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$1 Billion Mission To Reach the Earth's Mantle
black6host writes "Humans have reached the moon and are planning to return samples from Mars, but when it comes to exploring the land deep beneath our feet, we have only scratched the surface of our planet. This may be about to change with a $1 billion mission to drill 6 km (3.7 miles) beneath the seafloor to reach the Earth's mantle — a 3000 km-thick layer of slowly deforming rock between the crust and the core which makes up the majority of our planet — and bring back the first ever fresh samples."
Please remember to wear your heat suit when venturing outside the vessel.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
I wonder if by samples, they mean the live dinosaurs that inhabit hollow earth.
sudo make me a sandwich
Forgive my ignorance here but don't we already have this? What's wrong with using a volcano?
The unfresh samples at Gros Morne not good enough?
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
I know how this ends...with a giant sucking sound as the world's oceans drain into the earth's core. Then, as steam builds inside the planet, the earth turns into a giant exploding kernel of popcorn.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Just don't overestimate the DESTINI-- I mean density of the core-- I mean mantle.
by Cyphase ( 907627 )
But this one is a live (and good) comic strip: http://www.reptilisrex.com/
This might be a good way to terraform... might this create a volcanic island?
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
They've been training for this for years. The original project was supposed to take place back in 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wurm:_Journey_to_the_Center_of_the_Earth
can i vote against this?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Lets hope the Earth crust is not a balloon...
Used to watch this on Saturday morning with "Superhost" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHtZ6Ixeqvs
RELEASE THE MORLOCKS!
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnqMOZHW8YPNEWVW03mSRQKjNRo-TT7g38a60HEoOdZBD4Ixj-Bw
This movie?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
What's that I see?
Everyone knows you're supposed to enter through the poles...
Now that was money well spent.
Dust!
We just dont have enough dust here on our planet!
Anyone who has visited my home, can tell that Im addicted to dust.
Why don't you just call is Preparation Ass Cream
In my experience CNN typically writes stories with fancy headlines to generate clicks.
This story fails the BS sniff test.
To get to the mantle scientists will be relying on a purpose-built Japanese deep-sea drilling vessel called Chikyu
Chikyu, meet Cthulhu. :p
A number so great that it has an extra I
Would we get more enjoyment if we gave the money to Michael Bay to remake "The Core"?
Please tell me my taxes aren't involved...
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I tell you, if any untold horrors come out of there, I shall just point at the hole in the adamantine, say "ain't my fault", and whistle as I walk away and get quickly minced into an unrecognizable mess.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The humans delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame.
Anytime you do something like this you always take your token black guy with you so when something goes wrong he can be the one to die trying to fix it so the other people that actually matter to the mission can live.
Man, Dr. Evil needs to get himself a copyeditor.
"Down there," said Golg, "I could show you real gold, real silver, real diamonds."
"Bosh!" said Jill rudely. "As if we didn't know that we're below the deepest mines even here."
"Yes," said Golg. "I have heard of those little scratches in the crust that you Topdwellers call mines. But
that's where you get dead gold, dead silver, dead gems. Down in Bism we have them alive and growing.
There I'll pick you bunches of rubies that you can eat and squeeze you a cup full of diamond-juice. You
won't care much about fingering the cold, dead treasures of your shallow mines after you have tasted the
live ones of Bism."
"My father went to the world's end," said Rilian thoughtfully. "It would be a marvellous thing if his son
went to the bottom of the world."
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I did this once in dwarf fortress... Protip, it creates a lot of FUN.
"Crack in the world"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/
What exactly would be the problem with contacting Morlocks in the year 002012? The only reason they had settled for farming and eating Eloi by 802701 was because the Morlocks had already hunted most other wildlife to extinction.
good will come from this....
There is no escape from the fortress of the Moles!
20,000 leagues under the sea?
Seriously, though: what's the possibility that they could turn a deep ocean trench into Earth's very own Mount Olympus? :p
On a Journey to the Centre of the Earth pick a door, any door.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Umm, the easiest way into Undermountain is in the well of the Yawning Portal, but if you don't have the gold piece to spare you can go through the basement.
You mean Halaster?
And there is always Skullport.
Next thing someone will want to stick a bomb in it to break through that final diamond barrier...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_World (Great almost the end of the world movie)
They should use part of the 1 billiion to buy a spell checker. Either that, or with all that money they bought an extra vowel!
I believe it's spelled: one BIIIIIIIILLION dollars...
Really Slashdot, now we don't even spell check titles anymore? Billiion, with three "i"'s? Really?
Fuck it, I'm out. There are plenty of other websites out there that report things faster than Slashdot, spell check (and sometimes even grammar check) their post titles, and are a lot more balanced than Slashdot (try telling people you want to start a company with closed source code - even it will be cross platform and use Qt). Best of luck, but I'm unsubscribing.
Couldn't this possibly cause a volcano type blow out?
Yeah, and it's showing a hell of a rash for it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So what is that rumbling noise and why is everyone going uh oh?
I realize Inferno was aired decades ago, but have we forgotten?
Don't they remember the Inhumanoids; the evil that lies within?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The pressure below is so high that the creep of rock may fill back the hole as it is drilled.
Do they plan to reinforce the hole wall ?
With which material ? Even if they find one, this will make the project a lot more complicated...
I know it isn't going to happen like this, but I cannot help but think of the flooded salt mine on Lake Peigneur. Some drillers miscalculated their location and drilled down, through a lake bed, into a nearby salt mine shaft. The lake was drained and temporarily reversed the flow of nearby rivers. Look it up on youtube... its kind of interesting to hear how a relatively small 14 inch drill bit can cause a disaster large enough to sink multiple barges and reverse rivers.
This was attempted before but ran out of funding before it got far:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mohole
We get free samples all the time, it is called volcanic eruptions.
All drilling to the mantle will do is create a new volcano.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I.e. a volcanic irruption....
Geophysicist David Stevenson of Cal Tech proposes we make a probe that rides a molten mass of iron, 10,000 cubic meters of it poured into a fissue 0.1 meter wide x 300 long x 300 meter deep, all the way to the center of the earth.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcampanian.iodp.org%2FMantleFrontier%2F12_Ojovan%2520-%2520Self_Sinking_Capsules_-_Ojovan.pdf&ei=egNrUMiMKuOeywH48YFw&usg=AFQjCNF3htj3aVkXi4Ln7xttNgFiL4TW5A&sig2=-xgVnfbwNGwtVNN6w7s_ZQ
We can finally reach the gooey jelly filling!
Any bets on what flavor it'll be?
-
That was a base on the moon, not getting to the earth's core. But I love those movies.
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005148/
That was Delroy Lindo apparently. Can't really give you a hard time, I briefly thought it was Morgan Freeman which is clearly ridiclous. Morgan Freeman has been on my mind since that YouTube video I saw awhile ago, so maybe that's it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eV8l_Qb8Fc
What are they going to do when mantle juice starts gushing out of the hole & they can't stop it? We're all done for!
... well documented in"Crack in the World"?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Scientists come up with evidence-based ideas and then try to test them.
Religion makes absolute proclamations and damns people who disagree.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
its kind of interesting to hear how a relatively small 14 inch drill bit can cause a disaster large enough to sink multiple barges and reverse rivers.
It can't.
What can, is an extensive salt mine placed under a lake.
This has bad idea written all over it. Supervolcano anyone? Just not smart
Never would I have thought science could be kicked out of the park regarding journeys beneath our feet further than The Core until ... I saw the "elevator" in TR 2012.
So expensive, they had to create a new number!
Also funny because this story was double-posted to correct redundant dollars ($1 Billiion dollar... to $1 Billiion) yet they still forgot to correct the redundant "i".
They did this a long time before The Core. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/ with really disastrous results.
So... we had a devil of a time spending tons of money to patch a teensie oil leak under water... and now we want to potentially make more things leak worse intentionally?
Have we lost our minds completely... ?
I mean, I've lost mine but I didn't realize that everyone else had as well.
The real problem is the mud. So to more or less balance pressure at the bottom of the hole, you need the drilling mud to be so heavy that I really donno how to make it. Hmm a lubricating coolant with the density of aluminum that can be pumped around at sea level on the surface like water... Oh and it has to be stable around 600 degrees F (which is why they gave up on Kola). So anything other than asphalt (including teflon) will be vapor.... its just a mess.
Another fun limitation is if the bottom pressure is 10000 psi (made up) the pressure half way up is 5000 psi now can your cemented in holes survive that?
You know those engineering puzzles like from statics/dynamics class "how tall of a cylindrical flagpole can you make out of concrete / steel / CF until it buckles" well my cousins in the Louisiana petrochem industry have puzzlers like "imagine an infinite budget and you wanna dig 10 miles straight down, now write an essay explaining all the technical limitations".
Someday the tech might change to something like a vertical tunnel boring machine. Maybe thats what they're going to try. That would certainly be very interesting.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
No, it's from Austin Powers in Goldmember.
Be relentless!
If this is done it will set a new precident to follow or topple. As we live in a opportunistic capitalism run world it wont take ong for major coporations to follow suit and start drilling deeper for oil, rare minerals etc. If anything is found of value or anything that can have a value put on it you can bet mega corporations will be racing to drill. In the meantime no one will be paying enough attention or care as to the reprecussions of this action. In the meantime the deep drlling releases more heat from the earth's core and into the atmosphere thereby accelerating glacial melting and making the planet eventually inhabitable. Granted it wont happen overnight but it will happen. The first two justifications for the deeper drilling will be oil and thermal energy then others will follow suit. This will accelerate global warming and the greenhouse effect.
Meanwhile food shortages, global instablization, and the proliferation of plagues, diseases and disorders will follow as we will create more sub tropical and desert environments where lethal animals, insects and the like can flourish such as snakes, aligators, mosquitos and more. We will eventually burn ourselves to extinction as the heat will begin to affect our reproduction as well. You can think I am being dramatic I just see the writing on the wall mankind has a penchant for acting without thinking and this is a prime example. Just like Fracking running lose with no regulations courtesy of lobbysts from Halliburton.
Yeah, I think it was from the crater of Mt. Nyiragongo, DRC, they even made a documentary about it on Nat. Geo. Region-limited Youtube link. I've seen this show, it's awesome, makes me wish I had a projector and a rocket heater to get the full experience without actually leaving my comfy chair.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Reminds me of what seems to routinely happen to me in Minecraft...
thanks for the reading, very informative!
As soon as they have access to the surface. they're going to want green cards. Instead of the "wet foot dry foot" policy Americans have for the the cuban refugees, it could be "deep foot surface foot". Becha the Mormons are going to want to send missionaries toot sweet !
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
Wonder if they'll be using anything similar to this: http://www.google.com/patents?id=PdAuAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Apparently, it's a subterranean atomic drill. Quite interesting, and quite old. If it -- or similar technology -- ever was employed, I suspect it has evolved since.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Balrog
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/360436/were-sorry
to what end? For what purpose?
Recipe for a Planet
See also 'Project Mohole'
Ditto, thanks Kaptain.
I'm surprised to see (unless I missed it) no reference to earlier attempts, Project Moho for example.
If we've never drilled 3.7 miles below the ocean floor to the mantle, then how do we know that it exists at all? Am I the dumb one here or is it everyone else?
You talk better than you fool!
Yeah, I'm sure they're going to find investors who really want to 'Inspire and advance human knowledge.' That's what companies these days are all about.
This is a little like trying to figure out what the inside of an elephant is like by taking core samples the size of a hypodermic needle.
What will they find deep within the earth? There are only two choices: dinosaurs or zombies!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
This does not sound like a good idea to me. The mantle is hot, under a lot of pressure, and wants to escape upwards. Hence we get mountains and volcanoes. The land mass and water above the mantle provide an opposing force that keeps the mantle contained. We seem to have a nice balance here. I just can't see poking a hole in here and risk modifying this balance. Perhaps it is perfectly safe, but have these scientist really thought everything through and could they be wrong.
I believe that this is the lowest S/N ratio that I have ever seen on a Slashdot story, particularly a science story.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It was 99% certain that mantle rocks had been brought to surface in ophiolites (obducted seafloor) and kimberlites (explosive vents). you should study these first at a vastly cheaper cost.
50 years later we have much more cost-effective drilling and want to close that 1% uncertainty gap.
Mars rocks are like this too. There about 50 meteor samples that 99% certain to come from Mars because the mineralogy and gas inclusions exactly match what Mars probes measured. But at some point we will want to and be able to retrieve actual samples to close the final uncertainty gap. The cheapest retrieval mission is estimated at about $5B, comprised of three partial missions. And far too expensive for NASA in the current budget climate.
now has a whole new meaning..
A boat was a hole in water you pore your money into. This will be way more efficient....
Do I start flaying my arms now? Danger Danger ..
Just brilliant ....
...how do we know how thick the crust is, if we've never been through it? How do we know anything as such even exists? I love seeing the cut-section model of our planet, showing the crust, mantel and core. But how did anyone ever come to know that the Earth is comprised of such?
This has been done before, donkeys years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What are they thinking?!? The Earth will deflate and fly away like a balloon if they do this! We might end up in the Gamma Quadrant when this is all said and done.
Who says they have to keep the shaft open? If they don't mind doing twice the work, they could turn around and drill back out. Of course, that presents other issues like what to do if a drill breaks.
Holy shit, if you punch a hole in that thing I will not be responsible!
Right becasue we know we can build safety protocols to drill a hole, under miles of ocean, into what is assuredly a very highly pressurized molten ocean of mostly iron.
Why don't they just call it what it is, or rather will be? A man-made plinian or phreatomagmatic (if it develops even the tiniest leak of water into the rig) volcanic vent.
I for one welcome our first man-made volcano, although I am perplexed why none of Earth's submarine volcanoes can be utilized to examine the core.
But, I look forward to this 3.7 mile deep drilled hole. What could possibly go wrong drilling miles under the ocean looking for liquids trapped in/under the Earth's crust?
Maybe Hyundai Heavy Industries knows of a rig we can use?
It's all fun and games until we kick off the next plague.
I recall watching some incredibly awful movie on TV in the 1960s, where there were unexpected results from deep drilling project: giant chickens emerged from the bowels of the Earth and terrorized the population.
I just hope they plan to bring a log with a bump with a frog on it in order to plug up the hole they make, otherwise when they leave... Whoosh!
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
This has been done before en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mohole
...the Earth's mantle will be coming to us in two months.
Russians have already been twice as far as this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
The project to liberate the great space lord will soon begin! Xenu will be free and reestablish his galactic empire! Embrace your inner thetans!
who cares?
They'll just have to plan on drilling on their way out, same as they did on their way in.
A more interesting situation might be that they must always keep moving/drilling, lest they be crushed by staying in one spot too long. The drill is only in one direction, how does the ship keep from getting crushed laterally?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
From the Archives of Failed Science reality rears its gnarled and very ugly head: Project Mohole.
I'll just post a full breath from the web:
http://www.nas.edu/history/mohole/
Project Mohole was an attempt to retrieve a sample of material from the earth's mantle by drilling a hole through the earth's crust to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, or Moho. The project was suggested in March 1957 by Walter Munk, NAS member (1956) and member of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Earth Science Panel.
Project Mohole represented, as one historian has described it, the earth sciences' answer to the space program. If successful, this highly ambitious exploration of the intraterrestrial frontier would provide invaluable information on the earth's age, makeup, and internal processes. In addition, evidence drawn from the Moho could be brought to bear on the question of continental drift, which at the time was still controversial.
The Mohorovicic Discontinuity marks the boundary between the earth's crust and mantle. (The Moho was named for Andrija Mohorovicic, a Croatian geologist who first proposed the existence of such a discontinuity. ) The plan was to drill to the Moho through the seafloor, at those points where the earth's crust is thinnest. Attempting such an effort on land would have been impractical, since the drilling equipment would not have withstood the depths and temperatures involved. Ocean drilling offered a further advantage in that undersea samples, undistorted by atmospheric and surface actions, would provide better evidence of long term geological activity than would samples drawn from land.
The American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC), an informal group of scientists of which Munk was a member, endorsed Munk's idea. The group was formed in 1952 when Office of Naval Research geophysicists Gordon Lill and Carl Alexis found themselves handling research proposals that fit into no existing scientific categories. Out of that "precarious miscellany" AMSOC emerged, as a forum for scientific speculation. When funds for Project Mohole had been obtained from NSF, AMSOC in 1958 took charge of the effort as an official study unit of the National Research Council's Division of Earth Sciences.
Project Mohole was to include three phases, the first consisting of an experimental drilling program, the second consisting of an intermediate vessel program, and the third consisting of the final drilling to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity. After ocean-going trials off La Jolla, California, Phase I began in earnest with a set of drillings off Guadalupe, Mexico, in March and April 1961. Five holes, one of which extended 601feet beneath the seafloor, were drilled under 11,700 feet of water. Cores obtained from the holes showed that the first layer of crust extended 557 feet and consisted of sediment Miocene in age. The second layer of crust was sampled for the first time, and this was found to consist of basalt. After the unprecedented success of Phase I, it was decided to shift operational control to NSF while maintaining the AMSOC Committee as project adviser. This relationship proved to be unsatisfactory, and after a series of negotiations and redefined agreements with NSF, the AMSOC Committee in 1964 dissolved itself. Following the AMSOC Committee's dissolution, two new National Academies committees continued to advise the NSF Mohole activity until Congress, objecting to increasing costs, discontinued the project toward the end of 1966, before Phase II could be implemented.
Although Project Mohole failed in its intended purpose, it did show that deep ocean drilling was a viable means of obtaining geological samples. Since Mohole's demise a number of related programs have been undertaken, the most recent one being the NSF's Ocean Drilling Program.
Take the other side of the big oil bets and knock the price back down to a reasonable 20 dollars per barrel.
That will do more for humanity than a hole in the ground.
I can take the balance weights off your car wheel with a paperclip and the loss of balance just might make the wheel wobble enough to fall off.
It's easier to stop something moving when other forces exist to assist you, then it is to get it started all on it's own.
do you know soldiers don't march synchronized when crossing a bridge?
a small platoon on foot can take down a bridge....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Paging Roger Zelazny...
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
deep fracking?
I heard the Japanese made a good attempt at this at Fukushima.