Drilling Hits an Active Magma Chamber In Hawaii

Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that drillers looking for geothermal energy in Hawaii have inadvertently put a well right into a magma chamber. Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study. Magma specialist Bruce Marsh says it will allow scientists to observe directly how granites are made. 'This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat,' the Johns Hopkins University professor told BBC News. 'Before, all we had to deal with were lava flows; but they are the end of a magma's life. They're lying there on the surface, they've de-gassed. It's not the natural habitat.' It is hoped the site can now become a laboratory, with a series of cores drilled around the chamber to better characterise the crystallisation changes occurring in the rock as it loses temperature."

Comments

Hot Drill Bit

[JamJam]

I wonder if the magma melted the drill bit?

Re:Hot Drill Bit

[Endo13]

I'm fairly certain you're wrong in your reasoning, but I also am not an expert on the subject so I could be wrong as well.

However, first thing is the material that has to be removed as they drill. They would probably need some kind of rotary drill for this. Also, I can tell you from experience drilling other types of things (such as wood and concrete) that a rotary drill will never entirely occupy the volume of the borehole - there's always some slop that happens as you drill, and some space beside the drill bit. The other thing you may not have considered is that the magma could have forced a rotary drill up the borehole.

Re:Hot Drill Bit

[lymond01]

I'm fairly certain you're wrong in your reasoning, but I also am not an expert on the subject so I could be wrong as well.

You're an old hand here at Slashdot, aren't you. ;-)

Re:Hot Drill Bit

[syncrotic]

You're picturing a drill bit like you'd find on the end of your drill at home, with grooves running all the way up the bit that transport the cuttings to the surface. In rock drilling there's a bit at the bottom of the hole(either percussive or rotary), connected to the drill rig by a pipe of smaller diameter than the bit. Cuttings are forced up through the space between the drill pipe and the wall of the borehole by either high pressure air or water.

Re:Hot Drill Bit

[fizzup]

I have worked in economic geology as a summer student when I was at university, and I can vouch for the fact that hollow rotary drills are in common use. The drill core (the part of the rock that goes in the hollow centre) is the whole purpose of drilling the hole in the earth.

The drill is a gasoline or diesel engine, and the drill bit is a piecewise continuous long hollow tube. The drill bit is quite short, and the business end is a ring of industrial diamonds. The whole tube spins, and water is used to carry away the cuttings. To remove the core, the whole nine yards gets pulled up, and the drill core comes with it. The drill core is put in boxes, with depth markings on it.

The last (optional) step is for the drill operator to piss on the drill core. When the geologist opens the box of drill core, the first thing he does is lick the rock, because you can see the colour variations in wet rock a lot easier than in dry rock.

It seems to me that if you drilled into some magma with one of these diamond drills, you would run the risk of the whole earth collapsing like a balloon thththpththpthpthpthtpp. :)

Re:Hot Drill Bit

[James McP]

TFA says This is not the first time drillers have encountered magma; the depth of the hit and the setting are, however, thought to be unique.

I'll summarize. a) this is dacite as compared to basalt (aka this is closer to "continental" magma than "Hawaiian" magma). b) It's close to the surface (2.5km) and c) it's freaking hot.

"We were at about 2.5km which is pretty routine drilling depth," explained Mr Teplow.

"But that is half the depth of experimental projects in Europe and Australia where they are drilling very deep into hot granite - some 5-5.5km down - and getting 260C rock; and here we're getting 1,050C rock."

I don't feel like doing the math right now but the power generating options from a 1000C heat source is very, very, very good.

If the geologists figure out how to find shallow magma anywhere near a cross-connected power grid, you can product a ton of energy.

For a localized environment like Hawaii, they could make huge strides in cutting external fuel needs. I'm generally anti-hydrogen because of the losses between generation and transportation but it would be very feasible for Hawaii to use the excess power from a geothermal power plant to produce hydrogen that could be transported the relatively short distances between islands by boat to provide fuel to other islands. I'm not an EE, but it seems like converting their current fuel-oil generators to hydrogen would be a fairly inexpensive process.

They already have an electric car initiative which would further cut down the bulk of their fuel oil imports.

Re:Hot Drill Bit

[darrenbjohnson]

2.5 Km isn't all that deep for a drill. I've spent more time then I would like to admit on a LF230 Rig and depending on the rod size they can go a lot deeper. I imagine the drilling went something like this: So you are drilling down, maintaining torque and rodfeed, all of a sudden you hit a void (this case magma pocket) and your torque drops off to zero your rodfeed hits zero resistance. So you stop the rods slowly, you don't want a twist off in a void. You turn up your mud, you notice that there is some serious pressure in your rods, you pull the rods up 20 or so feet. By this time your core barrel is filled with magma and melting, but it's in a nice wet mud casing cooling it. You then notice the pressure wont drop cause your drill shoe is solid rock. You turn off the mud, look over at your helper, grin and say it's gonna be a fun night. You then proceed to remove all 2.5km of rods from the whole, a big pain in the ass. The whole trip out is wet as the mud has nowhere to go but out of where you disconnect them every 40 feet or so, the drilling helper and hopefully the drill op is soaked in mud. They finally get to the last 10 ft rod, look down the rod at a giant tube of rock, the helper runs out of the rig, the operator starts throwing stuff. Nothing amazing, a 2 or 3 in diameter tube of cooled magma sits in your rod. You just ruined $50K+ worth of stuff depending on the rods, the bit, the core barrel, and etc. You then proceed to wait for the foreman to come and laugh at you.

Re:I'd rather be...

[Timothy's Mom]

You insensitive clod! What if Timothy reads this?

Perfectly safe?

[truckaxle]

Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study

When dealing with a pressurized body of molten rock with entrained gasses, I don't think one could ever say it is perfectly safe.

Re:Perfectly safe?

[Fastolfe]

If it were truly under a dangerous amount of pressure, wouldn't this borehole have become another volcano? The fact that it traveled only a short distance before solidifying suggests the pressure isn't a concern.

Re:Perfectly safe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study

I'm sure they're leaving out their initial observations which probably went something like: "OH FUCK!! RUN! ok.. i think it stopped.. let's change our underwear then we'll send the new guy over to check it out"

Re:Perfectly safe?

[Chris Burke]

I'm sure they're leaving out their initial observations which probably went something like: "OH FUCK!! RUN! ok.. i think it stopped.. let's change our underwear then we'll send the new guy over to check it out"

"Oh yes, of course it's perfectly safe, Ensign Burke. Nothing to worry about. Now go on over there and examine the bore hole. Oh but first put on this official red shirt signifying your position on our team."

Odd misreading...

[tomknight]

Dammit, I read "..active manga chamber...". Confused, yes.

It's a gusher!!

[xleeko]

All that I can picture is the classic 19th century drill tower with glowing magma spraying from the top, and lava-coated workmen running around cheering "It's a gusher!!"

Actually, in my mind, the workmen look a lot like Homer Simpson ...

Re:It's a gusher!!

[gardyloo]

In my mind, there's one workwoman, she's played by Natalie Portman, and the lava is actually hot grits.

The dream realised

[El Yanqui]

"It has been described as a geologist's dream"

Dare to dream, geologists. Dare to dream.

Re:I bet that got interesting...

[Panspechi]

That sentence somehow got me pretty hot

Old news.... This happened in 2005

[Maddog Batty]

I would love to know why it was kept quiet for so long.

"The breakthrough was made in 2005. Only now are researchers confident enough about their work to discuss the details publicly."

So what were they not confident about? Hot temperatures - check. No drill bit left - check. Rock fused to end of drill - check.

Quote of the year

[Psychotria]

This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat

Is this professor also known as David Attenborough?

Perfectly Safe?

[Yossarian45793]

Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study.

I don't think that phrase means what you think it means...

Re:They found it

[MikeUW]

I believe those pipes would need to be made from an alloy known as 'unobtainium'.

Re:I bet that got interesting...

[Lord Apathy]

Interesting might be an understatement. More like "Oh Shit!" You know, those two words you never want to hear your bomb technician, drill operator, or gynecologist exclaim.

how magmanimous of you

[jollyreaper]

Drill, baby, dr--AAAAUGH! It burns!

Re:They found it

[barzok]

Every time I try to lay pipe near/inside volcanoes, she tells me "not tonight, I have a headache."

Drilling for geothermal energy may harm your home

[fzimper]

In the German city of Staufen, they drilled some 140m deep holes to get geothermal energy for heating the town hall and adjacent buildings.

Unfortunately, this drilling caused many cracks in houses around the city centre. Some of these cracks are said to be big enough that you can put your fingers in.

According to this article on the English Spiegel (a German news magazine) website, dated March 2008, the whole city is sinking. In a recent German article from November, they write that the city has risen several centimeters due to water mixing with gypsum deep down and therefore causing the gypsum to expand.

Re:Not granite...

[lmckayjo]

Read the article. This magma chamber is NOT apparently basaltic, and has much in common with magmas that produce granite. 67% silica content - which is very uncommon to see in anything on the surface here in Hawaii.

That said, the important thing isn't probably going to be understanding how volcanoes in other parts of the world work, but just in how this volcano works. That won't get as much funding as studying "how continents originally formed" or other highly derived hypotheses that this site might generate, so the geologists are focusing on what sounds good to people OTHER than Hawaiians (who are generally against messin' with da aina anyway).

-L

They were scared!

[mangu]

So what were they not confident about?

In 1943 a farmer in Mexico was plowing his field, when smoke started coming from the soil. Today the nearby village is like this.

Even if the lava in the hole solidified almost instantly, they had to make sure there would be no unforeseen evolution.

Re:They found it

[afidel]

We simply don't have anywhere near the technology to harness this sort of heat into energy.

Like hell we don't, molten salt solar plants use salts that boil at 1400C and magma only reaches about 1300C max, the solidified area that would form around the pipe would lower the delta T to well below what such a system could handle.

Re:Not granite...

[jolyonr]

I know this is Slashdot, but perhaps you should read the full article. The magma encountered was unusually high in silica (ie felsic) - a dacite-type lava. They are excited about this because it is showing how granitic continental-style magma can differentiate from your normal basaltic lava.

So yes, it would potentially be granitic rather than gabbroic in nature. Isn't geology fun!

The same thing happens in Iceland too, there are dacite-type and rhyolitic-type lava flows, although a far lower percentage than the normal basaltic flows. Silica-rich lava is a much nastier stuff when it gets to the surface, explosive, but more viscous and less runny than your basaltic lava. That's why you didn't get a geyser of molten-hot lava coming up the tubes [slight simplification, but hey, this is slashdot].

Jolyon