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Drilling to the Center of the Earth
indylaw writes "Japanese scientists are attempting to explore the centre of the Earth." From the article: "Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below. The team wants to retrieve samples from the mantle, six miles down, to learn more about what triggers undersea earthquakes, such as the one off Sumatra that caused the Boxing Day tsunami."
12-25km through the oceanic crust is *not* the centre of the earth.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
mantle makes you repeat yourself
dupe dupe.
This article is very interesting. This article is very interesting.
This sounds awfully risky. I hope Bruce Willis and his team are involved.
Is the drill tip made of unobtanium?
"Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below. Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below." Anyways, what happens when it gets crushed by the huge weight of the ground above it, and how are they going to keep it transmitting data, through the mantel, and in the magma.
I hope they consult Hilary Swank or other well-known Hollywood "terranauts" before they commence all this.
Could it be viable to turn the molten into powerful energy source after that? Anyone?
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is there a sentence repeated in there?? note to self, if I want to get a story on /. submit it at midnight or later.
This mission so obviously MUST be done, because this type of exploration, sparks imagination to inspire more than dreams, among Archaeologists, Paleontologists, Biologists, Ahthropologists, Geologists, even a whole bunch of -ists which begin with exo- ... and writers, astronomers, ladies, gentlemen, men, women, children ... explorers of all sorts.
News like this is why I read Slashdot. Wow.
"I am a fictional character."
if 'the core'was anything to go by... then this will be rubbish.. except they may find giant diamonds..
> Something strange about the recursiveness of the article text
That's nothing - wait 'til you see what the dupe looks like!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The team will feature a lovely (if a little dazed) Hilary Swank as Major Beck Childs and Aaron Eckhart will be reprising his role as Dr. Josh Keyes. There will also be a host of other two-dimensional, transparent chaaracters who must get to the centre of the world to "jump start the Earth's core".
Coming Summer 2005!
In order to more efficiently bring you duplicate articles, Slashdot has started listing the article text twice in a row.
Either that or the text was written by Johnny Two Times, they called him that becaue he said everything two times. "I'm gonna get the papers, get the papers." I watched Goodfellas tonight.
-B
It's not recursive, just repetitive.
Apparently, the Earth's core is hotter than the surface of the Sun, so if ever they drilled down to the core, it would heat up the planet. While the upper-mantle is nowhere near as hot as the core, is there some risk that the air at the bottom of the hole will be heated by convection, and then rise up forcing more cold air downwasds? The solid crust not only prevents such convection events, but is also a poor thermal conductor. If this does happen, could this contribute significantly to Global Warming, or worse?
Read up on Project Mohole.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The mantle IS NOWHERE NEAR the center of the earth. More /. titling sensationalism.
Still, drilling even 6 miles down is quite a feat
Badboy. Forgot to inc loopvariable
....
Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below. Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the second to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below. Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the third to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below.
... hee2 is stuck under the bed.
Check the time stamps. I didn't need to read the article to know that drilling through the oceanic crust is nowhere near the centre of the earth. It would've looked better if I did quote the correct figure instead of the "typical" oceanic crust thickness :-)
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
So that explains the big hole in my backyard with the Asian dudes in lab coats peeking out of it....
Right, so this japanese ship is heading out to sea with large metal poles on board. Think they want to punch holes in the sea bed? Nah, they're aiming to blow holes in something else.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
I even emailed the on duty editor before the article was posted to warn him. I even emailed the on duty editor before the article was posted to warn him.
Slashdot story Sunday 10 April 2005.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Zonk worded it a bit better the other time.
Seriously, if you are going to cut and paste the first paragraph of the target story as your submission, at least get it right and don't have the first sentence pasted in twice.
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it's not so funny when not only have 10 other people made the joke before you, but you also *explain* it.
Slashdot: reaching new heights in intra-story dupes. Slashdot: reaching new heights in intra-story dupes.
1. Build giant probe to drill to the center of the earth
2. Arm the probe with nuclear weapons
3. Hold the world hostage for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS
4. Profit!
...what if there were no rhetorical questions?
I repeat myself when under stress... I repeat myself when under stress...
didn't I already see this movie?
Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below. Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below. The team wants to retrieve samples from the mantle, six miles down, to learn more about what triggers undersea earthquakes, such as the one off Sumatra that caused the Boxing Day tsunami.
I hear that the team wants to retrieve samples from the mantle, six miles down, to learn more about what triggers undersea earthquakes, such as the one off Sumatra that caused the Boxing Day tsunami.
Don't know if that was mentioned...
i don't get the point of mysterious future slashdot's feature available for subscribers. does anybody check that mail account just before publishing the article for real? i bet there must have been at least five posts about the repetition...
Jan Tomka
If they're piercing the crust, will earth deflate ? :)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Edge of mantle != center of the earth. Mantle = ~3000 km, outer core = ~ 5000 km, inner core = ~5000 km.
Reaching the mantle is very impressive. Just keep it in perspective.
Why would they use a ship? I would think an on-shore platform would be more stable if you want to drill that far down. But then again, the earth in Japan is moving every now and then, so it's probably safer anyway...
Axe me while I slumber
From TFA:
Previously undiscovered bacteria that can survive the anticipated 100C temperatures of the upper mantle could be useful on the surface. Heatproof enzymes isolated from bugs brought back by earlier Japanese drill missions are now used in washing powders.
WOW! Just imagine the kinds of laundry detergent we could make with super heat resistant bacterial enzymes. WOW! Just imagine the kinds of laundry detergent we could make with super heat resistant bacterial enzymes.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
> Something strange about the recursiveness of the article text
That's nothing - wait 'til you see what the dupe looks like!
^_^
Haven't you always wondered about the phrase "it's a small world"?
Drilling to the center of the earth
nuff said.. ;)
Written by Bill Bryson.
About the earth's layers (p216): "... the various layers, using average figures:
From 0 to 40 km (25 mi) is the crust.
From 40 to 400 (250 mi) is the upper mantle.
From 400 to 650 (400 mi) is a transition zone between the upper and lower mantle.
From 650 to 2,700 km (1,700 mi) is the lower mantle.
From 2,700 to 2,890 (1,900 mi) is the "D" layer.
From 2,890 to 5,150 km (3,200 mi) is the outer core,
and from 5,150 to 6,378 km (3,967 mi) is the inner core."
About an attempt to drill the "Mohole" during the 60's (p214)
"Drilling from a ship in open waters is, in the words of one oceanographer, 'like trying to drill a hole in the sidewalks of New York from atop the Empire State Building using a strand of spaghetti.'"
A very cool book.
The power of Christ compiles you!
Too much heat is what they will find, among other supprises. Now, I hope they will be able to devise a means of harnessing this heat to generate electricity. I guess folks from Iceland are just near this heat and this is why they rely so much on geo-thermal electric generation.
Perhaps people drilling to the center of the earth is what's causing the tsunamis... Oh the tragic irony that would be!!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
There have been a number of other projects to drill deep into the Earth's crust, though none has succeeded in reaching the mantle, as this Japanese team is trying to do. Some of the more well-known ones:
Another poster already provided the wikipedia page for Project Mohole. That was a US team back in 1961 that managed to drill to 183 m below the sea floor, in 3500 m of water off the Mexican coast. From a ship, floating on the ocean surface -- I just find that incredible.
As far as land-based projects go, there have been 2 big ones that I know of. The Kola Superdeep Borehole was a Russian project, started in 1970, that drilled at a site on the Kola Peninsula near Finland. Their deepest hole reached 12.262 km in depth, which is the current record. This page has a section (scroll down a few screens) with some very interesting findings from the project. Apparently, geologic theory doesn't quite correspond with what we find when we actually go down there to see for ourselves.
There's also the KTB (long German acronym) Borehole, started in 1978 in Bavaria. They reached a depth of 9.101 km. Information on this one is hard to find, at least in English, though there is a great Oilfield Review article (big pdf) available.
This Japanese project is going to drill through the sea floor in the Pacific, in a spot where the crust is thin, which will hopefully allow them to reach the mantle in only 7 km, under 2.5 km of water. For comparison: the previous record seafloor drill was only 2.1 km. So they've definitely got their work cut out for them.
That was like.. funny :)
They really seem to be working on streamlining the reposting process. The next post may look something like this:
"Uussiinngg aa ggiiaanntt ddrriill sshhipp llaauunncchheedd nneexxtt mmoonntthh, tthhee rreesseaarrcchheerrrss aaiimm ttoo bbee tthhee ffiirrsstt ttoo ppuunncchh aa hhoollee..."
Soon they will perfect both instances occupying the same space, resulting an a repost singularity.
I hope they don't wake up some million year old creature that then terrorises Tokyo and makes all the girls scream!
I don't know how Mother Earth is going to like this one.
Yes, that's the problem, you don't know. It's generally good idea to think about perhaps gaining the knowledge before you open your mouth and start gabbling nonsense.
She's not going to like it one way or another, she won't even notice. We're talking about 7.5km hole (that's also very small width-vise) in a planet with radius of almost 6400km, that's just about 0.1% way down to the core.
The thing is over 4 billion years old - is it really a good idea to start punching holes in it now?
The thing is indeed over 4 billion years old. That should tell you something about how much she can handle, think this is the first time she feels a pinprick? Are you aware of the theory explaining how Moon got there? Earth once collided with Mars-sized object and survived. Oh, and guess what volcanoes are, much larger channels going much deeper.
It's the "centre" in the same way that the "centre" of an M&M is a peanut.
In other news, With profound obesity in human beings these days... damn @ the lengths we have to go through for a good shag!
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It's a good thing though, they would open up a gate to hell if they went that deep.
I'm trying to improve my English. Please correct me on any spelling/grammar errors in this post.
The core has been breached before -- described here in detail
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The Core: "Someone set up us the bomb"
"The team wants to retrieve samples from the mantle, six miles down, to learn more about what triggers undersea earthquakes" What they are going to learn is that Giant Drill ships that are punching a big ass hole in the Earth's crust trigger undersea earthquakes.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
From the article: "Heatproof enzymes isolated from bugs brought back by earlier Japanese drill missions are now used in washing powders."
Now that's interesting. Rocket science meets home science.
--
Better head for the Moon.
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this is a really bad idea. hasn't anyone seen inferno, the pertwee era doctor who episode???
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"The team wants to retrieve samples from the mantle, six miles down, to learn more about what triggers undersea earthquakes" wouldn't it be amusing if the drilling triggered an undersea earthquake?
This has already been done. They found an ocean down there, dinosaurs, and they even brought a duck. This team needs to do it with a drill?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
haha. when i first read this, it reminded me of the move The Core. movie was in a way hilariously stupid.
i didn't know we actually had so many projects trying to get closer to earth's core.
HD Trailers
Has history taught us nothing? Look what happened to Krypton when they tried to tap the core of their planet. And look what happened to the Atlanteans when they tried it, as evidenced by the Well's expedition to the Centre of the Earth in 1890. It is pretty clear the Venuseans tried the same thing, and look at their planet now. Will we never learn.
I couldn't help thinking, while rtfa, that this sounds like the plot to a godzilla movie. In fact, didn't they make one about drilling into the earth and then awaken some hell beast that gozilla had to kill in tokyo harbor or something? Didn't he have to cape a geyser of lava with a hell beast? I had the "lumbering" godzilla theme playing in my head as I read the guardian story.
*waits for the flames*
Bart: "It's my job to be repetitive. My job. My job. Repetitiveness is my job. I am going to go out there tonight and give the best performance of my life."
Marge: "The best performance of your life?"
Bart: "The best performance of my life!"
No It's the New World Order drilling a hole to the gate so they can drop a key in and relaeas Dubyas REAL father... Satan W. Bustos-Antichrist-Fernandez-The Third . He shall become mayor of Crawfod Texas and deceive the inbred masses.
Oh, no! They're going to drill down and accidentally stop the earth's magnetic field, and then something else bad will happen, and we'll all have to move to Mars!
and only another 3953 miles to go to the center of the earth. It's progress, I suppose.
Hole made in planet. Last seen whizzing around solar system getting smaller and smaller.
Task Mangler
To be pedantic, the mantle does not go all the way to the center. There's the core below the mantle. To extend your analogy, the crust is the M&M's chocolate shell, the mantle is the chocolate below that, and the core is the peanut.
Infuriate left and right
This is serious. Somebody should stop them. Otherwise, they will pop the planet like a balloon, causing the insides to gush out into space, and the Earth's crust to fragment and fly off in all directions. Those parts of the crust left intact will shrink to a small fraction of their former size (just like a ballon's skin), once the air is let out of the Earth. On the plus side, traveling from point A to point B will take much less time, once the crust has shrunk, but point A and point B will themselves be much smaller. Houses in the suburbs will start to look like houses in the city, i.e., scrunched up against each other with small to non-existent back yards. No back yards! Where will yuppies hold their barbeques? My god, my god! We have to stop them before they pop the planet!
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Don't scientist pay attention to sci-fi anymore. Doing this will release the aliens or the mole people. Stop the earths core from turning, cat's and dogs living together.
Japan will initially be building an airport, a seaport and a resort on the resulting volcanic island. Further expansion to Japanese real estate is planned for the future, including the possibility of a small continent.
The meaning of your Life is up to you. Mean well. -- Me, 9/11/2001
It is fair to know something about the person who is addressing you, so, I am past middle age. History and the correlation to current events or thought and ideas, is sometimes best related in jest. I suppose our friends in Japan have not considered Nimrod nor have they ever stuck a pin in a balloon. Or maybe they are recovering from shaving a bobcat's ass with a shard of glass.
And believe me, they're about to find out.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
NOOO! Don't let them kill Wil Wheaton again. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202314/
These guys have obviously never watched Dr. Who.
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Yes, that's the problem, you don't know
Isn't not knowing better than presuming to know?
The thing is indeed over 4 billion years old. That should tell you something about how much she can handle,
That is a good point.
think this is the first time she feels a pinprick?
No, but apparently we haven't done it before ("the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet"). Yes, there have probably been huge objects hitting the planet in the past, volcanic eruptions, etc., but some of these events may have also caused mass extinctions. I guess I am more worried about us than about the planet!
I think they mean the soft creamy center, like the center of a malteeser.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The core of the earth has stopped spinning!
You'll let out all the dinosors.
:-)
Apolagies to Jules Vern
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
This is cool, but the mantle is hardly the center of the earth. I'm much more interested in this - a proposal to create a molten-iron probe capable of actually reaching the core of the earth. A hundred thousand tons or more of the stuff would be poured into an artificial crevice in the earth, where it would sink down through the mantle.
The trick seems to be finding a probe that can ride the iron blob the whole way down, and keep it hot (probably through radioactivity). This was also considered as a way to dispose of nuclear waste.
At only $10 billion, this seems like a very hot possibility for exploring the mysteries of the earth. Just like sending a man to the moon, sending a manmade object to the center of the earth would be a seven-sigma experience.
In the mathematics that I had at school, the radius is half the diameter, therefore the centre of the earth would be 3,800 miles down.
What is this, a Japanese bible university that says the core is halfway through a 12-mile diameter Earth, that is only 6000 years old? If they can't get those details right after talking to leading-edge geologists, what gives them the legitimacy to represent the scientists to consumers? Just a fancy printing press gives their authority, it seems.
--
make install -not war
Was being harassed by Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and all the rest not enough? Now they need to go drilling into the earth to find even more monsters to rampage their countryside?
Why do volcanoes, and perhaps this hole, spew pressurized material past holes made in the surface? The crust isn't anything like a seal, and the mantle that we see exposed as lava is a fluid. How does one mantle volume under a hole (or weakness) heat up differently from the rest of the mantle fluid? Why doesn't the mantle just equalize that pressure increase in the fluid, rather than force open the brittle mantle?
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make install -not war
a movie from 1965 called "A Crack in the World"?
I hope this project turns out better than The Project in the film.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
(notices Paris Hilton on CNN)
... on second thought. Bring 'em on.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Reminds me that I have a friend that once thought that if you did something like that the Earth would pop/deflate. guess he never factored in volcanoes or anything of the sort
I am Spartacus
I suppose if they started to drill within the Mariana trench http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench/, they'd be starting out 11km below sea level *already*. Perhaps, at that level, one could drill horizontally to reach the mantle. But... the sea pressure! ("At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, water exerts a pressure of 1086 bar (108.6 MPa or 15,751 psi)" (wikipedia))
yeah, then we can recreate the movie without CG effects !
Yesss! Exactly what I meant, if I had only known. Thank you, sir.
I suppose the lettering is like our buildings, inconsequential but noticeable.
Infuriate left and right
Perhaps this will yeild new material for Thomas Gold to research.
Now maybe they can get rid of that pesky angel trying to destroy the planet.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Of course they're conducting proper research.
They're researching how many whales one boat can successfully catch at a time.
Is that what they're calling it in Sumatra?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
What are the main reasons why it's so difficult to drill to the center of the Earth? Seriously, if we can dig out caves underneath the ground, then what's stopping us going all the way?
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I can see the headlines now "Giant Drill Ship Triggers Undersea Earthquake".
If the mantle is fluid enough and under pressure, wouldnt it gush out and form a volcano? We dont have volcanoes everywhere because the crust is thick enough to hold it down. Punch a hole in the waterbed and viola!
Volcanoes have a knack of closing themselves up, which is partly why this is being done in the ocean. Would be cool to have a build-a-volcano-mountain experiment on the surface somewhere, maybe close to Mt Fiji to augument the current one.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH!! Peter: We don't get many of you molten rock men in here. Molten Rock Man: At these prices, I'm not surprised! Peter: That's it, buddy. YOU...ARE...OUTTA HERE!!
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/
"Crack in the World"? ..... I'm getting worried.
Where they drilled to the earths core and caused the mantle to crack. A huge chunk of the earth broke away and formed a new moon. OK, in the movie they did use an Atomic Bomb to break through when the drill broke, but still
Maybe I was asleep when I went to class that one day, but I thought that the crust of the Earth was sitting on top of a ball of hot magma. Wouldn't this suggest that if you drill down to it that you would only create your very own private volcano? And, if you could get that close, how would you go about and keep the drill machine from melting? I assume that the boffins have thought of everything. So I eagerly wait to hear about the results.
According to Professor George Edward Challenger, who conducted a drilling probe prior to World War I, the earth's crust is exactly "...fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-two yards..." in thickness.
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They are not even trying to get the the center of the earth. They're merely trying to get 6 miles down to get some samples. 6 miles are NOT even remotely close to the center of the Earth.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
No No, they are drilling in the ocean, The pacific ocean will drain into the hollow core. Its realy a ploy to lower sea level and gain more land for Japan. After all, that WWII thing didn't go as they planned.
Then when the drill hits the outer core will iron spray up the way oil comes up? What if the liquid mantle rises and solidifies around the bit - would this stop the drill? In the Matrix a bullet-like drill makes a hole but it's no use if the liquid mantle corks up the hole. However, any plug that occurs would most likely be much stubbier than the hole itself and could be lifted out relatively easily ...
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Flee! Flee for your lives! The reign of the Molemen approaches!
(All this I have seen, and foretold in my book "See, I told you that was gonna happen". Soon to be in print. Be sure to buy... er preorder your copy today! (Shipment may take 8 to 10 years))
THINK! It's patriotic
Isn't not knowing better than presuming to know?
Sometimes, but usually not. We'd still be living in caves if we would have erred on the side of caution everytime there is a very, very slight chance something _might_ have bad consequences.
Yes, there have probably been huge objects hitting the planet in the past, volcanic eruptions, etc., but some of these events may have also caused mass extinctions.
True, but the events that have done so have also been _BIG_, not just someone pushing pipe few meters wide deeper than before.
I guess I am more worried about us than about the planet!
That's a good point, we're still much more fragile than the planet. Global warming etc, for example don't do anything to the planet, or, on the long term, much at all to nature, but if things go awry enough we're not around to see it when they finally recover.
But it's still not particularly wise to not do something just because it hasn't been done before either, unless there's very good reason to believe something bad will happen.