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Drilling Hits an Active Magma Chamber In Hawaii

Posted by timothy on from the time-for-a-lava-luau dept.

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."

11 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Hot Drill Bit by JamJam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if the magma melted the drill bit?

    1. Re:Hot Drill Bit by darrenbjohnson · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Re:I'd rather be... by Timothy's+Mom · · Score: 5, Funny

    You insensitive clod! What if Timothy reads this?

  3. It's a gusher!! by xleeko · · Score: 5, Funny

    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 ...

  4. The dream realised by El+Yanqui · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Dare to dream, geologists. Dare to dream.

    --
    Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
  5. Re:I bet that got interesting... by Panspechi · · Score: 5, Funny

    That sentence somehow got me pretty hot

  6. Perfectly Safe? by Yossarian45793 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

  7. Re:Perfectly safe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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"

  8. Re:They found it by MikeUW · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  9. Drilling for geothermal energy may harm your home by fzimper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  10. Re:Not granite... by lmckayjo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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