermonuclear explosion to clear the last few feet of crust. Didn't work out quite as they expected, particulary when a large portion of the Earth's crust decided to launch intself into orbit, taking along with it most of the scientists.
Anyone else think we could slap a turbine on top of the hole and use it for power?
Mens et Manus
I am Doc Ruby, and I did not authorize that message.
--
make install -not war
When the Soviets detonated the Tsar Bomba, the yield was conservatively estimated at 50 megatons. That's only 1/8th the energy released by Mt. St. Helens. I wouldn't be surprised if even more powerful devices exist.
Yes, but most nukes are nowhere near that size. Also, the energy released was trivial compared to the energy that had been involved in the magma melting rock and rising to the surface, which is what would be required to create a new volcano.
I'm flattered
no, wait, I'm not
This sig is false.
I'll bet Bruce Willis could dig deeper with just a shovel.
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
We're making our own Volcano. It'll be neat.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Get it right next time....ya jackass..
[cx]
Thank you. Next time I'm out that way I hope I remember to take a look at that view.
I would however point out that our world, indeed our universe is full of these wonders of size and perspective.
As you pointed out that's not much more space than needed to store the human race, actually I wonce saw man climb into a space 1' on a side on some tv show. And yet somehow that small dot of flesh is supposedly ruining the climate by creating fluctuation in temp the likes of which the earth hasn't seen since, err well just a few hundred years ago, and bigger by far a few centuries ago and...
That tiny span from crust bottom to atmosphere top is indeed tiny, but by the same token it completely wraps the surface of the earth. over 7 thousand miles in diameter.
I'm not saying we're having an effect, or that pollution is ok. What I am saying is we're still pretty much guessing what that effect is and to what extents it goes. Running around screaming we're gonna freeze, or is it melt this decade (dunno it changes every dozen years or so) the earth like chicken little is stupid and irresponsible.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
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.
There was no shock! It was a local ground wave, not an earthquake. There may have been slight aftershocks at the site, as rock caved in to the hole generated by the blast. There were no earthquakes, and no tectonic activity - the blast was 5 megatons, which is absolutely negligible compared to the energy in even the smallest quake.
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.
Well, big bombs will open cracks, but these are nothing on the scale of tectonic events.
I have not seen the film, but I don't rate a single movie narrated by William Shatner as a definitive source of scientific information. It may be true, but I don't consider that useful evidence.
everybody now...
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a hole, there's a hole
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.
There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a log, there's a log
There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.
There's a branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a branch, there's a branch
There's a branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.
There's a bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a bump, there's a bump
There's a bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.
There's a frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a frog, there's a frog
There's a frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.
There's a tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a tail, there's a tail
There's a tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.
There's a speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the
bottom of the sea
There's a speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the
bottom of the sea
There's a speck, there's a speck
There's a speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the
bottom of the sea.
There's a fleck on the speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in
the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a fleck on the speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in
the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a fleck, there's a fleck
There's a fleck on the speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in
the hole in the bottom of the sea.
"appears to have been 1,000 feet off to the side of where it needed to be to pierce the Moho"
I knew I should have taken that left at Albuquerque!
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.
Dig a hole into the mantle- drive a hose into the hole- fill it with water- have the steam exiting the hole turn a turbine.
Build your own geothermal power source. In 50 years- when you build a house- you will have the same guy who digs your well dig you an geothermal power mine.
I will probably be knocked off tonight by the same Exxon-Mobil hitsquad who capped Diesel.
...evading all those diggers and sentinels.
I don't know about that, but the people of Middle Earth are gonna be very pissed off with this whole thing.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Well, what else do you expect when they puncture the skin? All that air's gonna come out in a rush, and we'll be visiting Mars without the benefit of rockets, ships or indeed, spacesuits.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
I have not seen the film, but I don't rate a single movie narrated by William Shatner as a definitive source of scientific information. It may be true, but I don't consider that useful evidence.
The footage was shot by the team doing the test. I'm not really sure what William Shatner has to do with the scientific credibility of that.
The documentary states that there were over 1000 aftershocks which occured over the course of about a month after the actual detonation. Given that the production team interviewed a number of people who actually worked on the project, I'm inclined to believe them. OTOH since I can't find any hard data regarding the measurements taken at the site of the effects, I guess arguing that issue right now is pointless.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
url:http://www.undernet.org/?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
I for one welcome our Jupterian overlords.
AT what point do we punch through into a giant loading dock only to be shot at by hundreds of "free people" who unlike the rest of us are NOT plugged into the Matrix?
With such a transport system you would reach speeds in excess of 10,000 km/hr, and with a network of tunnels could travel free to just about any line of longitude, (with multiple legs). Travelling between latitudes would be more of a problem though as you can only fall to the equivalent latitude in the opposite hemisphere.
If the tunnels were bored sufficiently accurately it should be possible for humans to travel using such a method, with little risk of hitting the walls (which would no doubt be a bit painful at 10,000km/hr). It's probably advisable to wear a spacesuit though.
The documentary states that there were over 1000 aftershocks which occured over the course of about a month after the actual detonation
I would put it like this: 5 Megatons is a minute amount of energy compared to natural processes and it depends what you mean by 'aftershock'. There may have been minor earth movements due to the collapsing of material unto underground cavities produced by the blast, but it is a vast exaggeration to call these 'earthquakes'.
I guess arguing that issue right now is pointless.
Well, I enjoy the debate, and I have learned a lot looking up information about this!
1
2
Engineering problems notwithstanding, couldn't a really deep hole be used as a power source? I mean geothermal is used anywhere its practical. This could be used anywhere. Just dig a deep enough hole or two and pump water down them and use the steam to turn turbines. Unless the steam would condense before reaching the surface.
Who cares?? Its a small price to pay for science. If geologists want to figure out exactly WHAT'S a the earth's core, let them. I could careless. In either case, an interesting discussion upthread about "artificial" volcanos. It was like my college earth sciences course all over again.
The first time they tried to do this was Project Mohole, which ran from 1958-1965... http://www.nas.edu/history/mohole/
Who would want to live in a subterranean island?!
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
"I have not seen the film, but I don't rate a single movie narrated by William Shatner as a definitive source of scientific information."
Now that's an awesome quote......
Well, I enjoy the debate, and I have learned a lot looking up information about this!
...and of course, the documentary writers could have put together something misleading based on a misunderstanding of what the scientists told them.
Hah. Okay, then =).
5 Megatons is a minute amount of energy compared to natural processes and it depends what you mean by 'aftershock'. There may have been minor earth movements due to the collapsing of material unto underground cavities produced by the blast, but it is a vast exaggeration to call these 'earthquakes'.
Again, my geology knowledge is very rusty, but I do remember that earthquakes are caused when two tectonic plates briefly catch on each other, then start moving again.
I'm not saying that a 5 (or even 50) megaton warhead could cause an earthquake directly. As you say, geological processes are many times more powerful. But what I'm thinking is that maybe the shockwave travelling through the plates jarred them slightly out of alignment and ended up triggering earthquakes until they sort of re-aligned themselves.
If I have two chunks of broken concrete and use a machine to rub them together over and over, they will eventually wear down so that the movement is more smooth, but only with the pieces aligned in the same way (because they're still somewhat uneven).
I'm wondering if plate tectonics has a similar result (although there the movement isn't repetitive in the same way). My course didn't go into anything like that though.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Seriously, do they just literally get a 50' drill bit with a "stackable" end then attach a new peice and a new peice and so on?
I'm curious
Either you misspelled a mofo-baby or you meant to say
-Dr. Evil is stealing my Moho, baby!
Yeah?
You can't handle the truth.
No. It could be much worse. They could let the air out of the center of the earth, and it might pop. Even worse, it could jet around the solar system in wild arcs, making farting noises while all the other planets laugh and throw half-eaten cupcakes at eachother.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Better watch out! Their experiments might stop the Earth's spin and we'll lose our magnetic fields!!!
...or shouldn't we solve the problems and help people that live on this planet before we start going inside of it? It just seems like a waste of money.
It's true, this is my goodbye post. I'm coughing up the :10bux: and making the jump to General Bullshit & SH/SC over at somethingawful. The high real monetary cost (for 12 year olds) of doing something stupid does a great job of keeping the idiots supressed.
This introduces energy into the biosphere that would otherwise have stayed below ground. Given that we already have diminished the ability of our planet to rid itself of excess energy through adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, would this really be a good idea?
I'd rather we trapped energy the earth aborbs from the sun, like solar power, wave power, hydroelectric power etc.
Stop the brainwash
A prequel to Hawaii 5-0 surely? ;-)
Or in reverse what if the pressure of the ocean was greater and we open a giant drain in the middle of the atlantic?
Well, it depends...If the hole was below the equater, all the water would flush in the opposite direction.
Just another day in Paradise
Pinky and the Brain The Simpsons? Attempted by Professor Chaos (of South Park fame) among others?
A 'treaty', much like the Bill Gates "buyout" of CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet.
-mkb
I can't believe you left out the rest of the headline.
Read the post Tsar Bomba was 57Mt in 1961, the UK nuclear deterrent is presumably classified still but is just Trident since we destroy 175 warheads in the 200 - 400 Kt range.
So the UK got major political capital from decommission weapons with the total yield of one 1961 bomb.
Similarly the remaining warheads in the UK arsenal probably have a similar yield per Trident submarine as the Tsar Bomba. Think many small devices means many targets get hit, with adjustable yield you can tune them down almost as low as the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs, and only wipe out small cities or big military targets.
One big bomb means you flatten one target completely and scare the living daylights out of anyone within a thousand miles or so. Which might make for good "shock and awe" but is totally useless if you want to live on the planet afterwards.
The point is that the individual devices in the worlds nuclear arsenals don't match big earthquakes (the UK created a 5.3 magnitude earthquake in one of their tests), because we have deliberately built many small warheads.
Britain if it wanted could have built 400, 100Mt yield nukes, allowing a total yield of 40 Gt. Detonated underground that could produce 40 earthquakes of the scale that caused the Asian Tsunami in December.
However even the current UK nuclear arsenal is estimated to be more than sufficent to deplete the ozone layer to almost nothing (in both hemispheres if we nuke the right places), and induces a nuclear winter. If we target the worlds most populous cities we can probably take out over a tenth of the worlds population in the first few minutes.
Now your definition of TEOTWAWKI may vary from mine, but I think if one relatively small country could scale up two orders of magnitude from total depletion of the ozone layer, I'm not sure what would be left? Algae, and scorpions.
But what I'm thinking is that maybe the shockwave travelling through the plates jarred them slightly out of alignment and ended up triggering earthquakes until they sort of re-aligned themselves.
I see what you mean, but I still don't think it is likely, as almost all earthquakes occur at great depth, and the nukes are creating surface waves.
One big bomb means you flatten one target completely and scare the living daylights out of anyone within a thousand miles or so. Which might make for good "shock and awe" but is totally useless if you want to live on the planet afterwards.
No. It is not good if you want to avoid cancer afterward, but for most life, it is not that much of a problem. Look at the rich variety of wildlife that not only survived near Chernobyl, but thrived.
The point is that the individual devices in the worlds nuclear arsenals don't match big earthquakes (the UK created a 5.3 magnitude earthquake in one of their tests), because we have deliberately built many small warheads.
Nukes don't create earthquakes. Nukes create mostly shallow surface waves that are the same kind of waves you would have at the surface if there had been an earthquake.
Also, big nukes are very hard to build, for a variety of technical reasons.
Now your definition of TEOTWAWKI may vary from mine, but I think if one relatively small country could scale up two orders of magnitude from total depletion of the ozone layer, I'm not sure what would be left? Algae, and scorpions.
Hardly. The K/T boundary asteroid had an energy of around 200 million megatons. What survived? Quite a lot, including birds, mammals, reptiles, fish...
As for dealing with the costs, could a hole that deep replace Yucca Mountain?
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."