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Scientists Begin Another Attempt To Drill Through the Earth's Crust
schwit1 writes: An expedition to the Indian Ocean is about to begin an effort to drill a core down through the Earth's crust and into its mantle. Geologists have been trying to drill through the contact between the crust and the mantle, called the Moho, since the 1960s, with no success. Either the projects have gone way over budget and been shut down, have failed due to engineering problems, or were stopped by the geology itself. This last issue is maybe the most interesting: "Expeditions have come close before. Between 2002 and 2011, four holes at a site in the eastern Pacific managed to reach fine-grained, brittle rock that geologists believe to be cooled magma sitting just above the Moho. But the drill could not punch through those tenacious layers. And in 2013, drillers at the nearby Hess Deep found themselves similarly limited by tough deep-crustal rocks." This new project hopes to learn from these past problems to obtain the first rock samples from below the Earth's crust. (Here's an eccentric introduction to the Hess Deep rift.)
I remember the earlier attempt. The Doctor stopped it by going forward in time, or went to an alternate dimension or something. I can't remember, but I do remember it destroyed the world. With Nazis.
...will probably be all over this one. Eons ago they published a cover story about a super-deep oil well that had drilled into Hell and let the Devil escape...there was a picture of billowing black smoke over an oil well fire that had been retouched to make a satanic face.
Egon, remember that time you tried to drill a hole through your head?
This does not go well, I've seen the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/
That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.
But the drill could not punch through those tenacious layers. And in 2013, drillers at the nearby Hess Deep found themselves similarly limited by tough deep-crustal rocks.
That's the engine warning you not to dig into hell. They will damn us all.
At heart, these geologists are the kids who just had to unwrap a golf ball and ended up putting out an eye.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Lizard Men living inside the hollow Earth won't allow it. They've already positioned plates of ultra-dense titanium right where we'll drill so we can't punch through...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
These wicked, wicked "scientists". Is it not enough that they fill our children's heads in school with nonsense like "evolution"? Now they're drilling *straight down*?!?!
THAT'S WHERE HELL IS!!!
turn the whole world into Oklahoma?
Never mind that interstellar space (or medium) consist of helium.
The interstellar medium is composed primarily by hydrogen followed by helium with trace amounts of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen comparatively to hydrogen.[
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_medium
The stupid, it hurts. That's pretty bad even by Hollywood standards.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Dude, do you even physics?
Geology noob here, with a noob question. Has the mantle been definitively proven to exist? Browsing the summary, it looks to me like no one has ever seen or touched the earth's mantle, and that scientists are trying to drill through the crust and reach the mantle for the first time to do exactly that.
It would be interesting if they they drill through the earth's crust completely, and instead of the mantle they find something else. Maybe more crust? Or....
If they succeed, I hope the result is in no way similar to what happens when you squash a well fed tick.
If they do break through they'll made a huge crack in the Earth, and a big chunk will fly up and make a second Moon. I know because I saw the movie.
"You shall not pass!!"
In space, no-one can hear you fail.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Do you even know what "interferometry" means?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Maybe you've watched too much 60's scifi.
Anybody can fly.
So long as it's on a roughly parabolic trajectory.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...but I also believe we shouldn't fuck with things with as much unknown
What level of unknown are you comfortable with?
How exactly is this going to "destabilize" the earth?
yes, some people like Edward Teller, Oppenheimer and Hans Bethe, hardly unscientific dullards. Then they actually ran the numbers and judged the fear to be unfounded, which you can read about below:
https://www.metabunk.org/debun...
That's called science. I know you don't really understand science or the scientific method, as you don't seem to realize that man made climate change is real. So what can anyone say to you at that point, but that's what happened. Scientists came up with a hypothesis and then tested it to the best of their abilities.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Just move fast enough that you continually miss the ground.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
"Notice that they do not so much fly as... plummet." -- Monty Python
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Because it's the only other answer than nuclear for our future. The longer we put off serious nuclear, the more we suffer, as we have seen. We need more power.
On the Earth, there are three stores of power. Stored sunlight in carbon, and stored supernovas in uranium and thorium that are in the crust itself. Those two we can get to now.
Of course the big enchilada is the stored heat from the formation of the solar system that is stored under the crust. Don't even have to build a machine to release the heat; don't have to burn or transmute anything; it's raw power itself; heat; that is there for the taking. I really can't imagine running out of that.
It would allow us to bypass this nuclear power political war that must come, if we are to advance as a species. Doesn't matter where you're at on AGW, carbon is not cutting it anymore. Imagine that very soon 20 billion people will want 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, air conditioning, hot running water, one new car, one older...
Where is that power coming from? Drill baby, drill.
That you have no imagination doesn't make it impossible. What's the weight of the crust? I would guess the pressure is about 100,000 psi (average) on the mantle. So what happens when you have a 10 cm hole in a balloon pressurized to 100,000 psi? does it matter if the filling in the balloon is molten rock?
Note I'm not saying what I think will happen, or my opinion on the whole matter. I'm just stating you are an idiot because you can't think of a single catastrophic thing that could happen from this.
Learn to love Alaska
Volcanos do this all of the time. This reminds me of people saying particle accelerators could create dangerous backholes, when much much higher energy particles slam our atmosphere all of the time.
I have to give you credit.. You posted some shit that makes you look like an uneducated moron, but at least you had the balls to do it without posting as an AC
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
... when you need him? :-)
"does it matter if the filling in the balloon is molten rock?"
If you ever had a nerdy card it's your time to return it... But of course yes: viscosity makes all the difference.
You're right, a hole that small won't make the world blow up unless you drill it through the exact center of the Large Hadron Collider
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'm just stating you are an idiot because you can't think of a single catastrophic thing that could happen from this.
Oh, I know, right? For example, the drill's high pressure oil system could spring a leak and cover you with black icky stuff from head to foot. Or you could drop a pipe wrench on your big toe.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This reminds me of people saying particle accelerators could create dangerous backholes, when much much higher energy particles slam our atmosphere all of the time.
That's not the issue. The issue is that accelerators smash things together from two opposing beams so that the average velocity is approximately zero.
High energy particles smash into the earth and create other high energy particles that have velocities that would still be just under the speed of light. It's possible that black holes from but just fly through the earth, never accumulating enough mass to slow down and just keep on going.
"setting off a nuclear weapon would destroy the atmosphere " it actually would, giving a sufficiently powerful weapon lol. Starfish Prime was only 1.4 megatons and caused damage almost 900 miles away. It would probably take something far larger than even the Tsar bomb at 50MT, and is (hopefully) still outside our technical capabilities. But it IS possible...
That you have no imagination doesn't make it impossible.
No, but knowing physics allows you to make informed guesses about things. I can imagine all sorts of wildly impossible things, like the earth being hollow and inhabited by lizard men. Just because I can imagine it, doesn't make it possible.
So what happens when you have a 10 cm hole in a balloon pressurized to 100,000 psi?
The earth isn't a balloon. The pressure in a balloon is caused by the skin. In the earth it's caused by the weight of stuff above.
Imagine what happens---actually you do need a good imagination. The molten rock starts gushing up the hole at 100,000psi pressure (or whatever). As it goes higher and higher, the the weight of the molten rock starts increasing the pressure at the bottom, since the 100,000 psi has to support the weight of the column of molten rock, any excess pressure of course pushes more melt out of the hole. This will continue until the pressure reaches equilibrium. At that point, molten rock will stop gushing up the hole.
Things might get a bit worse if there's a local excess of pressure due to convection currents, for example, but what you'll have there is a volcano with a very, very small chimney, and a pressure excess which isn't enough to push through the crust anyway. As the rock cools, it will plug the hole.
I'm just stating you are an idiot because you can't think of a single catastrophic thing that could happen from this.
Physics works. Just because I can imagine crazy outcomes like the earth popping like a balloon, an invasion of the lizard men released from their eternal prison or an unstoppable column of fire reaching half way to the moon, doesn't mean those imaginings are actually worth considering.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And it took me only 18 years to realize it. I should probably reinstall Total Annihilation now...
The Core : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt02... ;)
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Just because I can imagine crazy outcomes like the earth popping like a balloon, an invasion of the lizard men released from their eternal prison or an unstoppable column of fire reaching half way to the moon, doesn't mean those imaginings are actually worth considering.
Just start writing fantasy, then they're worth considering.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
so you're trying to say that it's the scientists who research global warming, who belong with the flat earthers for denying science?
what ever it is you're smoking, I think you've had enough.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Unless it is a left wing anti science nut, of which there are just as many.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yeah, you just buy a ticket on a passenger jet.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
just walk around Gros Morne National Park.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
I thought that was how you released the Balrog?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Note that the surrounding material is also under pressure. It hasn't really been "released", there won't be really "new" sudden physical conditions as they inch down.
/can/ do.
It's hard to imagine a catalytic surprise here. Your point still has some validity, reality itself can't be Absolutely Certain on anything, and it probably wouldn't be the first experiment that overlooked dramatic-grade potentials (which, yes, can be entirely beyond predicting), but in practice we estimate risk-reward and make a decision. That's all we
the plot of Crack in the World?
Yes, everyone here is sure that there will be no unintended consequences, like nobody has ever been wrong about unintended consequences. It's not about being certain before acing, but being able to assess risk. Low probability high impact risk events aren't gauged by humans well, nor are high probability low impact events.
Learn to love Alaska
something to do with basketball?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Just drop a "Heat bomb" in Antarctic ice sheets. You'll reboot the planet.
Casteism
So true, there are ignorant people all across the political spectrum. There is also a disturbingly large amount of fraud in science.
States which depend on coal for a large part of their industry consistently vote democrat, the only exception has been when the democrat running for president was black, they do tend to be a bit racist around here.
You are forgetting that people on all extremes of the political spectrum have been fabricating scientific studies as long as we have had scientific studies. Personally, on climate science, I don't trust either side. There are extremists in the midst of both crowds who would not hesitate to fabricate studies to convince the sheep of their view. However, knowing a little about the climate history of our planet, I doubt we are having anywhere near the effect that the extreme left is claiming, but we are certainly accelerating a trend that was going to happen anyway.