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Hot Water, Hot Earth

Posted by kdawson on from the global-warming-not-implicated dept.

Calopteryx notes a New Scientist article on the discovery of "supercritical" water emerging from a vent in the Atlantic Ocean at 407 deg. C (765 deg. F). One of its discoverers actually said, "It's water, but not as we know it"; it's the hottest water ever found on earth. The cause seems to be a huge bubble of magma beneath the ocean floor, 3 km below the sea surface. Meanwhile Nymz shares a journal entry on a hot spot on land: a 2-acre patch in Ventura county, in California, that has heated up to 433 deg. C (812 deg. F). Here geologists blame buried hydrocarbons burning as they get access to air through cracks in the ground. That high temperature was measured a foot below the ground surface.

13 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Start drillin'! by RayMarron · · Score: 5, Funny

    Burning hydrocarbons?! Sounds like a good place to put a combo drill/refinery/gas station!

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    1. Re:Start drillin'! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Pretty difficult I'd imagine, since that sort of thing always seems to attract the attention of deep sea monsters.

    2. Re:Start drillin'! by philspear · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, in "There will be blood" they were able to get oil from a well that was gushing out oil, on fire ABOVE ground, by using a cool battering ram thing with a steel drum that had a bunch of dynamite in it. Push it up to the geyser of fire, it explodes, I guess it either disperses all the oxygen or maybe just the high-temperature gasses, and voila, you have just a regular old oil spout, not flaming, ready to be tapped.

      So

      1. Push a bomb into the ground
      2. Blow it up
      3. ???
      4. Drink a milkshake.

    3. Re:Start drillin'! by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wonder how difficult/reliable it would be to harness those deep sea monsters.

      --
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    4. Re:Start drillin'! by Drakonik · · Score: 4, Funny

      I can already hear the drums in the deep.

    5. Re:Start drillin'! by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 5, Funny

      That reminds me of an old joke:

      There's this oil fire going on, so they call Red Adair up and ask him how much it will cost to put it out. Red, being the world-famous guy that he is, rattles off a number that's much too expensive, so they end up going with one of his cheaper competitors.

      So, these guys show up, get briefed, and then proceed directly in their truck right to the heart of the fire. There they stop, and all the guys jump out and start stamping on the fire with their feet! They do this long enough, and what do you know, they put the fire out.

      Of course, the oil guys are just completely awestruck, and ask the heard fire chief guy if they're off to celebrate another job well done. The head fire chief guy replies "Hell no. First thing we're going to do is fix the brakes on the truck."

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    6. Re:Start drillin'! by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 5, Funny

      I brought a deep sea monster home from the bar last night, and I didn't notice any difficulty in obtaining it at all.

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  2. When will people learn?!?!?! by BobMcD · · Score: 5, Funny

    Buy an electric car TODAY people! That petrol is causing the ocean to heat up... Wait, what? Magma? Really? Wasn't that around before we invented cars?

    Hang on folks, I'll have to get back to you...

    1. Re:When will people learn?!?!?! by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Buy a magma car!

  3. Seems like.... by bwcbwc · · Score: 4, Funny

    an awful lot of effort to go through for some parboiled prawns. The Ventura county site sounds like a great spot for a barbecue, though. Don't even have to bring any charcoal.

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    We are the 198 proof..
  4. Re:Can we still blame pollution for this? by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 4, Funny

    >Could this conceivably be used to power locomotivators (more commonly known as "iron horses") across large distances on metal rails? This could help solve that whole oil problem!

    This could help solve that whale oil problem!

    There. Fixed it for you.

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    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  5. California hotspot by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Funny

    So can we conclude from this that Ventura==hot air?

    Of course, many Minnesotans already knew that... (and others learned it the hard way)

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  6. Re:Hot Water, Hot Earth by philspear · · Score: 5, Funny

    It sounds like hot fire is already present, throw in "hot heart" and you've got yourself a hot captain planet!