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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."
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
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
There's no tampon made than could contain the leak that would create.
Bad Scientists! Bad!
And then you come to the caramel lower mantle, then the delicious chocolate core.
music lover since 1969
That's happening all the time on the sea floor, where the plates are slowly separating.
A bunch of lava will squish out, immediatly cool, and plug the hole, and they'll have to start all over again.
Kind of like Cool Hand Luke.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
Yes, this is exactly what will happen. Just think of it like pricking a hole in a balloon, next thing you know we are 'ppttthhhhhhhhhh' on our way to Jupiter.
...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
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!"
Don't forget the hole's only natural enemy is the pile
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
shouldn't that be underlords?
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.
Unlikely. The Mohorovicic (Moho) discontinuity can be described in a few different ways - either where seismic veolocities have a marked discontinuity, or where a noticable chemical/mineralogical change occurs (can't remember what it is, I'm a geophysicist, not a geologist). What it's not is a boundary between a nice solid crust floating on top of "firey liquid mantle". In fact more accurate terms are lithosphere and asthenosphere, rather than crust and mantle, which basically differentiate between rigid, colder material, and warmer, more ductile rock. The top of the mantle is still solid, but becomes increasingly ductile with depth. Various minerals reach melting point as you go down towards the Core-Mantle Boundary, but basically I think you have to get to the outer core before it's all liquid (mostly iron). In terms of energies, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was about 55-60 megatonnes (depending on who you ask), in 1961 by the USSR. The energy released by the great 1960 Chilean earthquake (the largest recorded in the last 100 years) was equivalent approximately to a 2000 Mt bomb. So, setting off a nuke at the moho might temporarily create a small spherical cavity which would probably collapse in on itself, and maybe create some melt, but it's doubtful it would come gushing to the surface as a raging plume of "liquid hot magma". Besides, there have been plenty of underground nuclear tests, and none of those have resulted in a humungous volcano. As yet. The USGS site at http://www.usgs.gov/ is probably a good place to find out more.
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.
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"