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Ocean Floor Crust Wound to Be Explored

Posted by Zonk on from the journey-to-the-top-of-the-earth dept.

eldavojohn writes "A group of scientists are disembarking right now to study an open gash in the ocean floor where earth's mantle lays exposed without any crust covering it. The scientists describe this as the result of the mantle moving too quickly for the crust to keep up. Either that, or the mantle was never covered by the crust and just has always been like this. From the article, 'Regardless of how they formed, the exposed mantle provides scientists with a rare opportunity to study the Earth's rocky innards. Many attempts to drill deep into the planet barely get past the crust.'"

20 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. ohhh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nothing like a nice, wet, open gash down below to explore!

    I wonder what they'll find? Might be too deep for the little man in the boat.

  2. Wake me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wake me when they get to the creamy nougat center.

  3. disembark? by mr_zorg · · Score: 3, Informative

    They are embarking, not disembarking...

    1. Re:disembark? by moonbender · · Score: 3, Funny

      Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

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  4. Mid atlantic ridge? by ruiner13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hasn't the mid-atlantic ridge always been there? How is this a "rare opportunity"? I don't think it will be going anywhere anytime soon.

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    1. Re:Mid atlantic ridge? by Mr2cents · · Score: 5, Informative

      A few months ago I was wondering how deep mankind has drilled, and found some interesting stuff. Basically, you should read "barely" as "didn't".

      As always, when you think something's easy (make_small_hole(); while(1) { make_hole_deeper(); } ), it's just because your ignorance doesn't let you appreciate the problems, like the extreme temperature and pressure. For example, I didn't realize that the pressure compresses the rocks and when you drill a hole that deep, the rocks around it want to expand, causing engineering nightmares.

      And while measuring the straightness of a hole seems quite doable (or put otherwise, I accept the assumption that there exists technology to do that), I still wonder how they can adjust the drilling direction.

      Fascinating!

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  5. Analogy by Renfield+Spiffioso · · Score: 5, Informative

    MacLeod likens this process to stretching a person's skin until it ruptures, exposing the flesh underneath. That's the most horrifying scientific analogy I've ever heard.
    1. Re:Analogy by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Funny

      You don't want to hear his analogy for a volcano - it involves a donkey and a chambermaid.

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  6. Anti-Crust by RancidMilk · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you tamper with the anti-crust, you will get burned.

  7. Please don't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Please do not anthropomorphize our planet. He really hates that.

    1. Re:Please don't by jcr · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thats it, not "He" or "She", you insensitive sexist clod!

      -jcr

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  8. Can't wait by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Funny

    Someone is going to use this as evidence of humans causing global warming in 5...4...3...2...

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    1. Re:Can't wait by jjacksonRIAB · · Score: 4, Funny

      Al Gore will not fall for your Jedi mind tricks.

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  9. We've made it through the crust? by Slippery+Pete · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Many attempts to drill deep into the planet barely get past the crust." I wasn't aware of any drilling that has past the crust. The deepest I knew about was the Kola Borehole which only reached 12,262 meters. I understand drilling the seafloor saves us time and depth but I wasn't away of anyone getting through the crust yet.

  10. Why hasn't CRUST formed there? by StarKruzr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't understand how [water (cooling agent) + magma (what the mantle is made of] != crust evaluates to 1.

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    1. Re:Why hasn't CRUST formed there? by Bellum+Aeternus · · Score: 4, Insightful
      You're right magma + coolant (water) = rock. The mantle is a section of the planet, comprised of different materials than the crust. This an opportunity to look at those materials without having to drill do far. Trust me, not many scientists was to be looking at 2000 degree molten rock up close.

      There's a lot of other cool things we can see while we're down there, like how the rock crystals formed under that kind of pressure and how fast they cooled. All kinds of cool things can be interpreted by the rocks crystalline structure.

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  11. IGY - International Geophysical Year, 1957-ish... by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ...and the beginning of the Space Age. There was an attempt to drill past the crust to the mantle in a spot where the transition came up fairly close to the Earth's surface, called Project Mohole http://www.nas.edu/history/mohole/. This referred to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, or "Mohole". The IGY was an early attempt at an international cooperative effort in Earth studies.

    The importance of this effort was underlined by the fact that Walt Kelly's "Pogo" sent it up. Since the event was a "year" of 18 months, Pogo suggested naming the extra months after foods -- Octoberry, Novemberry etc.

    In a side note, the US response to Sputnik included a science payload named Nora-Alice 1, beacon transmitter for Discoverer satellite, which took it's name from a poem Pogo wrote in honour of the IGY. http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/about/history/reminiscence /space.html/ has a picture and a small quote down the column a bit.

    So as you can see, drilling a hole in the Earth past the crust to the mantle inspired some of the first orbital satellites. Remarkable! Oh, and then there was LAGEOS, of course, but I'll let you look that one up.

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  12. Re:Why hasn't a volcano formed there? by dwarmstr · · Score: 4, Informative

    The mantle is a solid, albeit warm and plastic, material. It's solid because of the immense pressure the material is under. Brought up via plate tectonics, the material can melt as the pressure is released.

  13. Project wont finish... by ZeroExistenZ · · Score: 3, Funny

    They'll just run away in fear like the commies did :P

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  14. Re:Wait, what? by ElectricRook · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mantle rock is not magma. Mantle material is usually very hot because it is (A) very heavy, and (B) usually covered by a layer of insulating lighter crust material. The crust is 3-18 miles thick. Magma is usually crust material that got pushed down into hot mantle material and melted. The crustal material magma being lighter than mantle wants to rise above the mantle magma. So usually we have an intrusion of lighter crustal magma being forced through the mantle. So we've never seen mantle material exposed before. Some small samples of solid mantle material have been carried up by some of the cooler type volcanoes. This is how we get diamonds and peridots. Read about Kimberlite pipes.

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