Kola Superdeep Well Since the end of the 19th century, it has been believed that the Earth consists of a crust, a mantle, and a core. At the same time, no one really could tell where one layer ends and the next one begins. Scientists did not even know what, in fact, these layers consist of. Some 30 years ago, researchers were sure that the layer of granites begins at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to three kilometers, and then basalts come. The mantle was supposed to be at a depth of 15-18 kilometers.
An ultra-deep well, which began to be drilled in the USSR on the Kola Peninsula, showed that scientists were wrong ...
Dive for three billion years
Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 1960s in several countries at once. The Americans were the first to drill ultra-deep wells, and they tried to do this in places where, according to seismic studies, the earth's crust should have been thinner. These places, according to calculations, were at the bottom of the oceans, and the area near the island of Maui from the Hawaiian group was considered the most promising, where ancient rocks lie under the very ocean floor and the earth's mantle is located approximately at a depth of five kilometers under a four-kilometer water column. Alas, both attempts to break through the earth's crust in this place ended in failure at a depth of three kilometers.
The first domestic projects also involved underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR that a well should be created on the continent. Although it would take an incomparably longer time to drill, he thought, the well would be far more scientifically valuable. The drilling site was chosen on the Kola Peninsula, which is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which consists of the most ancient terrestrial rocks known to mankind. The multi-kilometer section of the shield layers, as conceived by scientists, was supposed to show a picture of the history of the planet over the past three billion years.
Deeper, and deeper, and deeper...
The start of work after almost five years of preparation was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin in 1970. The project was started in earnest. The well operated 16 research laboratories, each the size of an average plant; the project was personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR. Ordinary employees received a triple salary. Everyone was guaranteed an apartment in Moscow or Leningrad. It is not surprising that getting to the Kola Superdeep was much more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps.
The appearance of the well was capable of disappointing an outside observer. No elevators and spiral staircases leading deep into the Earth. Only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters went underground. In general, the Kola super-deep can be imagined as a thin needle piercing the earth's thickness. The drill located at the end of this needle with numerous sensors, after several hours of work, was raised for almost a whole day for inspection, reading and repair, and then lowered for a day. Faster is impossible: the strongest composite cable (drill string) could break under its own weight.
What was happening at depth at the time of drilling was not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters were transmitted upward with a minute delay. Nevertheless, the drillers said that even such contact with the dungeon was sometimes frightening in earnest. The sounds coming from below were like shrieks and howls. To this we can add a long list of accidents that haunted the Kola superdeep when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers. Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures from which it could take on this form are comparable to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. Once the cable seemed to be pulled from below - and cut off. Subsequently, when drilling in the same place, no remnants of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents is still a mystery. However, they were not at all the reason for stopping the drilling of the bowels of the Baltic Shield.
In 1983, when the depth of the well reached 12,066 meters, work was temporarily stopped: it was decided to prepare materials on ultra-deep drilling for the International Geological Congress, which was planned to be held in 1984 in Moscow. On it, foreign scientists first learned about the very existence of the Kola Superdeep, all information about which had been classified until then. Work resumed on September 27, 1984. However, during the first descent of the drill, an accident occurred - the drill string broke again. It was necessary to continue drilling from a depth of 7000 meters, creating a new trunk, and by 1990 this new branch had reached 12,262 meters, which was an absolute record for ultra-deep wells, broken only in 2008. Drilling was stopped in 1992, this time, as it turned out, forever. There were no funds for further work.
Discoveries and finds
The discoveries made at the Kola Superdeep have made a real revolution in our knowledge of the structure of the earth's crust. Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers. This means that a well can be drilled almost up to 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle. But already at the fifth kilometer the temperature exceeded 700°C, at the seventh - over 1200°C, and at a depth of twelve it was roasting more than 2200°C.
The Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the range up to 12,262 meters. It was believed that there is a surface layer (young rocks), then granites, basalts, a mantle and a core should go. But the granites turned out to be three kilometers lower than expected. The basalts that were supposed to lie under them were not found at all. An incredible surprise for scientists was the abundance of cracks and voids at a depth of more than 10 kilometers. In these voids, the drill swayed like a pendulum, which led to serious difficulties in work due to its deviation from the vertical axis. In the voids, the presence of water vapor was recorded, which moved there at high speed, as if carried by some unknown pumps. These pairs created the very sounds that thrilled the drillers.
Quite unexpectedly for everyone, the hypothesis of the writer Alexei Tolstoy about the olivine belt, expressed in the novel The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin, was confirmed. At a depth of more than 9.5 kilometers, they discovered a real storehouse of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, which turned out to be 78 grams per ton. By the way, industrial production is carried out at a concentration of 34 grams per ton.
Another surprise: life on Earth arose, it turns out, one and a half billion years earlier than expected. At depths where, as it was believed, there could be no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were found (the age of these layers exceeded 2.8 billion years). At even greater depths, where there are no longer sedimentary rocks, methane appeared in high concentrations, which finally disproved the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas.
It is impossible not to mention the discovery made when comparing the lunar soil delivered by the Soviet space station in the late 70s from the surface of the Moon, and samples taken at the Kola well from a depth of 3 kilometers. It turned out that these samples are like two peas in a pod. Some astronomers saw this as evidence that the Moon had once broken away from the Earth as a result of a cataclysm (possibly a collision of the planet with a large asteroid). However, according to others, this similarity only indicates that the Moon was formed from the same gas and dust cloud as the Earth, and at the initial geological stages they “evolved” in the same way.
Kola Superdeep was ahead of its time
The Kola well showed that it is possible to go deep into the Earth for 14, and even 15 kilometers. However, one such well is hardly capable of providing fundamentally new knowledge about the earth's crust. This requires a whole network of wells drilled at different points on the earth's surface. But the times when ultra-deep wells were drilled for purely scientific purposes seem to have passed. Too expensive this pleasure. Modern ultra-deep drilling programs are no longer as ambitious as they used to be, and pursue practical goals.
This is mainly the discovery and extraction of minerals. In the United States, oil and gas production from depths of 6-7 kilometers is already becoming commonplace. In the future, Russia will also start pumping hydrocarbon raw materials from such levels. However, even those deep wells that are being drilled now bring a lot of valuable information that geologists seek to generalize in order to obtain a complete picture of at least the surface layers of the earth's crust. But what lies below will remain a mystery for a long time to come. Only scientists working on ultra-deep wells like the Kola can reveal it with the help of the most modern scientific equipment. In the future, such wells will become for mankind a kind of telescopes into the mysterious underworld of the planet, about which we know no more than about distant galaxies.
Saturday, 29 Dec. 2012One of the most ambitious projects of the Soviet era was the Kola super-deep well with a depth of 12,262 meters. This record remains unsurpassed to this day.
Year of issue: 2012
The country: Russia (TV Center)
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 00:25:21
Director: Vladimir Batrakov
Description: The authors of the report will talk about the history and goals of this bold scientific experiment, talk with its direct participants, and explain the results in a popular way. Viewers will be able to see what condition the rig is in at the moment.
Drilling began in 1970, and the work was completely classified until the mid-1980s.
In 1992, drilling was stopped due to lack of funding - the well was never brought to the planned depth of 15 kilometers. But even at the existing depth, unique scientific data were obtained.
In addition, the legend about the sounds of terrible human screams allegedly recorded at great depths is associated with the Kola superdeep well, which caused the most incredible assumptions in the press...
Additional Information:
Dig to Beelzebub: In the 1970s, a team of Soviet explorers drilled on the Kola Peninsula, resulting in the deepest borehole in the world. A large-scale project was conceived with research goals, but unexpectedly led to almost hysteria around the world. According to rumors, Soviet scientists stumbled on the "road to hell", writes SPIEGEL ONLINE.
“A chilling picture: in the middle of the deserted expanses of the Kola Peninsula, 150 km north of Murmansk, an abandoned drilling rig rises. Barracks for employees, rooms with laboratories crowd around. the author continues.
On May 24, 1970, when the USSR and the USA raced to explore space, a project was launched in the Soviet Union on the border with Finland and Norway to drill an ultra-deep well at the site of the geological Baltic Shield. For several decades, the Kola superdeep well has "swallowed" millions, allowing scientists to make some rather serious scientific discoveries. However, the most high-profile find at a depth of more than 10 km turned the research project into an event with a deeply religious background, in which conjecture, truth and lies mixed together, creating sensational reports in all the world's media.
Shortly after the start of drilling, the Kola Superdeep became the Soviet exemplary project, a few years later the SG-3 broke the record of 9583 m, previously held by the Bert-Rogers well in Oklahoma. But this was not enough for the Soviet leadership - scientists had to reach a depth of 15 km.
"On the way to the bowels of the earth, scientists made unexpected discoveries: for example, they managed to predict earthquakes based on unusual sounds from a well. At a depth of 3 thousand meters, a substance was found in the layers of the lithosphere, almost identical to material from the surface of the Moon. After 6 thousand meters it was gold was discovered. However, scientists became increasingly concerned that the deeper they penetrated, the higher the temperatures became, which made it difficult to work," the article says. Unlike preliminary calculations, the temperature was not 100 degrees Celsius, but 180.
Around the same time, rumors spread that at a depth of 14 km the drill unexpectedly moved from side to side - a sign that it had landed in a giant cavity. Temperatures in the passage zone went off scale over a thousand degrees, and after a heat-resistant microphone was lowered into the mine to record the sound of the movement of lithospheric plates, the drillers heard soul-chilling sounds. At first they mistook them for the sounds of malfunctioning machinery, but then, after the equipment was adjusted, their worst suspicions were confirmed. The sounds were reminiscent of the cries and groans of thousands of martyrs, the article says.
"Where exactly this legend originates from is still unknown," the author continues. For the first time in English, it was voiced in 1989 on the air of the American television company Trinity Broadcasting Network, which took the story from a Finnish newspaper report. The Kola super-deep well began to be called the "road to hell." The stories of the frightened drillers were published by Finnish and Swedish newspapers - they claimed that "the Russians let the demon out of hell."
Drilling work was stopped - they were explained by insufficient funding. On instructions from above, the drilling rig was to be dumped - but there was not enough money for that either.
27.04.2011
Kola Superdeep Well(SG-3) - recognized as the deepest borehole in the world. The mine is located on the territory of the geological Baltic Shield in the Murmansk region, 10 km west of the city of Zapolyarny. Its total depth is 12,262 meters.
Its main difference from other ultra-deep wells that were drilled for gas, oil or geological exploration, the Kola super-deep was built exclusively for scientific research of the lithosphere in the place where the Mohorovichich boundary comes closest to the Earth's surface.
SG-3 record well
The first stage of drilling of the SG-3 well, the Kola super-deep well, was completed. It was launched in May 1970 and by the beginning of 1975 had sunk 7263 meters into the bowels.
A lot of it? Or is drilling to such a depth no longer surprising? In Ukraine, a well "Shevchenkovskaya-1" was drilled with a depth of more than 7,500 meters.
Ten wells in different places of the Soviet Union exceeded 6 thousand meters. The deepest well in the world was drilled in the USA - 9583 meters. In such an environment, the Kola Superdeep seems ordinary, one of many superdeep.
- Firstly, because this well is so far the deepest in the world of those drilled in the crystalline rocks of the Precambrian.
- Secondly, the Kola superdeep well is a new word in drilling technology. For the first time in world practice, a significant part of the well was drilled "open hole", that is, without casing.
Every meter of the well along its entire length was carefully studied, each column of the extracted rock was examined.
The thickness of the earth's crust is not the same. Under the ocean, in some places it thins out to 5 kilometers.
On the continents in areas of ancient folding it is 20-30, and under mountain ranges up to 75 kilometers. The earth's crust is called the skin of the planet.
Sometimes, in order to more figuratively show the deep structure of the Earth, a comparison is made with an egg. In this case, the bark plays the role of the shell.
Despite such a seemingly insignificant thickness, the "shell" of the Earth has so far remained inaccessible to direct research.
The main information about it was obtained indirectly - by geophysical methods. For example, it has been established from reflected seismic waves that the earth's crust has a layered structure.
The continental crust consists of sedimentary, granite and basalt layers; there is no granite layer in the oceanic crust.
Below the earth's crust, seismic observations have identified the mantle (if we continue the comparison with the egg - protein), and in the center of the Earth, the core - the yolk.
Gravimetric, magnetometric, nuclear, geothermal methods are also used to study the earth's depths. They allow you to determine the density of rocks at great depths, establish gravity anomalies, the characteristics of the magnetic field, temperature and dozens of other parameters.
Yet many basic questions of geology remain unanswered. Only direct penetration into the bowels will finally help to remove these question marks of geology.
Kola Superdeep
The Kola Superdeep is laid on the Baltic Crystalline Shield. This is the oldest formation of the earth's crust, which in the Scandinavian and Kola Peninsulas, Karelia, the Baltic Sea and in part of the Leningrad Region comes close to the earth's surface.
It can be assumed that the basalt layer here lies at a depth of slightly more than 7 kilometers. The shield is composed of ancient, highly altered rocks: Archean gneisses, crystalline schists, intrusive rocks up to 3.5 billion years old or more.
Scientists will have access to deep matter, will be able to study it in detail, conduct observations along the entire wellbore, build a real, and not supposed, continental-type section of the earth's crust, and determine the composition and physical state of matter.
About half of the way to the design 15-kilometer mark has been covered. And even this seemingly modest intermediate result turned out to be very interesting in terms of a number of important indicators.
For the first time in world science and practice, the thickness of not young sedimentary deposits, but ancient crystalline rocks, was discovered and studied in detail by a well, for the first time it was possible to collect a lot of new information about these rocks and the geological and physical conditions of their occurrence.
Rapidly creating and applying various technical innovations, continuously improving drilling technology and adapting it to specific geological conditions, Soviet scientists and drillers with domestic equipment and tools paved more than a seven-kilometer passage in the strongest earth rocks.
The path to the bowels of the Earth, in a certain sense, has become the road of technological progress in drilling: what has proven itself well in drilling wells in other areas is being tested and improved, new technical means and technology are being created and tested.
The Kola Superdeep field has become an experimental testing ground for testing new drilling equipment and technology. The role of the general designer and scientific supervisor of this unique testing ground was entrusted to our All-Union Order of the Red Banner of Labor Research Institute of Drilling Technology (VNIIBT) of the Minnefteprom.
Well to hell
The drilling of the Kola super-deep well served as a source of rumors associated with the emergence of the legend of the "road to hell".
The primary source of information (1989) was the American television company Trinity Broadcasting Network, which, in turn, took the story from a Finnish newspaper report. Allegedly, while drilling a well, at a depth of 12 thousand meters, the microphones of scientists recorded screams and groans.
The Kola super-deep well immediately received the name - "the road to hell" - and each new kilometer drilled brought misfortune to the country. At a depth of 13,000 meters, the USSR collapsed, at a depth of 14,500 meters, scientists stumbled upon voids.
The researchers lowered the microphone into the shaft and heard strange terrifying sounds and even human screams. The sensors showed a temperature of 1100 °C. The scientists thought they had discovered hell.
In fact, acoustic well survey methods do not record the sound itself and not on a microphone, but the wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations on seismic receivers.
The drilling stop depth was 12,262 meters and the temperature recorded at this depth was only 220 ° C, which does not correspond to the main “facts” of the legend.
Kola superdeep: the last fireworks
Sounds of the underground - the secrets of the deepest well (TC "Vesti")
Kola superdeep hellish deceit
There is a terrible story about how Soviet drillers drilled the earth so deep that they got to hell itself. They lowered a microphone into the well and recorded the cries of sinners. Recently, interest in such a supernatural achievement of science has flared up with renewed vigor - the recording itself has appeared. The sounds really resemble the rumble of the crowd, singing, some kind of squeaking is heard.
The story features a certain "Dmitry Azzakov", to whom everyone refers. But numerous attempts to find this man did not lead to anything. Our further investigation showed that the surname itself appeared in the press as early as 1989. We found it in the Finnish newspaper Ammenusastia (monthly for Christians in the Levasjoki area). It is possible that this is the original source. There, Dr. “Azzakov”, a Soviet geologist, stated the following: “As a communist, I do not believe in heaven and the Bible, but as a scientist, I am now forced to believe in hell. Needless to say, we were shocked to make such a discovery. But we know what we heard and what we saw. And we are absolutely sure that we drilled through the gates of hell.”
It followed from the newspaper that the drama allegedly erupted in the USSR, when geologists conducting surveys in Western Siberia reached a depth of 14.4 km. Suddenly, the drill bit began to rotate wildly, indicating that there was a void or a cave below. When the scientists lifted the drill, a fanged, clawed creature with huge evil eyes emerged from the well, screeching like a wild animal, and disappeared. Frightened, most of the workers and engineers rushed to run, and the rest had to pass an equally ordeal.
“We lowered a microphone into the well, designed to record the movement of lithospheric plates,” Azzakov said further. “But instead, we heard a loud human voice that sounded like pain. At first we thought the sound was coming from the drilling equipment, but when we carefully checked it, our worst suspicions were confirmed. The screams and screams did not come from one person. It was the cries and groans of millions of people. Luckily, we recorded the terrifying sounds on tape."
And by June 1990, they had drilled up to 12,260 meters here. Now the work has been stopped, but then geologists did not hear about any hell.
In the end, it turned out that both stories were launched by the Norwegian Age Rendalin, who liked to call himself "special adviser to the Minister of Justice of Norway." When they became interested in him with might and main, it turned out that this was just a school teacher with an overdeveloped imagination.
He admitted that he invented everything to check how seriously the Christian press checks their publications. The audio recording, of course, was made by someone else in our days in order to somehow stir up interest in a long-standing fake.
Penetrating into those secrets that are under our feet is no easier than learning all the secrets of the Universe above our heads. And perhaps even more difficult, because in order to look into the depths of the Earth, a very deep well is needed.
The goals of drilling are different (oil production, for example), but ultra-deep (more than 6 km) wells are primarily needed by scientists who want to know what is interesting inside our planet. Where are such "windows" to the center of the Earth and what is the name of the deepest drilled well, we will tell you in this article. First, just one explanation.
Drilling can be done both vertically downwards and at an angle to the earth's surface. In the second case, the extent can be very large, but the depth, if measured from the mouth (the beginning of the well on the surface) to the deepest point in the bowels, is less than those that run perpendicular.
An example is one of the wells of the Chayvinskoye field, the length of which has reached 12,700 m, but in depth it is significantly inferior to the deepest wells.
This well with a depth of 7520 m is located on the territory of modern Western Ukraine. However, work on it was carried out back in the USSR in 1975-1982.
The purpose of creating this one of the deepest wells in the USSR was the extraction of minerals (oil and gas), but the study of the bowels of the earth was also an important task.
9 En-Yakhinskaya well
Not far from the city of Novy Urengoy in the Yamalo-Nenets district. The purpose of drilling the Earth was to determine the composition of the earth's crust at the drilling site and to determine the profitability of developing large depths for mining.
As is usually the case with ultra-deep wells, the subsoil presented the researchers with many "surprises". For example, at a depth of about 4 km, the temperature reached +125 (higher than the calculated one), and after another 3 km, the temperature was already +210 degrees. Nevertheless, scientists completed their research, and in 2006 the well was liquidated.
8 Saatli in Azerbaijan
In the USSR, one of the deepest wells in the world, Saatli, was drilled on the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It was planned to bring its depth to 11 km and conduct various studies related to both the structure of the earth's crust and the development of oil at different depths.
Interested in
However, it was not possible to drill such a deep well, as it happens very, very often. During operation, machines often fail due to extremely high temperatures and pressures; the well is curved, since the hardness of different rocks is not uniform; often a minor breakdown entails such problems that their solution requires more funds than the creation of a new one.
So in this case, despite the fact that the materials obtained as a result of drilling were very valuable, the work had to be stopped at around 8324 m.
7 Zisterdorf - the deepest in Austria
Another deep well was drilled in Austria, near the town of Zisterdorf. Nearby were gas and oil fields, and geologists hoped that an ultra-deep well would make it possible to make super-profits in the field of mining.
Indeed, natural gas was discovered at a very considerable depth - to the despair of specialists, it was impossible to extract it. Further drilling ended in an accident, the walls of the well collapsed.
It did not make sense to restore, they decided to drill another nearby, but nothing interesting for the industrialists could be found in it.
6 Universities in the USA
One of the deepest wells on Earth is the University in the USA. Its depth is 8686 m. The materials obtained as a result of drilling are of considerable interest, as they provide new material about the structure of the planet on which we live.
Surprisingly, as a result, it turned out that it was not scientists who were right, but science fiction writers: there are layers of minerals in the bowels, and life exists at great depths - however, we are talking about bacteria!
In the 1990s, drilling of the ultra-deep well Hauptborung began in Germany. It was planned to bring its depth to 12 km, but, as is usually the case with ultra-deep mines, the plans were not given success. Already at around 7 meters, problems began with the machines: drilling vertically down became impossible, the mine began to deviate more and more to the side. Each meter was given with difficulty, and the temperature grew extremely.
Finally, when the heat reached 270 degrees, and endless accidents and failures exhausted everyone, it was decided to suspend work. This happened at a depth of 9.1 km, which makes the Hauptborung well one of the deepest.
The scientific material obtained from the drilling has become the basis for thousands of studies, and the mine itself is currently used for tourism purposes.
4 Baden Unit
In the US, Lone Star attempted to drill an ultra-deep well in 1970. The location near the city of Anadarko in Oklahoma was not chosen by chance: here, wildlife and high scientific potential create a convenient opportunity for both drilling a well and studying it.
The work was carried out for more than a year, and during this time they drilled to a depth of 9159 m, which makes it possible to include it among the deepest mines in the world.
And finally, we present the three deepest wells in the world. In third place is Bertha Rogers - the world's first ultra-deep well, which, however, did not remain the deepest for long. After only a short time, the deepest well in the USSR, the Kola, appeared.
Bert Rogers was drilled by GHK, a mining company, mainly natural gas. The aim of the work was to search for gas at great depths. Work began in 1970, when very little was known about the earth's interior.
The company had high hopes for a place in Washita County, because there are many minerals in Oklahoma, and at that time scientists thought that there were entire layers of oil and gas in the thickness of the earth. However, 500 days of work and huge funds invested in the project turned out to be useless: the drill melted in a layer of liquid sulfur, and gas or oil could not be found.
In addition, scientific research was not carried out during the drilling, since the well was only of commercial importance.
2 KTB-Oberpfalz
In second place in our ranking is the German well Oberpfalz, which has reached a depth of almost 10 km.
This mine holds the record as the deepest vertical well, since it goes to a depth of 7500 m without deviation to the side! This is an unprecedented figure, because the mines at great depths inevitably bend, but the unique equipment used by scientists from Germany made it possible to move the drill vertically down for a very long time.
Not so big and the difference in diameter. Ultra-deep wells begin on the surface of the earth with a hole of a rather large diameter (at Oberpfalz - 71 cm), and then gradually narrow. At the bottom, the German well has a diameter of only about 16 cm.
The reason why the work had to be stopped is the same as in all other cases - equipment failure due to high temperatures.
1 Kola well - the deepest in the world
We owe a stupid legend to the “duck” launched in the Western press, where, with reference to the mythical “scientist of world renown” Azzakov, it was told about a “creature” that escaped from a mine, the temperature in which reached 1000 degrees, about the groans of millions of people who signed up for microphone down and so on.
At first glance, it is clear that the story is sewn with white thread (and it was published, by the way, on April Fool's Day): the temperature in the mine was no higher than 220 degrees, however, with it, as well as at 1000 degrees, no microphone can work ; creatures did not break out, and the named scientist does not exist.
The Kola well is the deepest in the world. Its depth reaches 12262 m, which significantly exceeds the depth of other mines. But not length! At least three wells can now be named - Qatar, Sakhalin-1 and one of the wells of the Chayvo field (Z-42) - which are longer, but not deeper.
Kolskaya gave scientists colossal material, which has not yet been fully processed and comprehended.
| Place | Name | The country | Depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kola | the USSR | 12262 |
| 2 | KTB-Oberpfalz | Germany | 9900 |
| 3 | USA | 9583 | |
| 4 | baden unit | USA | 9159 |
| 5 | Germany | 9100 | |
| 6 | USA | 8686 | |
| 7 | Zisterdorf | Austria | 8553 |
| 8 | USSR (modern Azerbaijan) | 8324 | |
| 9 | Russia | 8250 | |
| 10 | Shevchenkovskaya | USSR (Ukraine) | 7520 |
The Kola super-deep well is the deepest borehole in the world (from 1979 to 2008). It is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny, on the territory of the geological Baltic Shield. Its depth is 12,262 meters. Unlike other ultra-deep wells that were made for oil production or exploration, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for the study of the lithosphere in the place where the Mohorovichic boundary is. (abbreviated Moho boundary) - the lower boundary of the earth's crust, on which there is an abrupt increase in the velocities of longitudinal seismic waves.
The Kola superdeep well was laid in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin, in 1970. The strata of sedimentary rocks by that time were well studied during oil production. It was more interesting to drill where volcanic rocks about 3 billion years old (for comparison: the age of the Earth is estimated at 4.5 billion years) come to the surface. For mining, such rocks are rarely drilled deeper than 1–2 km. It was assumed that already at a depth of 5 km, the granite layer would be replaced by basalt. On June 6, 1979, the well broke the record of 9583 meters, previously owned by the Bert-Rogers well (oil well in Oklahoma). In the best years, 16 research laboratories worked at the Kola superdeep well, they were personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR.
Although it was expected that a pronounced boundary between granites and basalts would be found, only granites were found in the core throughout the depth. However, due to the high pressure, the pressed granites greatly changed their physical and acoustic properties. As a rule, the raised core fell apart from active gas release into sludge, as it could not withstand a sharp change in pressure. It was possible to extract a solid piece of core only with a very slow rise of the drill string, when the “excess” gas, while still in a state of high pressure, had time to leave the rock. The density of cracks at great depths, contrary to expectations, increased. At depth, water was also present, filling the cracks.
Interestingly, when the International Geological Congress was held in Moscow in 1984, at which the first results of the well research were presented, many scientists jokingly suggested that it be immediately buried, since it destroys all ideas about the structure of the earth's crust. Indeed, oddities began even at the first stages of penetration. So, for example, theorists even before the start of drilling promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield would remain relatively low to a depth of at least 5 kilometers, the ambient temperature exceeded 70 degrees Celsius, at seven - over 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 it was frying stronger than 220 degrees - 100 degrees higher than predicted. The Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the range up to 12,262 meters.
“We have the deepest hole in the world - this is how you should use it!” - bitterly exclaims the permanent director of the research and production center "Kola Superdeep" David Huberman. In the first 30 years of the existence of the Kola Superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,262 meters. But since 1995, drilling has been stopped: there was no one to finance the project. What is allocated within the framework of UNESCO's scientific programs is only enough to maintain the drilling station in working order and study previously extracted rock samples.
Huberman recalls with regret how many scientific discoveries took place at the Kola Superdeep. Literally every meter was a revelation. The well showed that almost all of our previous knowledge about the structure of the earth's crust is incorrect. It turned out that the Earth is not at all like a layer cake.
Another surprise: life on planet Earth arose, it turns out, 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 types of fossilized microorganisms were found - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there are no longer sedimentary rocks, methane appeared in huge concentrations. This completely and completely destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas. There were also almost fantastic sensations. When, in the late 70s, the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, the researchers of the Kola Science Center found that it was like two drops of water similar to samples from a depth of 3 kilometers. And a hypothesis arose: the moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula. Now they are looking for exactly where. By the way, the Americans, who brought half a ton of soil from the moon, did nothing sensible with it. Placed in sealed containers and left for research to future generations.
Quite unexpectedly for everyone, the predictions of Alexei Tolstoy from the novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" were confirmed. At a depth of more than 9.5 kilometers, they discovered a real storehouse of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold. A real olivine layer, brilliantly predicted by the writer. Gold in it is 78 grams per ton. By the way, industrial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per ton. But, most surprisingly, at even greater depths, where there are no sedimentary rocks, natural gas methane was found in huge concentrations. This completely and completely destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas.
Not only scientific sensations were also associated with the Kola well, but also mysterious legends, most of which turned out to be fiction of journalists during verification. According to one of them, the original source of information (1989) was the American television company Trinity Broadcasting Network, which, in turn, took the story from a Finnish newspaper report. Allegedly, while drilling a well, at a depth of 12 thousand meters, the microphones of scientists recorded screams and groans.). Journalists, without even thinking that it was simply impossible to stick a microphone to such a depth (what sound recording device can work at temperatures above two hundred degrees?) wrote about the fact that the drillers heard a "voice from the underworld."
After these publications, the Kola super-deep well began to be called the "road to hell", arguing that each new kilometer drilled brought misfortune to the country. They said that when the drillers were drilling the thirteenth thousand meters, the USSR collapsed. Well, when the well was drilled to a depth of 14.5 km (which actually did not happen), they suddenly stumbled upon unusual voids. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, the drillers lowered a microphone capable of operating at extremely high temperatures and other sensors into it. The temperature inside allegedly reached 1,100 ° C - there was the heat of the fiery chambers, in which, allegedly, human screams could be heard.
This legend still roams the vast expanses of the Internet, having survived the very culprit of these gossip - the Kola well. Work on it was stopped back in 1992 due to lack of funding. Until 2008, it was in a mothballed state. And a year later, the final decision was made to abandon the continuation of research and dismantle the entire research complex, and "bury" the well. The final abandonment of the well took place in the summer of 2011.
So, as you can see, this time the scientists were not able to get to the mantle and explore it. However, this does not mean that the Kola well did not give anything to science - on the contrary, it turned all their ideas about the structure of the earth's crust upside down.
RESULTS
The tasks set in the ultra-deep drilling project have been fulfilled. Special equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling, as well as for the study of wells drilled to a great depth, have been developed and created. We received information, one might say, "first-hand" about the physical state, properties and composition of rocks in their natural occurrence and from core samples to a depth of 12,262 m. 8 kilometers. Industrial copper-nickel ores were discovered there - a new ore horizon was discovered. And very handy, because the local nickel plant is already running out of ore.
As noted above, the geological forecast of the well section did not come true. The picture that was expected during the first 5 km in the well stretched for 7 km, and then completely unexpected rocks appeared. The basalts predicted at a depth of 7 km were not found, even when they dropped to 12 km. It was expected that the boundary that gives the most reflection in seismic sounding is the level where the granites pass into a more durable basalt layer. In reality, it turned out that less durable and less dense fractured rocks - Archean gneisses - are located there. This was not expected at all. And this is a fundamentally new geological and geophysical information that allows you to interpret the data of deep geophysical surveys in a different way.
The data on the process of ore formation in the deep layers of the earth's crust also turned out to be unexpected and fundamentally new. So, at depths of 9-12 km, highly porous fractured rocks saturated with underground highly mineralized waters were encountered. These waters are one of the sources of ore formation. Previously, it was believed that this was possible only at much shallower depths. It was in this interval that an increased gold content was found in the core - up to 1 g per 1 ton of rock (a concentration that is considered suitable for industrial development). But will it ever be profitable to mine gold from such a depth?
The ideas about the thermal regime of the earth's interior, about the deep distribution of temperatures in the areas of basalt shields, have also changed. At a depth of more than 6 km, a temperature gradient of 20°C per 1 km was obtained instead of the expected (as in the upper part) 16°C per 1 km. It was revealed that half of the heat flux is of radiogenic origin.
The bowels of the earth contain as many mysteries as the vast expanses of the universe. This is exactly what some scientists think, and they are partly right, because people still do not know exactly what exactly is under our feet deep underground. For the entire time of the existence of earthly civilization, we have been able to go deep into the planet a little more than 10 kilometers. This record was set back in 1990 and lasted until 2008, after which it was updated several times. In 2008, a deviated oil well, Maersk Oil BD-04A, with a length of 12,290 meters, was drilled (Al-Shaheen oil basin in Qatar). In January 2011, an inclined oil well was drilled at the Odoptu-more field (Sakhalin-1 project) with a depth of 12,345 meters. The record for drilling depth currently belongs to the Z-42 well of the Chayvinskoye field, the depth of which is 12,700 meters.
In 1970, just in time for Lenin's 100th birthday, Soviet scientists launched one of the most ambitious projects of our time. On the Kola Peninsula, ten kilometers from the village of Zapolyarny, drilling of a well began, which as a result turned out to be the deepest in the world and entered the Guinness Book of Records.
The grandiose scientific project has been going on for more than twenty years. He brought a lot of interesting discoveries, went down in the history of science, and in the end was overgrown with so many legends, rumors and gossip that would be enough for more than one horror movie.
THE USSR. Kola Peninsula. October 1, 1980. Leading well drillers reaching a record depth of 10,500 meters
entrance to hell
During its heyday, the drilling rig on the Kola Peninsula was a cyclopean structure 20-story high. Up to three thousand people worked here per shift. The team was led by leading geologists of the country. The drilling rig was built in the tundra ten kilometers from the village of Zapolyarny, and in the polar night it shone with lights like a spaceship.
When all this splendor suddenly closed and the lights went out, rumors immediately spread. By all measures, the drilling was remarkably successful. No one in the world has yet managed to reach such a depth - Soviet geologists lowered the drill more than 12 kilometers.
The sudden end of a successful project looked as ridiculous as the fact that the Americans closed the program of flights to the moon. Aliens were blamed for the collapse of the lunar project. In the problems of the Kola Superdeep - devils and demons.
A popular legend says that from great depths, the drill was repeatedly taken out melted. There were no physical reasons for this - the temperature underground did not exceed 200 degrees Celsius, and the drill was designed for a thousand degrees. Then the audio sensors allegedly began to pick up some moans, screams and sighs. Dispatchers who monitored the instrument readings complained of feelings of panic fear and anxiety.
According to legend, it turned out that geologists had drilled to hell. The groans of sinners, extremely high temperatures, the atmosphere of horror at the drilling rig - all this explained why all work on the Kola Superdeep was suddenly curtailed.
Many were skeptical about these rumors. However, in 1995, after the work was stopped, a powerful explosion occurred at the drilling rig. Nobody understood what could explode there, even the head of the entire project, a prominent geologist David Guberman.
Today, excursions are led to an abandoned drilling rig and they tell tourists a fascinating story about how scientists drilled a hole into the underworld of the dead. As moaning ghosts roam the installation, and in the evening demons crawl out to the surface and strive to sneak into the abyss of a gaping extreme seeker.
underground moon
In fact, the whole story with the “well to hell” was invented by Finnish journalists by April 1st. Their comic article was reprinted by American newspapers, and the duck flew to the masses. Long-term drilling of the Kola superdeep proceeded without any mysticism. But what happened there in reality was more interesting than any legends.
To begin with, ultra-deep drilling by definition was doomed to numerous accidents. Under the yoke of gigantic pressure (up to 1000 atmospheres) and high temperatures, the drills could not withstand, the well was clogged, the pipes that strengthened the vent were broken. Countless times the narrow well was bent so that new branches had to be drilled.
The worst accident occurred shortly after the main triumph of geologists. In 1982, they were able to overcome the mark of 12 kilometers. These results were solemnly announced in Moscow at the International Geological Congress. Geologists from all over the world were brought to the Kola Peninsula, they were shown a drilling rig and rock samples mined at a fantastic depth that mankind had never reached before.
After the celebration, drilling continued. However, the break in work proved fatal. In 1984, the most terrible accident occurred at the drilling rig. As many as five kilometers of pipes came off and hammered the well. It was impossible to continue drilling. The results of five years of work were lost overnight.
I had to resume drilling from the 7-kilometer mark. Only in 1990, geologists again managed to cross over 12 kilometers. 12,262 meters - this is the final depth of the Kola well.
But in parallel with the terrible accidents, incredible discoveries also followed. Deep drilling is an analogue of a time machine. On the Kola Peninsula, the oldest rocks, whose age exceeds 3 billion years, come to the surface. Climbing deeper and deeper, scientists have gained a clear idea of what happened on our planet during its youth.
First of all, it turned out that the traditional scheme of the geological section, compiled by scientists, does not correspond to reality. “Up to 4 kilometers, everything went according to theory, and then the doomsday began,” Huberman later said.
According to calculations, having drilled a layer of granite, it was supposed to get to even harder, basalt rocks. But there was no basalt. After the granite came loose layered rocks, which constantly crumbled and made it difficult to move inland.
But among the rocks 2.8 billion years old, fossilized microorganisms were found. This made it possible to clarify the time of the origin of life on Earth. Huge deposits of methane have been found at even greater depths. This clarified the question of the origin of hydrocarbons - oil and gas.
And at a depth of more than 9 kilometers, scientists discovered a gold-bearing olivine layer, so vividly described by Alexei Tolstoy in the Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin.
But the most fantastic discovery occurred in the late 1970s, when the Soviet lunar station brought back samples of lunar soil. Geologists were amazed to see that its composition completely coincides with the composition of the rocks they mined at a depth of 3 kilometers. How was it possible?
The fact is that one of the hypotheses of the origin of the Moon suggests that several billion years ago the Earth collided with some kind of celestial body. As a result of the collision, a piece broke off from our planet and turned into a satellite. It is possible that this piece came off in the area of the current Kola Peninsula.
The final
So why did they close the Kola Superdeep?
Firstly, the main tasks of the scientific expedition were completed. Unique equipment for drilling at great depths was created, tested under extreme conditions and noticeably improved. The collected rock samples were studied and described in detail. The Kola well helped to better understand the structure of the earth's crust and the history of our planet.
Secondly, time itself was not conducive to such ambitious projects. In 1992, the scientific expedition was closed funding. Employees quit and went home. But even today, the grandiose building of the drilling rig and the mysterious well impress with their scale.
Sometimes it seems that the Kola Superdeep has not yet exhausted the entire supply of its miracles. The head of the famous project was also sure of this. “We have the deepest hole in the world - this is how you should use it!” exclaimed David Huberman.
