In the second half of the 20th century, the world became sick with ultra-deep drilling. In the United States, a new program for studying the ocean floor (Deep Sea Drilling Project) was being prepared. Built specifically for this project, the Glomar Challenger vessel spent several years in the waters of various oceans and seas, drilling almost 800 wells in their bottom, reaching a maximum depth of 760 m. By the mid-1980s, the results of offshore drilling confirmed the theory of plate tectonics. Geology as a science was born again. Meanwhile, Russia went its own way. Interest in the problem, awakened by the success of the United States, resulted in the program "Study of the bowels of the Earth and ultra-deep drilling", but not in the ocean, but on the continent. Despite centuries of history, continental drilling seemed to be a completely new thing. After all, it was about previously unattainable depths - more than 7 kilometers. In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev approved this program, although he was guided by political motives rather than scientific ones. He did not want to lag behind the United States.

The well-known oilman, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolay Timofeev, headed the newly created laboratory at the Institute of Drilling Technology. He was instructed to substantiate the possibility of ultra-deep drilling in crystalline rocks - granites and gneisses. The research took 4 years, and in 1966 the experts issued a verdict - it is possible to drill, and not necessarily with the technology of tomorrow, the equipment that is already there is enough. The main problem is the heat at depth. According to calculations, as it penetrates into the rocks that make up the earth's crust, the temperature should increase by 1 degree every 33 meters. This means that at a depth of 10 km we should expect about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C. Drilling tools and devices will not withstand such heating. It was necessary to look for a place where the bowels are not so hot ...

Such a place was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. The report, prepared at the Institute of Physics of the Earth, said: over the billions of years of its existence, the Kola shield has cooled down, the temperature at a depth of 15 km does not exceed 150 ° C. And geophysicists have prepared an approximate section of the bowels of the Kola Peninsula. According to them, the first 7 kilometers are granite strata of the upper part of the earth's crust, then the basalt layer begins. Then the idea of ​​a two-layer structure of the earth's crust was generally accepted. But as it turned out later, both physicists and geophysicists were wrong. The drilling site was chosen on the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi. In Finnish, it means "Under the wolf mountain", although there is no mountain or wolves in that place. Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.

But

From here you can listen to hellish sounds from the well.

Film: Kola Superdeep: Last Salute

The drilling of the Kola well SG-3 did not require the creation of fundamentally new devices and giant machines. We started working with what we already had: the Uralmash 4E unit with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light-alloy pipes. What was really needed at that time was non-standard technological solutions. Indeed, in solid crystalline rocks no one has drilled to such a great depth, and what will be there, they imagined only in general terms. Experienced drillers, however, understood that no matter how detailed the project was, the real well would be much more complicated. After 5 years, when the depth of the SG-3 well exceeded 7 kilometers, a new drilling rig "Uralmash 15,000" was installed - one of the most modern at that time. Powerful, reliable, with an automatic tripping mechanism, it could withstand a pipe string up to 15 km long. The drilling rig has turned into a fully sheathed tower 68 m high, recalcitrant to the strong winds raging in the Arctic. A mini-factory, scientific laboratories and a core storage facility have grown up nearby.



When drilling to shallow depths, a motor that rotates a string of pipes with a drill at the end is installed on the surface. The drill is an iron cylinder with teeth made of diamonds or hard alloys - a crown. This crown bites into the rocks and cuts out of them a thin column - core. To cool the tool and remove small debris from the well, drilling fluid is injected into it - liquid clay, which circulates all the time through the wellbore, like blood in vessels. After some time, the pipes are raised to the surface, freed from the core, the crown is changed and the column is lowered into the bottomhole again. This is how normal drilling works.



And if the barrel length is 10-12 kilometers with a diameter of 215 millimeters? The string of pipes becomes the thinnest thread lowered into the well. How to manage it? How to see what is happening in the face? Therefore, at the Kola well, miniature turbines were installed at the bottom of the drill string, they were launched by drilling fluid injected through pipes under pressure. The turbines rotated the carbide bit and cut out the core. The whole technology was well developed, the operator on the control panel saw the rotation of the crown, knew its speed and could control the process. Every 8-10 meters, a multi-kilometer column of pipes had to be lifted up. The descent and ascent took a total of 18 hours.




7 kilometers - the mark for the Kola superdeep fatal. Behind it began the unknown, many accidents and a continuous struggle with rocks. The barrel could not be kept upright. When 12 km were covered for the first time, the well deviated from the vertical by 21°. Although the drillers had already learned to work with the incredible curvature of the trunk, it was impossible to go any further. The well had to be re-drilled from the mark of 7 kilometers. To get a vertical hole in hard formations, you need a very rigid bottom of the drill string so that it enters the subsoil like butter. But another problem arises - the well is gradually expanding, the drill dangles in it, as in a glass, the walls of the barrel begin to collapse and can crush the tool. The solution to this problem turned out to be original - the pendulum technology was applied. The drill was artificially swung in the well and suppressed strong vibrations. Due to this, the trunk turned out vertical.



The most common accident on any drilling rig is a pipe string break. Usually they try to seize the pipes again, but if this happens at a great depth, then the problem becomes unrecoverable. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer well, they threw such a hole and started a new one, a little higher. Breakage and loss of pipes on SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part, the well looks like the root system of a giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be happiness for geologists, who unexpectedly received a three-dimensional picture of an impressive segment of ancient Archean rocks that formed more than 2.5 billion years ago. In June 1990, SG-3 reached a depth of 12,262 m. They began to prepare the well for drilling up to 14 km, and then an accident occurred again - at the level of 8,550 m, the pipe string broke. The continuation of the work required a long preparation, updating equipment and new costs. In 1994, drilling of the Kola Superdeep was stopped. After 3 years, she got into the Guinness Book of Records and still remains unsurpassed.



SG-3 was a secret facility from the very beginning. Both the border zone, and strategic deposits in the district, and scientific priority are to blame. The first foreigner to visit the rig was one of the leaders of the Academy of Sciences of Czechoslovakia. Later, in 1975, an article about the Kola Superdeep was published in Pravda signed by the Minister of Geology Alexander Sidorenko. There were still no scientific publications on the Kola well, but some information leaked abroad. The world began to learn more from rumors - the deepest well is being drilled in the USSR. The veil of secrecy, probably, would have hung over the well until the very “perestroika” had it not been for the World Geological Congress in Moscow in 1984. Carefully prepared for such a major event in the scientific world, a new building was even built for the Ministry of Geology - many participants were expecting. But foreign colleagues were primarily interested in the Kola Superdeep! The Americans did not believe that we had it at all. The depth of the well by that time had reached 12,066 meters. There was no point in hiding the object anymore. In Moscow, the congress participants were treated to an exhibition of achievements in Russian geology, one of the stands was dedicated to the SG-3 well. Experts from all over the world looked in bewilderment at an ordinary drill head with worn carbide teeth. And this is how they drill the deepest well in the world? Incredible! A large delegation of geologists and journalists went to the village of Zapolyarny. Visitors were shown the drilling rig in action, and 33-meter pipe sections were taken out and disconnected. There were heaps of exactly the same drilling heads around, like the one that lay on the stand in Moscow. From the Academy of Sciences, the delegation was received by a well-known geologist, Academician Vladimir Belousov. During the press conference, he was asked a question from the audience: - What was the most important thing shown by the Kola well? - Lord! The main thing is that it showed that we know nothing about the continental crust, - the scientist answered honestly.



The section of the Kola well refuted the two-layer model of the earth's crust and showed that the seismic sections in the bowels are not the boundaries of layers of rocks of different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the properties of the stone with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties of rocks, apparently, can change dramatically, so that granites in their physical characteristics become similar to basalts, and vice versa. But the “basalt” raised to the surface from a depth of 12 km immediately became granite, although it experienced a severe attack of “caisson disease” along the way - the core crumbled and disintegrated into flat plaques. The further the well went, the fewer quality samples fell into the hands of scientists.



The depth contained many surprises. Previously, it was natural to think that with distance from the earth's surface, with an increase in pressure, rocks become more monolithic, with a small number of cracks and pores. SG-3 convinced scientists otherwise. Starting from 9 kilometers, the strata turned out to be very porous and literally crammed with cracks through which aqueous solutions circulated. Later, this fact was confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. At depth it turned out to be much hotter than expected: by as much as 80 °! At the mark of 7 km, the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it had already reached 230°C. In the samples of the Kola well, scientists discovered gold mineralization. Inclusions of the precious metal were found in ancient rocks at a depth of 9.5–10.5 km. However, the concentration of gold was too low to declare a deposit - an average of 37.7 mg per ton of rock, but sufficient to expect it in other similar places.



H about, once the Kola Superdeep was at the center of a global scandal. One fine morning in 1989, the director of the well, David Guberman, received a phone call from the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper, the secretary of the regional committee, and a host of other people. Everyone wanted to know about the devil that the drillers allegedly raised from the bowels, as reported by some newspapers and radio stations around the world. The director was taken aback, and - it was from what! "Scientists have discovered hell", "Satan has escaped from hell" - read the headlines. As reported in the press, geologists working very far in Siberia, and maybe in Alaska or even the Kola Peninsula (journalists had no consensus on this), were drilling at a depth of 14.4 km, when suddenly the drill began to dangle strongly from side to side. So, there is a big hole below, the scientists thought, apparently, the center of the planet is empty. Sensors lowered into the depths showed a temperature of 2,000 ° C, and super-sensitive microphones sounded ... the screams of millions of suffering souls. As a result, drilling was stopped due to fears of releasing infernal forces to the surface. Of course, Soviet scientists refuted this journalistic "duck", but the echoes of that old story wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when stories about hell had already been forgotten, employees of the Kola superdeep visited Australia with lectures. They were invited to a reception by the Governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady, who greeted the Russian delegation with the question: “What the hell did you raise from there?”

W Here you can listen to hellish sounds from the well.






In our time, the Kola well (SG-3), which is the deepest borehole in the world, will be liquidated due to unprofitability, Interfax reports, citing a statement by Boris Mikov, head of the territorial department of the Federal Property Management Agency for the Murmansk region. The exact closing date of the project has not yet been determined.



Earlier, the prosecutor's office of the Pechenga district fined the head of the SG-3 enterprise for salary delays and threatened to initiate a criminal case. As of April 2008, the well's staffing included 20 people. In the 1980s, about 500 people worked at the well.

Film: Kola Superdeep: Last Salute

In 2008, the deepest well in the world was finally abandoned, and all lifting mechanisms and structures were dismantled.

A couple of years later, the director of the Kola Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences issued a statement that the well was gradually self-destructing. Since that time, there is no official information about her anymore.

Well depth to date

As of today, the Kola well is one of the largest drilling projects in the world. Its official depth reaches 12,262 m.

Sounds of Hell from the Kola Well

Like any grandiose project created by human hands, the Kola well is shrouded in legends and myths.

The Kola well was drilled intermittently from 1970 to 1991

This can be seen both in the Mariana Trench, which we talked about at the beginning of the article, and in.

They say that at the moment when the workers of the deepest well crossed the line of 12,000 m, they began to hear terrible sounds.

Initially, they did not pay any attention, but over time the situation changed dramatically. With the onset of complete silence, sounds of a different nature were heard from the well.

As a result, the scientists decided to record everything that happened at the bottom of the well on film using heat-resistant microphones.

While listening to the recordings, it was possible to hear human cries and screams.

A couple of hours after studying the film, scientists found traces of a strong explosion, the cause of which they could not explain.

Drilling of the Kola super-deep well was suspended for some time.

When the work resumed, everyone still expected to hear people's wailing, but this time everything was quiet.

Suspecting something was wrong, the management began proceedings regarding the origin of strange sounds. However, the frightened workers did not want to comment on the current situation and in every possible way avoided any questions.

A few years later, when the project was officially put on hold, scientists suggested that the sounds were due to movement.

Some time later, this explanation was rejected as untenable. No other explanation was offered.

Secrets and mysteries of the Kola well

In 1989, the Kola well began to be called the "road to hell", because of the sounds coming from it. There is an opinion that with each next drilled kilometer, on the way to the 13th, one or another cataclysm happened. As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed.

However, the relationship between the drilling of the Kola superdeep well and the collapse of the superpower may be of interest only to those who believe that and others are supernatural "places of power."

There is an opinion that the workers managed to reach a depth of 14.5 km, and it was then that the equipment recorded some underground rooms. The temperature in these rooms exceeded 1000°C.

They also clearly audible and even recorded human cries. However, this whole story is not supported by facts.

Dimensions of the deepest well

The depth of the world's deepest well on the Kola Peninsula is officially registered at around 12,262 m.

The diameter of the upper part is 92 cm, the diameter of the lower part is 21.5 cm.

The maximum temperature did not exceed 220°C. Inexplicable in this whole story are only sounds of unknown origin.

Benefits of drilling the Kola well

• Thanks to this project, new drilling methods were achieved, as well as improved equipment.
• Geologists have been able to discover new locations of valuable minerals.
• It was possible to debunk many different theories, for example, conjectures regarding the basalt layer of our planet.

Worldwide ultra-deep wells

As of today, there are approximately 25 ultra-deep wells, most of which are located in the republics of the former USSR.

Others also have a number of ultra-deep wells. We present the most famous among them.

• Sweden. Silyan Ring - 6800 m.
• Kazakhstan. Tasym South-East - 7050 m.
• USA. Bighorn - 7583 m.
• Austria. Zisterdorf - 8553 m.
• USA. University - 8686 m.
• Germany. KTB-Oberpfalz - 9101 m.
• USA. Beidat Unit - 9159 m.
• USA. Bertha Rogers - 9583 m.

World records for ultra-deep wells in the world

1. In 2008, the Maersk oil well (Qatar) with a depth of 12,290 m became the new depth record holder.
2. In 2011, during a project called "Sakhalin-1" (), it was possible to drill a well up to a mark of 12,345 m.
3. In 2013, the well of the Chayvinskoye field (Russia) set a new record of 12,700 m. However, it was not drilled vertically down, but at an angle to the surface.

Photo of the Kola well

Looking at the photo of the Kola well, it is hard to imagine that once life was in full swing here, and many people worked for the good of a great country.

Now there is nothing here but garbage and remnants of its former greatness. Reinforced concrete walls and empty, abandoned rooms with randomly scattered things act depressingly. Silence reigns all around.

Drilling rig of the first stage (depth 7600 m), 1974
Electrical substation building
Photo 2012
The wellhead with a metal plug. Someone scratched the wrong depth. August 2012

It is hard to imagine that under this plug there is the deepest "hole" in the earth, extending to a depth of more than 12 km.
Soviet workers on shift change, late 1970s

The stories associated with the Kola well have not subsided so far. At present, scientists have not given a definitive answer about the origin of mystical sounds.

In this regard, there are more and more new theories trying to explain this phenomenon. Perhaps in the near future, scientists will be able to find out the nature of the "hellish sounds".

Now you know why the Kola well is interesting. If you liked this article, please share it with your friends. If you like it at all - subscribe to the site IinterestingFakty.org in any convenient way. It's always interesting with us!

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"Dr. Huberman, what the hell did you dig down there?" - a remark from the audience interrupted the report of the Russian scientist at the UNESCO meeting in Australia. A couple of weeks earlier, in April 1995, a wave of reports swept the world about a mysterious accident at the Kola superdeep well.

Allegedly, on the approach to the 13th kilometer, the instruments recorded a strange noise coming from the bowels of the planet - the yellow newspapers unanimously assured that only the cries of sinners from the underworld could sound like this. A few seconds after the appearance of a terrible sound, an explosion thundered ...

Space under your feet

In the late 70s and early 80s, getting a job at the Kola Superdeep, as the inhabitants of the village of Zapolyarny in the Murmansk region call the well familiarly, was more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. From hundreds of applicants, one or two were selected. Together with the order for employment, the lucky ones received a separate apartment and a salary equal to double or triple the salary of Moscow professors. There were 16 research laboratories working at the well at the same time, each the size of an average plant. Only the Germans dug the earth with such perseverance, but, as the Guinness Book of Records testifies, the deepest German well is almost half as long as ours.

Distant galaxies have been studied by mankind much better than what is under the earth's crust a few kilometers from us. The Kola Superdeep is a kind of telescope into the mysterious inner world of the planet.

Since the beginning of the 20th 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 40 years ago, they were sure that the layer of granites starts at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to 3 kilometers, and then basalts come. It was expected to meet the mantle at a depth of 15–18 kilometers. In reality, everything turned out to be completely different. And although school textbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists from the Kola Superdeep proved that this is not so.

Baltic shield

Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 60s in several countries at once. They tried to drill wells in those places where the crust should have been thinner - the goal was to reach the mantle. For example, the Americans drilled in the area of ​​the island of Maui, Hawaii, where, according to seismic studies, ancient rocks go under the ocean floor and the mantle is located at a depth of about 5 kilometers under a four-kilometer water column. Alas, not a single ocean drilling rig has penetrated deeper than 3 kilometers.

In general, almost all ultra-deep well projects mysteriously ended at a depth of three kilometers. It was at this moment that something strange began to happen to the Boers: either they fell into unexpected super-hot areas, or they seemed to be bitten off by some unprecedented monster. Deeper than 3 kilometers, only 5 wells broke through, 4 of them were Soviet. And only the Kola Superdeep was destined to overcome the mark of 7 kilometers.

Initial 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 drilling would take incomparably longer, he believed, the well would be much more valuable from a scientific point of view, because it was in the thickness of the continental plates in prehistoric times that the most significant movements of terrestrial rocks took place. The drilling point was chosen on the Kola Peninsula not by chance. The peninsula is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which is composed of the most ancient rocks known to mankind.

A multi-kilometer section of the Baltic Shield layers is a clear history of the planet over the past 3 billion years.

Conqueror of the Deep

The appearance of the Kola drilling rig is capable of disappointing the layman. The well does not look like a mine that our imagination draws for us. There are no descents underground, only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters goes into the thickness. An imaginary section of the Kola super-deep well looks like a thin needle that has pierced the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors, located at the end of the needle, is raised and lowered over several days. Faster is impossible: the strongest composite cable can break under its own weight.

What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upward with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the dungeon can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below are indeed like screams 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 can melt 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.

12,226 meters of discoveries and some hell

“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 Guberman. In the first 30 years of the existence of the Kola Superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,226 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. “Up to 4 kilometers, everything went according to theory, and then the doomsday began,” says Guberman. Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers.

Accordingly, it will be possible to dig a well up to almost 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle. But already at 5 kilometers, the ambient temperature exceeded 70 ºC, at seven - over 120 ºC, and at a depth of 12 it was roasting more than 220 ºC - 100 ºC 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 were taught at school: there are young rocks, granites, basalts, a mantle and a core. But the granites turned out to be 3 kilometers lower than expected. Next were the basalts. They weren't found at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer. This is an extremely important discovery, because all our ideas about the origin and distribution of minerals are connected with the theory of the layered structure of the Earth.

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.

Demons

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.

In the history of the Kola Superdeep, it was not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not - but it was in that 1995 that a powerful explosion of an unknown nature was heard in the depths of the mine. The journalists of a Finnish newspaper broke through to the inhabitants of Zapolyarny - and the world was shocked by the story of a demon flying out of the bowels of the planet.

“When I was asked about this mysterious story at UNESCO, I did not know what to answer. On the one hand, it's bullshit. On the other hand, I, as an honest scientist, could not say that I know what exactly happened here. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion ... A few days later, nothing of the kind was found at the same depth, ”recalls Academician David Huberman.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, the predictions of Alexei Tolstoy from the novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, they discovered a real storehouse of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold. A real olivine belt, 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. Perhaps in the near future humanity will be able to take advantage of this wealth.

An attempt to study the geological section and the thickness of volcanic rocks emerging on the surface of the earth prompted scientific centers and, like them, research organizations to identify the origin of deep faults. The fact is that structural rock samples, previously extracted from the bowels of the Earth and the Moon, were then of equal interest for study. And the choice of the point of laying the mouth fell on the existing huge bowl-like trough, the origin of which is associated with the presence of a deep fault in the area of ​​the Kola Peninsula.

It was believed that the Earth is a kind of sandwich, consisting of a crust, mantle and core. By this time, sedimentary rocks close to the surface had been sufficiently explored in the development of oil fields. Exploration for non-ferrous metals was rarely accompanied by drilling below the 2000-meter mark.

The Kola SG (superdeep), below a depth of 5000 meters, was supposed to find a section of granite and basalt layers. This did not happen. The drilling projectile pierced hard granite rocks up to the mark of 7000 meters. Further, the sinking went through relatively soft soils, which caused the collapse of the walls of the shaft and the formation of cavities. The crumbling soil jammed the tool head so much that when lifting the pipe string broke off, leading to an accident. The Kola well was supposed to confirm or refute these long-established teachings. In addition, scientists did not dare to indicate the intervals where exactly the boundaries between these three layers pass. The Kola well was intended for exploration and study of deposits of mineral resources, determination of patterns and gradual formation of fields of occurrence of raw material reserves. The basis was, first of all, the scientific validity of the theory of physical, hydrogeological and other parameters of the Earth's depths. And reliable information about the geological structure of the subsoil could only be provided by ultra-deep sinking of the shaft.

Meanwhile, the long-term preparation for the start of drilling operations included: the possibility of an increase in temperature as it deepens, an increase in the hydrostatic pressure of the formations, the unpredictability of the behavior of rocks, their stability due to the presence of rock and reservoir pressures.

From a technical point of view, all possible difficulties and obstacles were taken into account that could lead to a slowdown in the deepening process due to loss of time for tripping the projectile, a decrease in drilling speed due to a change in the category of rocks, and an increase in energy costs for downhole thrusters.
The most difficult factor was considered to be the constant increase in the weight of the casing and drill pipe as it went deeper.

Technical developments in the field of:
- increasing the carrying capacity, power and other characteristics of drilling equipment and equipment;
- thermal stability of the rock cutting tool;
- automation of management of all stages of the drilling process;
- processing of information coming from the bottomhole zone;
- warnings about emergencies with a drill pipe or casing string.

The sinking of an ultra-deep shaft was supposed to reveal the correctness or fallacy of the scientific hypothesis about the deep structure of the planet.

The purpose of this very costly construction was to study:
1. Deep structure of the Pechenga nickel deposit and the crystalline base of the Baltic Shield of the peninsula. Deciphering the contour of the polymetal deposit in Pechenga, coupled with manifestations of ore bodies.
2. The study of the nature and forces that cause the separation of the sheet boundaries of the continental crust. Identification of reservoir zones, motives and nature of high temperature formation. Determination of the physical and chemical composition of water, gases formed in cracks, pores of rocks.
3. Obtaining exhaustive material on the material composition of rocks and information on the intervals between the granite and basalt "gaskets" of the crust. Comprehensive study of the physical and chemical properties of the extracted core.
4. Development of advanced technical means and new technologies for sinking super-deep shafts. Possibility of application of geophysical methods of research in the zone of ore manifestations.
5. Development and creation of the latest equipment for monitoring, testing, research, control of the drilling process.

The Kola well, for the most part, met scientific goals. The task included the study of the most ancient rocks of which the planet is composed and the knowledge of the secrets of the processes occurring in them.

Geological substantiation of drilling on the Kola Peninsula

Exploration and extraction of deposits of useful ores is always predetermined by the drilling of deep wells. And why on the Kola Peninsula and specifically in the Murmansk region, and definitely in Pechenga. The prerequisite for this was the fact that this region was considered a real pantry of mineral resources, with the richest reserves of a wide variety of ore raw materials (nickel, magnetites, apatites, mica, titanium, copper).

However, the geological calculation, made on the basis of a core from a well, revealed the absurdity of world scientific opinion. The seven-kilometer depth turned out to be composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks (tuffs, sandstones, dolomites, breccias). Below this interval, as expected, there should have been rocks separating the granitic and basalt structures. But, alas, the basalts never appeared.

In geological terms, the Baltic Shield of the peninsula, with partial coverage of the territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Karelia, has been eroded and evolved for millions of centuries. Natural outbursts, destructive processes of volcanism, phenomena of magmatism, metamorphic modifications of rocks, sedimentation are most clearly imprinted on the geological record of Pechenga. This is that part of the Baltic folded shield, where the geological history of stratal and ore manifestations has evolved over billions of years.

Especially, the northern and eastern parts of the shield surface were exposed to centuries-old corrosion. As a result, glaciers, wind, water and other natural disasters, as it were, ripped off (scrapers) the upper layers of rocks.

The choice of the well site was based on the serious erosion of the upper layers and the exposure of the ancient Archean formations of the Earth. These outcrops significantly brought closer and facilitated access to the underground storerooms of nature.

Superdeep well design

Ultra-deep structures have a mandatory telescopic design. In our case, the initial diameter of the mouth was 92 cm, and the final one was 21.5.

The design guide column or the so-called conductor with a diameter of 720 mm provided for penetration to a depth of 39 linear meters. The first technical string (stationary casing), with a diameter of 324 mm and a length of 2000 meters; removable casing 245 mm, with a footage of 8770 meters. Further drilling was planned to be carried out with an open hole to the design mark. Crystalline rocks made it possible to count on the long-term stability of the uncased part of the walls. The second removable column, marked with magnetic marks, would allow continuous core sampling along the entire length of the wellbore. Radioactive markers on the downhole pipe were tuned to record the temperature of the drilling environment.

Technical equipment of a drilling rig for drilling an ultra-deep well

Drilling from scratch was carried out by the Uralmash-4E installation, that is, serial equipment used for drilling deep oil and gas wells. Up to 2000 meters, the shaft was drilled with steel drill pipes, with a turbodrill at the end. This turbine, 46 meters long, with a chisel at the end, was set in rotation under the action of a clay solution, which was pumped into the pipe at a pressure of 40 atmospheres.

Further, the sinking was carried out from an interval of 7264 meters by the domestic installation "Uralmash-15000", from an innovative point of view, a more powerful structure, with a carrying capacity of 400 tons. The complex was equipped with many technical, technological, electronic and other advanced developments.

The Kola well was equipped with a high-tech and automated structure:
1. Exploration, with a powerful base on which the sectional tower itself is mounted, 68 meters high. Designed to implement:

• sinking of the barrel, operations of descent - lifting of the projectile and other auxiliary actions;
• retention of the leading and the entire pipe string, both on weight and during drilling;
• placement of sections (stands) of drill pipes, including collars, traveling system.

In the inner space of the tower, there were also means of the joint venture (descent - ascent), tools. It also housed the means of security and possible emergency evacuation of the rider (assistant driller).

2. Power and technological equipment, power and pump units.

3. Circulation and blowout control system, cementing equipment.

4. Automation, control, process control system.

5. Electrical supply, means of mechanization.

6. A complex of measuring equipment, laboratory equipment and much more.

In 2008, the Kola super-deep well was completely abandoned, all valuable equipment was dismantled and removed (most of it was sold for scrap).

Until 2012, the main tower of the drilling rig was dismantled.

Now only the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences is operating, which to this day is studying core extracted from an ultra-deep well.

The core itself was taken out to the city of Yaroslavl, where it is now stored.

Documentary video about the Kola Superdeep Well

New ultra-deep well records

The Kola superdeep well was considered the deepest well in the world until 2008.

In 2008, the Maersk Oil BD-04A oil well, which is 12,290 meters long, was drilled at an acute angle in the Al Shaheen oil basin.

In January 2011, this record was also broken, and it was broken by an oil well drilled in the Northern Dome (Odoptu-Sea - an oil and gas field in Russia), this well was also drilled at an acute angle to the earth's surface, the length was 12,345 meters.

In June 2013, the Z-42 well of the Chayvinskoye field again broke the depth record with a length of 12,700 meters.

Soil studies prove: the moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula

Kola superdeep in section

Kola Superdeep

Allegedly, on the approach to the 13th kilometer, the instruments recorded a strange noise coming from the bowels of the planet - the yellow newspapers unanimously assured that only the cries of sinners from the underworld could sound like this. A few seconds after the appearance of a terrible sound, an explosion thundered ...

Space under your feet

In the late 70s and early 80s, getting a job at the Kola Superdeep, as the inhabitants of the village of Zapolyarny in the Murmansk region call the well familiarly, was more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. From hundreds of applicants, one or two were selected. Together with the order for employment, the lucky ones received a separate apartment and a salary equal to double or triple the salary of Moscow professors. There were 16 research laboratories working at the well at the same time, each the size of an average plant. Only the Germans dug the earth with such perseverance, but, as the Guinness Book of Records testifies, the deepest German well is almost half as long as ours.

Distant galaxies have been studied by mankind much better than what is under the earth's crust a few kilometers from us. The Kola Superdeep is a kind of telescope into the mysterious inner world of the planet.

Since the beginning of the 20th 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 40 years ago, they were sure that the layer of granites starts at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to 3 kilometers, and then basalts come. It was expected to meet the mantle at a depth of 15–18 kilometers. In reality, everything turned out to be completely different. And although school textbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists from the Kola Superdeep proved that this is not so.

Baltic shield

Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 60s in several countries at once. They tried to drill wells in those places where the crust should have been thinner - the goal was to reach the mantle. For example, the Americans drilled in the area of ​​the island of Maui, Hawaii, where, according to seismic studies, ancient rocks go under the ocean floor and the mantle is located at a depth of about 5 kilometers under a four-kilometer water column. Alas, not a single ocean drilling rig has penetrated deeper than 3 kilometers. In general, almost all ultra-deep well projects mysteriously ended at a depth of three kilometers. It was at this moment that something strange began to happen to the Boers: either they fell into unexpected super-hot areas, or they seemed to be bitten off by some unprecedented monster. Deeper than 3 kilometers, only 5 wells broke through, 4 of them were Soviet. And only the Kola Superdeep was destined to overcome the mark of 7 kilometers.

Initial 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 drilling would take incomparably longer, he believed, the well would be much more valuable from a scientific point of view, because it was in the thickness of the continental plates in prehistoric times that the most significant movements of terrestrial rocks took place. The drilling point was chosen on the Kola Peninsula not by chance. The peninsula is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which is composed of the most ancient rocks known to mankind.

A multi-kilometer cut of the layers of the Baltic Shield is a clear history of the planet over the past 3 billion years.

Conqueror of the Deep

The appearance of the Kola drilling rig is capable of disappointing the layman. The well does not look like a mine that our imagination draws for us. There are no descents underground, only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters goes into the thickness. An imaginary section of the Kola super-deep well looks like a thin needle that has pierced the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors, located at the end of the needle, is raised and lowered over several days. Faster is impossible: the strongest composite cable can break under its own weight.

What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upward with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the dungeon can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below are indeed like screams 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 can melt 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.

12,000 meters of discovery and some hell

“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 Guberman. 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. “Up to 4 kilometers, everything went according to theory, and then the doomsday began,” says Guberman. Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers. Accordingly, it will be possible to dig a well up to almost 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle. But already at 5 kilometers, the ambient temperature exceeded 700C, at seven - over 1200C, and at a depth of 12 it was roasting stronger than 2200C - 1000C 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 were taught at school: there are young rocks, granites, basalts, a mantle and a core. But the granites turned out to be 3 kilometers lower than expected. Next were the basalts. They weren't found at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer. This is an extremely important discovery, because all our ideas about the origin and distribution of minerals are connected with the theory of the layered structure of the Earth.

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 utterly destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas.

Demons

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.

In the history of the Kola Superdeep, it was not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not - but it was in that 1995 that a powerful explosion of an unknown nature was heard in the depths of the mine. The journalists of a Finnish newspaper broke through to the inhabitants of Zapolyarny - and the world was shocked by the story of a demon flying out of the bowels of the planet.

“When I was asked about this mysterious story at UNESCO, I did not know what to answer. On the one hand, it's bullshit. On the other hand, I, as an honest scientist, could not say that I know what exactly happened here. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion ... A few days later, nothing of the kind was found at the same depth, ”recalls Academician David Huberman.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, the predictions of Alexei Tolstoy from the novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" were confirmed. At a depth of over 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. Perhaps in the near future humanity will be able to take advantage of this wealth.