
Kola Superdeep Borehole - mrzool
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
======
saagarjha
The borehole has now been welded shut and is surrounded by the ruins of the
project. The actual borehole itself is pretty unassuming for something that
goes twelve kilometers into the Earth's crust:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole#/media...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole#/media/File:Сама_скважина\(заварена\),_август_2012.JPG)

~~~
avian
How stable are abandoned holes like that? I would imagine that at those
temperatures and pressures, the rock would slowly flow and refill the hole
after a while.

~~~
mnw21cam
It got to 180C at the bottom. That's nowhere near hot enough to melt rock. Not
sure about the pressure though. I get the feeling though that rock tends to
either stay put or shift all at once (like an earthquake).

~~~
avian
Not hot enough to melt, but heat definitely reduces structural integrity of
materials. And pressures on the rock so deep are immense. This article linked
from Wikipedia seems to confirm that the hole tended to close itself when they
were drilling:

"At that level of heat and pressure, the rocks began to act more like a
plastic than a solid, and the hole had a tendency to flow closed whenever the
drill bit was pulled out for replacement."

[https://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-
hole/](https://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-hole/)

------
knbknb
I have re-created a CGI Script that we have programmed years ago, when some
Russian geologists were visiting our institute.

This visualises a generalised lithological log: That means, some of the rocks
recovered from the hole, and their thicknesses.

[https://data.icdp-
online.org/sites/kola/tpl/litholog_sel.htm](https://data.icdp-
online.org/sites/kola/tpl/litholog_sel.htm)

Let's seee if I manage to make the script more interactive.

------
ofrzeta
See also the image gallery: [http://rusue.com/abandoned-kola-superdeep-
borehole/](http://rusue.com/abandoned-kola-superdeep-borehole/)

~~~
Vekz
"It is rumored that at some point the drilling rig began to vibrate
unnaturally as if someone were jerking for it from below."

~~~
taneq
"When the well reached a mark of about 12,000 meters, scientific equipment
recorded sounds resembling the cries and groans of thousands of martyrs
emanating from the depths."

I think we've crossed the line from documentary to creepypasta.

------
abhiminator
Super interesting.

It's kind of hard to believe how our species has managed to explore furthest
of planets, stars and galaxies while just drilling 7.62 miles through the
crust of the very planet we exist on and "dominate" [0] -- a testament to how
challenging crust drilling can be, right on par with exploring deepest parts
of Earth's oceans.

[0] [https://www.fs.blog/2016/01/yuval-noah-hararri-on-why-we-
dom...](https://www.fs.blog/2016/01/yuval-noah-hararri-on-why-we-dominate-the-
earth-myth-making/)

~~~
avian
I don’t find it surprising at all that we found traveling through a vacuum
easier than traveling through solid granite.

Imagine how much mass that drillbit had to go through and now translate that
into the density of interstellar medium. You could probably travel half way
across the galaxy before your space ship went through as much matter as that
drill.

------
asah
I'm curious:

What did/does such a project cost?

Is there substantial scientific value to going further?

I can imagine some tech billionaire(s) funding a follow-on project, esp in a
more hospitable location that could attract tourists, press, etc.

------
wruza
Also,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax)

------
brian-armstrong
This article lead me down the rabbit hole to the page for Mud (drilling fluid)
engineer, which might be one of the most vandalized articles I've ever seen (#
vandalizing edits/total edits)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Mud_engineer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Mud_engineer)

~~~
mark212
glad I'm not the only one who went down that hole (pun very much intended) and
started watching videos about the Reelwell Drilling Method and horizontal
displacement techniques.

------
nellaby
Really interesting experiment. Since the temperature was greater than expected
would that have any bearing on being able to use bore holes for geothermal
power?

I believe they are trialling this in a few places but I can't help but think
that a hole that small (circumference wise!) could be easily implemented and
potentially used as an energy source

~~~
ianai
I was curious about that too. It might just be too expensive to pump water
down and back to extract power.

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Jaruzel
Continental crust is between 20 miles deep and 50 miles deep, this borehole
'only' managed to get to 7.4 miles deep - we've still go a long way to go
before we get to The Lost World of the Dinosaurs.

~~~
okket
Must be a special kind of Dinosaurs, which could survive even on Venus.

~~~
avip
I was thinking he's referencing Verne's "Voyage au centre de la Terre".

~~~
Jaruzel
Bingo!

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YeGoblynQueenne
I would like to understand why drilling stopped at the depth it did. Was it
something to do with the material at that depth, something to do with the
drill, some other factor?

~~~
abhiminator
>Because of higher-than-expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180
°C (356 °F) instead of the expected 100 °C (212 °F), drilling deeper was
deemed unfeasible and the drilling was stopped in 1992. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole#Drilli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole#Drilling)

~~~
wallace_f
180C sounds like a rock that somehow got into the oven and can be easily
removed with mitts on, not something like 1,000C lava.

In other words I'm confused by why 180C stopped the drilling process.

~~~
nerdponx
Someone attempted to explain that in this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17337270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17337270)

------
amelius
Did they make any special geological discoveries?

Did they find any precious metals, etc.?

Also, I'm wondering, is it possible to measure the depth of the hole using a
laser?

~~~
bcraven
> Did they make any special geological discoveries?

[From the Wikipedia article:] To scientists, one of the more fascinating
findings to emerge from this well is that no transition from granite to basalt
was found at the depth of about 7 km (4.3 mi), where the velocity of seismic
waves has a discontinuity. Instead the change in the seismic wave velocity is
caused by a metamorphic transition in the granite rock. In addition, the rock
at that depth had been thoroughly fractured and was saturated with water,
which was surprising. This water, unlike surface water, must have come from
deep-crust minerals and had been unable to reach the surface because of a
layer of impermeable rock.

Another unexpected discovery was a large quantity of hydrogen gas. The mud
that flowed out of the hole was described as "boiling" with hydrogen.

> Did they find any precious metals, etc.?

These concentrate in veins, so the single borehole would not be the best way
to find out. They were probably recorded in mud logs somewhere.

> is it possible to measure the depth of the hole using a laser

Holes like this are very rarely totally straight as the geology likes to
manipulate the drill string as it descends. Whilst this won't be a true
deviated well (due to the research goals) I'd be very surprised if there's a
vertical hole.

~~~
stareatgoats
> the rock at that depth had been thoroughly fractured and was saturated with
> water

This is what makes me think that drilling to great depths and utilizing the
energy there for sustainable power generation should be possible.

It's just a matter of developing the right drilling technology. How hard can
it be?

~~~
Piskvorrr
Ah, indeed, the dreaded question "How hard can it be?" and its rarely-spoken
assumption "that looks simple from my armchair". Well...most of the low-
hanging fruit has already been picked, and things that _look_ simple are
chock-full of those pesky details that are handwaved away in the birds-eye
view. "Just use the right technology," and you have flying cars, strong AI,
self-driving vehicles, space elevators and whatnot. How hard can it be?

~~~
stareatgoats
Glad you caught the irony in that comment ;-)

~~~
Piskvorrr
Somebody should make a reliable sentiment analyser. How hard could that be? ;)

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Pandavonium
A nice video explainer from scishow:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs)

~~~
Something1234
Please don't link to scishow. They produce trash, and often don't do due
diligence with their videos.

~~~
Pandavonium
That's a shame, I like their presenters. Are there any interesting science-
related YouTube channels that you can recommend?

~~~
Something1234
I like a lot of PBS's content. Like physics girl, and what the physics.
Engineer Guy also produces good content. MinutePhysics is also a good choice.
As for math related topics, I love 3Blue1Brown.

In general I find science journalism lacking.

My biggest problem with SciShow is that it's a bunch of people who lack a true
science background commenting on topics. I really don't think that they do
their due diligence in reporting, there's been cases where they present
incorrect findings, and hype up the physically impossible.

~~~
Pandavonium
Cool, thanks for the recommendations. I gravitated to SciShow because was
produced by Hank Green, who's other YouTube offerings I really enjoy. I guess
it's a lesson to be more critical with my sources, regardless of the author's
previous work.

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bitL
Was there some explosion in one of those buildings? Doesn't look like
theft/vandalism to me...

~~~
Already__Taken
Looks like the drill tower used to be there, maybe they just wholesale lifted
the proprietary drilling rig out of there. I'm sure they had to invent a thing
or two about drilling to do this research.

------
walrus01
You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep.
You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm... shadow and flame.".

------
m0skit0
Back when Russia actually did science.

~~~
m0skit0
List of Science Nobel Prizes educated in the USSR:

\- Andre Geim, Physics, 2010

\- Konstantin Novoselov, Physics, 2010

\- Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov, Physics, 2003

\- Vitaly Ginzburg, Physics, 2003

\- Zhores Alferov, Physics, 2000

\- Pyotr Kapitsa, Physics, 1978

\- Ilya Prigogine, Chemistry, 1977

\- Leonid Kantorovich, Economics, 1975

\- Nikolay Basov, Physics, 1964

\- Alexander Prokhorov, Physics, 1964

\- Lev Landau, Physics, 1962

\- Pavel Cherenkov, Physics, 1958

\- Igor Tamm, Physics, 1958

\- Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, Physics, 1958

\- Nikolay Semyonov, Chemistry, 1956

List of Nobel Prizes educated in post-Soviet Russia:

~~~
Fins
Most of them either were educated in (old, pre-USSR) Russia, or by people who
had Russian education. Once the generation changed, people educated in/by
Soviet system achieved... well, you've listed it.

~~~
m0skit0
Your lack of arithmetic is disturbing.

~~~
Fins
Do you have something more substantial to offer?

Or will you suggest that a country where communism is "scientific" and whole
areas of science can be banned is actually capable of developing homegrown
science? This is laughable on its face.

~~~
m0skit0
You mean like Cuba? [https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/09/cuba-
has...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/09/cuba-has-lung-
cancer-vaccine-many-u-s-patients-cant-get-without-breaking-law/1019093001/)

Your claim is that most of these Nobel prizes were educated in the Russian
Empire is simply false based on their age.

Can you provide examples of these whole areas of science banned in the
USSR/socialist states?

~~~
Fins
You could have read the entire sentence -- while there were some remnants of
the pre-revolution education teaching in schools, there were Nobels. Once they
had died out, and the new generation educated in Soviet schools by Soviet-
educated teachers appeared, Nobels went away.

I guess you have never heard about genetics? It's generally considered to be a
science. Except in USSR where for a long time it was officially termed a
pseudo-science and a call-girl of imperialism.

~~~
m0skit0
Your point is that Soviet education was bad. By 1980 it was as good (if not
better) than American education.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_Soviet_Union)

[https://www.quora.com/Do-you-believe-Soviet-Union-
education-...](https://www.quora.com/Do-you-believe-Soviet-Union-education-
system-was-the-best-in-the-world-at-that-time-Why)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ycco6/how_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ycco6/how_did_the_quality_of_soviet_education_compare/)

What you're talking about is Lysenkoism and it was mostly during Stalin rule.
Later Soviet biologists actually criticized Lysenko and the whole anti-
genetics stance. Similar movements also happened in Western science, like
Social Darwinism for example.

~~~
Fins
Social Darwinism or anything like that has never been appointed as the one and
only TRUE THING with scientific opponents sent off to labor camps.

Also, soviet high elementary through high school education was... I'm not sure
if "better" is the correct word, but it certainly taught more science than
American schools do, if we compare average American school with a good school
in Moscow, Leningrad, or similar large cities.

College level education in USSR was nowhere near as good as American -- you
can't have good education if teaching people to think for themselves is
physically dangerous.

[Source: I attended better than average schools and a decent college in
Moscow]

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dirktheman
There's a well known urban legend about the borehole that they stopped
drilling when a scientist lowered a microphone into the hole. When they played
back the recording they heard terrible screams, supposedly from people trapped
in hell. Nice campfire story!

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax)

~~~
toomanybeersies
Any mention of the Kola Borehole isn't complete without a mention to this
story.

