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Drilling to the Center of the Earth

Posted by Zonk on from the watch-out-for-the-lavamen dept.

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."

7 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong bloody title. by Anthony · · Score: 5, Informative

    12-25km through the oceanic crust is *not* the centre of the earth.

    --
    Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
    1. Re:Wrong bloody title. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I agree 100%, the earth is flat.

  2. This article is very interesting. by cwmonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    This article is very interesting. This article is very interesting.

    1. Re:This article is very interesting. by bgarcia · · Score: 4, Funny
      They just decided to get the repost out of the way now by reposting into the same article!

      It's ingenious!

      --
      I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
  3. Begin project Vulcan! by concreationist · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?
  4. Similar projects by Flamerule · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Godzilla!! by Skiron · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hope they don't wake up some million year old creature that then terrorises Tokyo and makes all the girls scream!