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> 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.




> 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?


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?


Glad you caught the irony in that comment ;-)


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


Geothermal isn't really sustainable (in the long, long term). The heat is built up due to some special geology, think an insulating blanket. Once you use this heat to make electricity you lower the temperature of the rock and it takes a very, very long time to warm up again.


It is sustainable enough under any reasonable scenario, and will in effect mainly just harness some of the heat that already dissipates.

As for for rewarming the rock: if the strata that were porous and water filled were found at the appropriate levels this problem would be reduced. One would not need to hydro-shear the rock is normal in EGS plants nowadays (with some inconvenient side-effects - see Basel)[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_system


How many Watts would a single such hole generate? And how sustainable would it be?


> I'd be very surprised if there's a vertical hole.

Ok, is the reported depth the true depth, or the length along the hole?


On this page, about 1/3 down the way (it's in Russian) is a nice schematic of the hole that shows it's not vertical at all:

https://realt.onliner.by/2015/11/19/kola

The depth is the true depth, apparently.


Google Translate (to English) works really well on this article.




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