There are many ways scientists can find out what’s going on below the Earth’s surface — such as measuring seismic waves as they travel underground — but perhaps nothing beats a very, very, very deep hole.
Run according to the Chinese state Xinhua news agencywork is now underway to dig a borehole of 11,100 meters (36,417 feet) in the Taklamakan desert in northwestern China. That’s the equivalent of more than 33 Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other.
This isn’t quite the deepest people have ever been. The new excavation will not beat the 12,262 meters (40,230 feet). Kola Superdeep borehole in Russia (now abandoned), or the 12,290 meters (40,323 ft) BD-04A oil well in the Al Shaheen oil field in Qatar – but it comes close.
Chinese scientists hope the hole will greatly improve our understanding of Earth’s deep geology, while also searching for oil and gas reserves as drilling moves to ever lower depths.
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China hasn’t revealed much more about the details of the borehole, or the kind of experiments and analysis that will result when it’s finished, but it could help verify what we think we know about the Earth’s crust. continental crust goes to depths averaging about 30 kilometers (more than 18 miles), so this hole won’t hit the mantle.
It’s a huge engineering undertaking, as you can imagine. The hole will not be completed for more than a year and some 2,000 tons of equipment and tools – including drills and drill pipes – have been brought in for the job.
For an idea of how difficult drilling to these depths can be, look at the Kola Superdeep Borehole. Work on that project began in May 1970 and continued through 1994, with a total of five boreholes being dug due to mechanical failures and defects.
However, it turned out to be very useful: scientists found water and hydrogen in quantities and at depths they did not expect. Another interesting discovery was the presence of microscopic planktonic fossils about 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) below the surface.
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a large truck riding on two thin steel cables,” said scientist Sun Jinsheng of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Xinhua.
The equipment used to create the borehole must be able to withstand temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit) and atmospheric pressures some 1,300 times higher than at the surface.
When complete, the new hole in China will go through 10 continental layers — the layers of sedimentary rock that stretch across entire continents — all the way back to China in about 450 days (approximately). the Cretaceous Systemformed as far back as 145 million years ago.
