Journey To the Mantle of the Earth By 2020

An anonymous reader writes "A half-century after the first attempt to drill through the ocean crust into the Earth's mantle, a new campaign armed with improved technology is underway that could reach the mantle by the end of the decade, researchers say."

Comments

Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[elrous0]

But how could we have known that's where those alien microbes were? God help us, HOW COULD WE HAVE KNOWN!?

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[chemicaldave]

In all seriousness, that would be a pretty significant discovery if we found life living close to the mantle.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[Anrego]

Also.. is this a reference to POD by any chance? :D

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[pushing-robot]

obligatory.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[elrous0]

Not to worry. As long as we have Christian Bale to lead us, we'll survive.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[ElectricTurtle]

As much as people love to get worked up about doomsday science, I think the only real credible threats are grey goo and malevolent strong AI, and both of those things are probably at least another generation or two away.

There is too much genetic diversity and geographic separation of human populations for a virus to wipe them all out. Even in the middle of some of the worst of plagues some people were immune. The energy involved in achieving any kind of planetary effects is for all intents and purposes currently impossible to produce, and if H bombs didn't ignite the atmosphere, what, if anything, could?

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[Dunbal]

Hah - don't worry. The only thing the LHC is destroying is budgets, deadlines and large sums of money.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[MickyTheIdiot]

What about one of the greatest Dr. Who serials ever: Inferno.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[mark-t]

What would tend to happen is that as they drill the hole, lava starts climbing up the shaft and cooling again into solid rock. Even once they are all the way through, the lava will still quickly cool into rock as it comes onto the surface.

Ultimately, it would amount to becoming a man-made volcano... one that would probably take several centuries before it was of any significant size, and that's assuming that it remains active for that amount of time.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how about we drill it into the Yellowstone super caldera and allow it to release the pressure so that we don't get that big old explosion that is supposed to happen?

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[ElectricTurtle]

I'm not sure if you and those of like mind responding are seriously stupid or just trolling. Volcanoes have been doing this as long as the earth has had a crust. It's not going to do anything to 'core spin' or cause some unstoppable lava flow. It's not like the earth is a fucking water balloon that's going to pop as soon as somebody pokes it with a pin.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[RoverDaddy]

Yet another fictional account of the same thing: Thank God It's Only A Motion Picture

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

That's why we NEED to get the fuck off this rock! Start sending people to mars and start laying the groundwork for colonization/terraforming. Start building large rotating space stations where people can live permenantly. And launch ourselves even further out from there.

The only way the human race is going to survive is if we aren't all in one place. If we don't do it to ourselves, then it will be some natural disaster like an asteroid.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[Zcar]

where lava can spew out

Where lava will spew out. I don't know what they plan to accomplish short of destroying their drill/probe. Well I guess that first fraction of a second before the sensors melt will let them know what "virgin" mantle 'tastes' like...

Not really.

1) The temperature of the upper mantle, near the boundary with the crust, is in the neighborhood of 750C/1400F. I think we can design sensors to handle these temperatures.

2) The mantle is mostly solid, not liquid. And even where it's not "solid", for most practical purposes you'd have a hard time telling it from solid..

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[osu-neko]

Grey goo isn't really a credible threat either. Somehow you start talking nanotechnology and people imagine magical machines capable of operating and replicating without regard to basic principles of conservation of energy and so on. Self-replicating machines will quickly bump into the same limits that naturally occuring self-replicating life forms do, and unlike machines we design, things like bacteria have no interest in limiting themselves -- they'd happily become the grey goo that takes over the planet if they could. But they don't, because it's not realistically possible.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[sensei moreh]

I (and, I dare say, most other igneous petrologists), for one will be extremely surprised if it becomes granite (or even rhyolite).

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[rgbatduke]

There is actually a very simple argument from thermodynamics and/or statistical mechanics that this will not happen. No matter what you think that we might do -- drill down to the Earth's mantle, for example, or build a super-accelerator capable of extremely energetic collisions -- Nature does it first, and does it all of the time. For example, asteroids have drilled down to the Earth's mantle in the past, and volcanoes do it in the present. Galactic Cosmic Rays with energies greater than anything we can imagine creating in an accelerator happen all of the time -- the most powerful one observed so far is (IIRC) a proton with roughly the same kinetic energy as a baseball travelling at 90 mph. People worried that the first nuclear bomb would ignite the atmosphere and turn the world into a short-lived sun, ignoring the fact that temperatures and pressures well in excess of nuclear bomb temperatures occur in both the GCR events and in asteroid impacts -- if such a thing were possible, it would have already happened long ago.

So you are actually probably pretty safe from most things like this that we might do. Even a global thermonuclear war (which is no longer terribly likely, at least at this time, politically) is very unlikely to kill off all of humanity. Nature, however, could easily produce a pandemic killer bug without our help. Or a nearby sun (including our own) could almost casually snuff out the human race in a matter of minutes. Or a really big rock could fall and manage it. There are a few "plausible" extinction/doomsday scenarios, if by plausible you mean things that could cause it are known to happen somewhere in the Universe and could do the job, but none of them are terribly likely on a timescale of a few million years at this point in the natural evolution of our solar system and our biosphere. They are, if anything, less likely as time goes by -- a pandemic that might have been (nearly) universally fatal three hundred years ago would probably not be today, between our knowledge of the causes of disease and our ability to produce remedies and or quarantines that would very likely contain it.

In a nutshell, we probably won't "destroy ourselves", but if we really want the human species to survive in the long run, we do need to move off of planet Earth and out into the Universe at large -- events likely to wipe out all life on Earth are rather likely to be confined to Earth or local Galactic environments until we hit deadlines like the Big Crunch or the Big Freeze. By which time, singularity or not, we'll both likely be dead...

rgb

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[pushing-robot]

Before you give humans too much credit for their ingenuity, the main reason machines perform so well is because they are not organisms. In a sense, a battle tank is like a single organ; very effective at a task but incapable of existing without a greater body. The tank has mines to produce steel, titanium and depleted uranium, refineries to produce jet fuel, factories to build it, ships to transport it, people to operate it, and heavy equipment to get it out of any mud and ditches it happens across. Tanks are not capable of homeostasis, adaptation, growth, or reproduction, and even if they were they could not acquire enough resources to sustain their energy budget.

When you've built a tank that can repair itself, operate itself, reproduce itself, adapt to new environments, and is built from and powered by materials it scavenged and assembled from its environment, then we'll see how fearsome our technology is.

Re:Looking back now, it was a terrible mistake

[jc42]

In all seriousness, that would be a pretty significant discovery if we found life living close to the mantle.

Actually, few biologists would be surprised. One of the more interesting things about previous deep-drilling projects is that they've turned up micro-organisms all the way down. Projecting the microbe count from these holes has produced the estimate that there is more biomass inside the planet than on its surface and in the oceans. Of course, this is based on a very small sample, so nobody takes it too seriously.

But still, the fact that we've found living things everywhere we've drilled means that the default assumption should be that we'll keep finding them. Presumably it'll get too hot for life at some depth, but so far we have no clue at all what this depth might be. The really significant thing would be if we found no decrease in the density of microbes at any depth.

And I don't think the critters down there qualify as "alien". From the few samples that've been studied, they are very similar to the things living inside rocks near the surface. We might have to go to other planets to find something truly alien. And maybe the things living inside the other planets will turn out to be relatives of the things living here.

For further information, ask google about "deep-rock microorganisms" (without the quotes). There's quite a bit of information on the subject online.

Journey to the Center of the Earth!

[TaoPhoenix]

Jules Verne Likes This.

I predict...

[Stenchwarrior]

...they'll find a bunch of lonley socks. I mean, those fuckers have to end up somewhere.

Boon, or boom?

[russotto]

I can see two ways this could go. One, plentiful geothermal power wherever you can dig a big enough hole.

Two, artificial volcanos.

Either one is pretty cool.

Nuclear waste disposal

[gr8_phk]

Can we inject all the spent nuclear fuel into the mantle and let it sink to the center? That's what's probably down there anyway...

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[KarrdeSW]

You want to put spent nuclear fuel rods into a burning hot ocean of magma in a spot where enormous upward pressure is being exerted? Realistically, a hole in the earth's crust that reaches the mantle already has a name. It's called a volcano. You wouldn't try to shit in an overflowing toilet, would you?

Though you may have something if you meant that we somehow insert spent fuel into a Subduction Zone, where a portion of the crust is sinking into the mantle anyway.

Personally, I'm all for storing the old fuel until technology becomes sufficiently advanced to use it again, there is still a ton of energy present in it. I'd say the best way to be safe from the stuff it is to bleed it dry.

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[Dunbal]

The problem is that this mantle is under intense pressure because it has the weight of the Earth's crust bearing down on it. This pressure doesn't matter too much to us because of the weight of the rock being forced down by gravity is exactly balanced by the reaction force of the mantle pushing back up. Except where you get cracks and weaknesses in the rock - and some mantle seeps through, causing a volcano. This pressure is enough to drive the molten rock all the way to the surface.

Now consider drilling a hole - a hole filled with a tube and presumably some material that is not rock - like air or water (probably water since the distance to the mantle is less from the bottom of the ocean). While water has weight, it doesn't weigh as much as rock - we can prove that because undersea volcanoes exist, too. So basically what you will end up doing is creating your own instant-volcano, the minute you get close enough to the mantle that the remaining rock is weakened, all of that stuff is going to come up - following the path of least resistance.

I am not saying it's the end of the world - it's not. There are other forces at work too, the mantle will cool on its way up and might only reach the surface slowly, if at all. However you must understand that there will be a tremendous amount of upwards pressure in the shaft. It will be absolutely impossible to "drop something" down there. At best what you would get is a deep hole with your radioactive waste, sitting at the bottom of the sea. At worst you would get the mother of all dirty-bombs, driven by a volcano and spreading this waste all over the ocean floor. It was virtually impossible to drop concrete into the Deepwater Horizon shaft. Imagine the pressures of going much much deeper and what's coming out isn't oil but lava.

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[0100010001010011]

They're called breeder reactors and already exist. They just happen to be illegal in the united states.

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[ElectricTurtle]

Volcanoes are not primarily caused by local differences in surface strata composition. There is a reason why volcanoes occur along fault lines and especially subduction/divergence zones. Volcanoes are driven in their development and activity primarily by activity in the mantle itself, whether that is melting crust in suduction zones causing plumes of lighter materials or plumes cascading out of the core itself to form hotspots. This is stark contrast to your artificially simplistic description of an equalization of pressure. Volcanoes occur where pressure is not equal.

The crust itself is surprisingly resilient in places where there are no special pressures. The Kola borehole proved that. Over seven and a half miles down and there was no explosion of pressure. If seven and a half miles of rock can be removed to no ill effect, then substituting it with water should not be as big a problem as you think it is, difference in weight not withstanding.

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[drinkypoo]

They're called breeder reactors and already exist. They just happen to be illegal in the united states.

Are they actually illegal, or is that just the way a certain non-nuclear proliferation treaty has been interpreted to date in order to protect the high price of nuclear fuel?

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[scubamage]

However you must understand that there will be a tremendous amount of upwards pressure in the shaft.

Giggity.

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[crabboy.com]

You wouldn't try to shit in an overflowing toilet, would you?

Depends on how bad I had to go...

Re:Nuclear waste disposal

[demonbug]

The problem is that this mantle is under intense pressure because it has the weight of the Earth's crust bearing down on it. This pressure doesn't matter too much to us because of the weight of the rock being forced down by gravity is exactly balanced by the reaction force of the mantle pushing back up. Except where you get cracks and weaknesses in the rock - and some mantle seeps through, causing a volcano. This pressure is enough to drive the molten rock all the way to the surface.

Now consider drilling a hole - a hole filled with a tube and presumably some material that is not rock - like air or water (probably water since the distance to the mantle is less from the bottom of the ocean). While water has weight, it doesn't weigh as much as rock - we can prove that because undersea volcanoes exist, too. So basically what you will end up doing is creating your own instant-volcano, the minute you get close enough to the mantle that the remaining rock is weakened, all of that stuff is going to come up - following the path of least resistance.

I am not saying it's the end of the world - it's not. There are other forces at work too, the mantle will cool on its way up and might only reach the surface slowly, if at all. However you must understand that there will be a tremendous amount of upwards pressure in the shaft. It will be absolutely impossible to "drop something" down there. At best what you would get is a deep hole with your radioactive waste, sitting at the bottom of the sea. At worst you would get the mother of all dirty-bombs, driven by a volcano and spreading this waste all over the ocean floor. It was virtually impossible to drop concrete into the Deepwater Horizon shaft. Imagine the pressures of going much much deeper and what's coming out isn't oil but lava.

First, to keep magma out of the drill pipe you would just need to keep pressure on your drilling fluid. We already do this; it would just require a higher pressure system than what is needed for, say, oil drilling. Of course, this could be a problem if your drilling fluid is flash-boiling as it encounters the magma, as it would be very difficult to control that much pressure and could lead to a blow out. However, unlike with oil, you could fairly easily stop any leaking lava by circulating cold water, or worst case, it freezes when it reaches sea water and plugs up your hole that way. You might build a small sea mound, but that's probably about the extent of the danger.

Heat issues

[Scootin159]

The soviets have already tried this, but ran into issues with the deep-crust temperatures (570*F when they stopped, but it was still climbing) melting their drill bits. How is this project intending to resolve this issue?

Re:Heat issues

[Tom Womack]

There has been billions of dollars of research into drill bits over the twenty years since the Kola project stopped, drilling deep holes in rock under awkward conditions being more than somewhat useful for the oil industry - the mud-motors that Kola is described as pioneering are now reasonably routine. But whilst 400F is something that people deal with now, 600F is still quite a problem.

The drilling fluids probably will be fairly horrible, and simply getting electronics to work at those temperatures is hard (NASA have done some work in silicon-carbide-substrate semiconductors, since it would be fantastic to be able to run a robot on the surface of Venus, but I don't think they've met with much success).

Re:Heat issues

[sootman]

They'll go at night! Wait, sorry, wrong joke.

Re:"Extreme Heat"?

[Yamata no Orochi]

Oh no, THREE HUNDRED degrees celsius!!! Whatever will they do?

Perhaps they shall bake a cake.

Old News

[bedouin]

Shredder and Krang already did this in like 1989.

Re:Inferno

[Dunbal]

parallel universes with the British military in Nazi-esque uniforms

Not all that different than our universe, then. The only thing missing really is the uniform. The police state mechanism is already in place.

Re:"Extreme Heat"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I realise both you and OP are being sarcastic, however the biggest problem isn't finding tools to function at that temperature. The biggest problem is finding drilling equipment that can dissipate heat at that temperature while generating additional heat through friction. Try using a normal steel drill-bit in concrete for more than 15 minutes continuous in standard air temperature (lets say 21C) will render the drill bit useless just from friction generated heat (anecdotal, certainly - you are welcome to find your own sources or try the experiment yourself).

Now, the Russians probably used tungsten-carbide drill bits (which have about 2x the shear, 2x the melting point of 440 stainless steel and are significantly harder on the Mohr scale than steel - again, I couldn't find a source on the drill bits, I'm just guessing) and had enough heat dissipation issues when the ambient temperature reached 300 C + heat generated from friction drilling.

Re:"Extreme Heat"?

[_0xd0ad]

The Italians apparently don't agree with you...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza#Pizza_types

According to the rules proposed by the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, the genuine Neapolitan pizza [...] must be baked for 60–90 seconds in a 485 C (905 F) stone oven with an oak-wood fire. When cooked, it should be crispy, tender and fragrant.

Same thing happened with Project Mohole

[Latent Heat]

The same thing happened with Project Mohole, the Journey Partway to the Center of the Earth Project funded by NSF in the '60's.

The Moho is short for Mohorovicic -- a Hrv (Croatian) scientist who discovered some seismic-wave boundary between crust and upper mantle. The Mohole was the effort do drill "partway to China" as it were, doing this in the ocean where the crust is to be thinner. You had to do seaborne drilling, which is hard, but you had to drill through less crust.

It seems that Texas drilling contractor Brown and Root blew through the budget and they never got there.

football size diamonds

[k6mfw]

I read someplace diamonds formed deep below (high temperatures, high pressures) are the size of footballs. However, as they are pushed upwards through the crust over millions of years, they get broken up into much smaller pieces. And much smaller than footballs when it finally makes it to the near surface. (yes diamonds are hard but give tectonic movements enough time, anything will break).

But think of what it would be like getting the diamond the size of a football! And all the chicks you can pick up with it.