It occupies the first positions in the list of "Super-deep wells of the world". It was drilled to study the structure of deep earth rocks. Unlike other available wells on the planet, this one was drilled exclusively from a research point of view and was not used for the purpose of extracting useful resources.

Location of the Kola ultradeep station

Where is Kolskaya ultradeep well? O located in Murmansk region, near the city of Zapolyarny (about 10 kilometers from it). The location of the well is truly unique. It was laid out on the territory in the area Kola Peninsula. It is where the earth daily pushes various ancient rocks to the surface.

Near the well is the Pechenga-Imandra-Varzuga rift trough, which was formed as a result of a fault.

Kola superdeep well: history of appearance

In honor of the centennial anniversary on the occasion of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in the first half of 1970, the drilling of a well was started.

On May 24, 1970, after the location of the well was approved by the geological expedition, work began. Up to a depth of about 7,000 meters, everything went easily and smoothly. After crossing the seven thousand milestone, the work became more difficult and constant collapses began to occur.

As a result of constant breakage of lifting mechanisms and breakage of drilling heads, as well as regular collapses, the walls of the well were subject to the cementing process. However, due to constant malfunctions, work continued for several years and went extremely slowly.

On June 6, 1979, the depth of the well crossed the line of 9583 meters, thereby breaking the world record for oil production in the United States of America by Bert Rogers, located in Oklahoma. At that time, about sixteen scientific laboratories were continuously working in the Kola well, and the drilling process was personally controlled by the Minister of Geology Soviet Union Kozlovsky Evgeny Alexandrovich.

In 1983, when the depth of the Kola super-deep well reached 12,066 meters, work was temporarily frozen in connection with preparations for the 1984 International Geological Congress. Upon its completion, work was resumed.

The resumption of work fell on September 27, 1984. But during the first descent, the drill string was cut off, and once again the well collapsed. Work resumed from a depth of about 7 thousand meters.

In 1990, the depth of the drill well reached a record 12,262 meters. After the break of the next column, an order was received to stop drilling the well and complete the work.

The current state of the Kola well

In early 2008, the ultra-deep well on the Kola Peninsula was considered abandoned, the equipment was being dismantled, and a demolition project for existing buildings and laboratories had already begun.

In early 2010, the director of the Kola Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced that the well had now undergone a conservation process and was being destroyed on its own. Since then, the issue has not been raised.

Well depth to date

Currently, the Kola superdeep well, the photo of which is presented to the reader in the article, is considered one of the largest drilling projects on the planet. Its official depth is 12,263 meters.

Sounds in the Kola well

When the drilling rigs crossed the line of 12 thousand meters, the workers began to hear strange noises coming from deep. At first they did not attach any importance to this. However, when all the drilling equipment stopped, and deathly silence hung in the well, unusual sounds were heard, which the workers themselves called “the cries of sinners in hell.” Since the sounds of the ultra-deep well were considered rather unusual, it was decided to record them using heat-resistant microphones. When the recordings were listened to, everyone was amazed - they looked like the screams and squeals of people.

A few hours after listening to the recordings, the workers found traces of a powerful explosion of a previously unknown origin. Work was temporarily stopped until the circumstances were clarified. However, they resumed after a few days. Having again descended into the well, everyone with bated breath expected to hear human cries, but there was truly deathly silence.

When the investigation into the origin of sounds began, questions began to be asked about who heard what. The amazed and frightened workers tried to avoid answering these questions and only brushed off the phrase: “I heard something strange ...” Only later a large number of time and at the end of the project, a version was put forward that sounds of unknown origin are the sound of movement tectonic plates. This version was refuted over time.

The secrets that shrouded the well

In 1989, the Kola super-deep well, the sounds from which excite the human imagination, was called "the road to hell." The legend originated on the air of an American television company, which took an April Fool's article in a Finnish newspaper about the Kola well for reality. The article said that each drilled kilometer on the way to the 13th brought continuous misfortunes to the country. According to the legend, at a depth of 12,000 meters, workers began to imagine human cries for help, which were recorded on ultra-sensitive microphones.

With each new kilometer on the way to the 13th, cataclysms occurred in the country, so the USSR collapsed on the above path.

It was also noted that, having drilled a well up to 14.5 thousand meters, the workers stumbled upon hollow "rooms", the temperature in which reached 1100 degrees Celsius. Having lowered one of the heat-resistant microphones into one of these holes, they recorded groans, gnashes and screams. These sounds were called "the voice of the underworld", and the well itself began to be referred to only as "the road to hell."

However, soon she research group refuted this myth. Scientists reported that the depth of the well at that time was only 12,263 meters, and the maximum recorded temperature was 220 degrees Celsius. Only one fact remained unrefuted, thanks to which the Kola super-deep well has such dubious fame - sounds.

Interview with one of the workers of the Kola Superdeep Well

In one of the interviews dedicated to the refutation of the legend of the Kola well, David Mironovich Huberman said: “When they ask me about the veracity of this legend and about the existence of the demon that we found there, I answer that it is utter nonsense. But to be honest, I can't deny the fact that we've encountered something supernatural. At first, sounds of unknown origin began to disturb us, then there was an explosion. When we looked into the well, at the same depth, a few days later, everything was absolutely normal ... "

What was the benefit of drilling the Kola super-deep well?

Of course, one of the main advantages of the appearance of this well can be called a significant progress in the field of drilling. New methods and types of drilling have been developed. Also, drilling and scientific equipment was created personally for the Kola superdeep well, which is still used today.

Another plus was the opening of a new location of valuable natural resources, including gold.

home scientific goal research project deep layers land has been reached. Many existing theories were refuted (including those about the basalt layer of the earth).

Number of ultra-deep wells in the world

In total, there are about 25 ultra-deep wells on the planet.

Most of them are located in former USSR, but about 8 are located around the world.

Superdeep wells located on the territory of the former USSR

A huge number of super-deep wells were present on the territory of the Soviet Union, but the following should be especially highlighted:

1. Muruntau well. In depth, the well reaches only 3 thousand meters. It is located in the Republic of Uzbekistan, in the small village of Muruntau. The drilling of the well began in 1984 and has not yet been completed.
2. Krivoy Rog well. In depth it reaches only 5383 meters out of 12 thousand conceived. Drilling began in 1984 and ended in 1993. The location of the well is considered to be Ukraine, the vicinity of the city of Krivoy Rog.
3. Dnieper-Donetsk well. She is a fellow countrywoman of the previous one and is also located in Ukraine, near the Donetsk Republic. The depth of the well today is 5691 meters. Drilling began in 1983 and continues to this day.
4. Ural well. It has a depth of 6100 meters. Is in Sverdlovsk region, near the town of Upper Tura. Work on the software lasted for 20 years, starting in 1985 and ending in 2005.
5. Biikzhal well. Its depth reaches 6700 meters. The well was drilled from 1962 to 1971. It is located on the Caspian lowland.
6. Aralsol well. Its depth is one hundred meters more than Biikzhalskaya and is only 6800 meters. The drilling year and location of the well are completely identical to the Biizhalskaya well.
7. Timan-Pechora well. Its depth reaches 6904 meters. Located in the Komi Republic. To be more precise, in the Vuktyl region. Work on the software lasted about 10 years, from 1984 to 1993.
8. Tyumen well. The depth reaches 7502 meters out of 8000 planned. The well is located near the town and village of Korotchaevo. Drilling took place from 1987 to 1996.
9. Shevchenko well. It was drilled during one year 1982 with the aim of extracting oil from Western Ukraine. The depth of the well is 7520 meters. Located in the Carpathian region.
10. En-Yakhinskaya well. It has a depth of about 8250 meters. The only well that exceeded the drilling plan (6000 was originally planned). Situated on the territory Western Siberia, near the city New Urengoy. Drilling lasted from 2000 to 2006. It was currently the last operating ultra-deep well in Russia.
11. Saatlinskaya well. Its depth is 8324 meters. Drilling was carried out between 1977 and 1982. It is located in Azerbaijan, 10 kilometers from the city of Saatly, within the Kursk Bulge.

Worldwide ultra-deep wells

On the territory of other countries there are also a number of super-deep wells that cannot be ignored:

1. Sweden. Silyan Ring with a depth of 6800 meters.
2. Kazakhstan. Tasym South-Eastern with a depth of 7050 meters.
3. USA. The Bighorn is 7583 meters deep.
4. Austria. Zisterdorf with a depth of 8553 meters.
5. USA. University with a depth of 8686 meters.
6. Germany. KTB-Oberpfalz with a depth of 9101 meters.
7. USA. Beydat-Unit with a depth of 9159 meters.
8. USA. Bertha Rogers at a depth of 9583 meters.

World records for ultra-deep wells in the world

In 2008, the world record of the Kola well was broken by the Maersk oil well. Its depth is 12,290 meters.

After that, several more world records for ultra-deep wells were recorded:

1. In early January 2011, the record was broken by the Sakhalin-1 oil well, which reaches a depth of 12,345 meters.
2. In June 2013, the record was broken by the well of the Chayvinskoye field, the depth of which was 12,700 meters.

However, the riddles and mysteries of the Kola super-deep well before today not disclosed or explained. Regarding the sounds present during its drilling, new theories have arisen to this day. Who knows, maybe this is really the fruit of a violent human fantasy? Well, then why so many eyewitnesses? Maybe soon there will be a person who will give a scientific explanation of what is happening, and perhaps the well will remain a legend that will be retold for many more centuries...

Today scientific research humanity reached the boundaries of the solar system: we landed spacecraft on the planets, their satellites, asteroids, comets, sent missions to the Kuiper belt and crossed the border of the heliopause. With the help of telescopes, we see events that took place 13 billion years ago - when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. Against this background, it is interesting to assess how well we know our Earth. The best way to get to know her internal structure- drill a well: the deeper, the better. The deepest well on Earth is the Kola Superdeep, or SG-3. In 1990, its depth reached 12 kilometers 262 meters. If we compare this figure with the radius of our planet, it turns out that this is only 0.2 percent of the way to the center of the Earth. But even this turned out to be enough to turn the ideas about the structure of the earth's crust.

If you imagine a well as a shaft through which you can go down by elevator into the very bowels of the earth, or at least a couple of kilometers, then this is not at all the case. The diameter of the drilling tool with which the engineers created the well was only 21.4 centimeters. The upper two-kilometer section of the well is a little wider - it was expanded to 39.4 centimeters, but still there is no way for a person to get there. To imagine the proportions of the well, the best analogy would be a 57-meter sewing needle with a diameter of 1 millimeter, slightly thicker at one end.

Well scheme

But this presentation will be simplified. During drilling, several accidents occurred at the well - part of the drill string ended up underground without the possibility of extracting it. Therefore, several times the well was started anew, from the marks of seven and nine kilometers. There are four major branches and about a dozen smaller ones. The main branches have different maximum depths: two of them cross the mark of 12 kilometers, two more do not reach it by only 200-400 meters. Note that the depth of the Mariana Trench is one kilometer less - 10,994 meters relative to sea level.

Horizontal (left) and vertical projections of SG-3 trajectories

Yu.N. Yakovlev et al. / Bulletin of Kolsky scientific center RAS, 2014

Moreover, it would be a mistake to perceive the well as a plumb line. Due to the fact that at different depths the rocks have different mechanical properties, the drill during the work deviated to less dense areas. Therefore, on a large scale, the profile of the Kola Superdeep looks like a slightly curved wire with several branches.

Approaching the well today, we will see only upper part- a metal hatch screwed to the mouth with twelve massive bolts. The inscription on it was made with a mistake, the correct depth is 12,262 meters.

How was a deep well drilled?

To begin with, it should be noted that the SG-3 was originally conceived specifically for scientific purposes. The researchers chose to drill a place where ancient rocks came to the surface of the earth - up to three billion years old. One of the arguments in the exploration was that the young sedimentary rocks were well studied during oil production, and no one had yet drilled deep into the ancient layers. In addition, there were also large copper-nickel deposits, the exploration of which would be a useful addition to the scientific mission of the well.

Drilling began in 1970. The first part of the well was drilled with a Uralmash-4E serial rig - it was usually used for drilling oil wells. The modification of the installation made it possible to reach a depth of 7 kilometers 263 meters. It took four years. Then the installation was changed to "Uralmash-15000", named after the planned depth of the well - 15 kilometers. The new drilling rig was designed specifically for the Kola Superdeep: drilling at such great depths required a serious refinement of equipment and materials. For example, the weight of the drill string alone at a 15-kilometer depth reached 200 tons. The installation itself could lift loads up to 400 tons.

The drill string consists of pipes connected to each other. With its help, engineers lower the drilling tool to the bottom of the well, and it also ensures its operation. At the end of the column, special 46-meter turbodrills were installed, driven by a stream of water from the surface. They made it possible to rotate the rock crushing tool separately from the entire column.

The bits with which the drill string cut into the granite evoke associations with futuristic details from the robot - several spinning spiked disks connected to the turbine from above. One such bit was enough for only four hours of work - this roughly corresponds to a passage of 7-10 meters, after which the entire drill string must be raised, disassembled and then lowered again. Constant descents and ascents themselves took up to 8 hours.

Even the pipes for the column in the Kola Superdeep had to use unusual ones. At depth, temperature and pressure gradually increase, and, as engineers say, at temperatures above 150-160 degrees, the steel of serial pipes softens and holds multi-ton loads worse - because of this, the likelihood of dangerous deformations and breakage of the column increases. Therefore, the developers chose lighter and heat-resistant aluminum alloys. Each of the pipes had a length of about 33 meters and a diameter of about 20 centimeters - a little narrower than the well itself.

However, even specially designed materials could not withstand drilling conditions. After the first seven-kilometer section, it took almost ten years and more than 50 kilometers of pipes to further drill to the mark of 12,000 meters. Engineers were faced with the fact that below seven kilometers the rocks became less dense and fractured - viscous for the drill. In addition, the wellbore itself distorted its shape and became elliptical. As a result, the string broke off several times, and, unable to lift it back, the engineers were forced to concrete the well branch and go through the wellbore again, wasting years of work.

One of these major accidents forced drillers in 1984 to concrete a branch of the well, which reached a depth of 12,066 meters. Drilling had to be restarted from the 7-kilometer mark. This was preceded by a pause in work with the well - at that moment the existence of SG-3 was declassified, and the international geological congress Geoexpo was held in Moscow, the delegates of which visited the object.

According to eyewitnesses of the accident, after the resumption of work, the column drilled a well nine meters down. After four hours of drilling, the workers prepared to lift the column back, but it "did not go." The drillers decided that the pipe somewhere "stuck" to the walls of the well, and increased the lifting power. The workload has been drastically reduced. Gradually disassembling the string into 33-meter candles, the workers reached the next segment, ending with an uneven lower edge: the turbodrill and another five kilometers of pipes remained in the well, they could not be lifted.

The drillers managed to reach the 12-kilometer mark again only by 1990, at the same time the dive record was set - 12,262 meters. Then there was a new accident, and since 1994, work on the well was stopped.

The scientific mission of the ultra-deep

Pattern of seismic tests on SG-3

"Kola superdeep" Ministry of Geology of the USSR, publishing house "Nedra", 1984

The well was explored by a whole range of geological and geophysical methods, starting from the collection of a core (a column of rocks corresponding to given depths) and ending with radiation and seismological measurements. For example, the core was taken using core receivers with special drills - they look like pipes with jagged edges. In the center of these pipes there are 6-7 centimeter holes where the rock enters.

But even with this seemingly simple (except for the need to lift this core from many kilometers deep) technique, difficulties arose. Due to the drilling fluid - the same one that set the drill in motion - the core was saturated with liquid and changed its properties. In addition, conditions in depth and on the surface of the earth are very different - the samples cracked from the pressure difference.

At different depths, the core yield was very different. If at five kilometers from a 100-meter segment it was possible to count on 30 centimeters of core, then at depths of more than nine kilometers, instead of a column of rocks, geologists received a set of washers from dense rock.

Micrograph of rocks raised from a depth of 8028 meters

"Kola superdeep" Ministry of Geology of the USSR, publishing house "Nedra", 1984

Studies of the material lifted from the well made it possible to make several important findings. First, the structure of the earth's crust cannot be simplified to a composition of several layers. This was previously indicated by seismological data - geophysicists saw waves that seemed to be reflected from a smooth boundary. Studies at SG-3 have shown that such visibility can also occur with a complex distribution of rocks.

This assumption affected the design of the well - scientists expected that at a depth of seven kilometers the shaft would enter basalt rocks, but they did not meet at the 12-kilometer mark either. But instead of basalt, geologists discovered rocks that had a large number of cracks and low density, which could not be expected at all from many kilometers of depth. Moreover, there were traces in the cracks groundwater- even suggestions were made that they were formed by a direct reaction of oxygen and hydrogen in the thickness of the Earth.

Among the scientific results, there were also applied ones - for example, at shallow depths, geologists found a horizon of copper-nickel ores suitable for mining. And at a depth of 9.5 kilometers, a layer of a geochemical anomaly of gold was discovered - micrometer grains of native gold were present in the rock. Concentrations reached gram per ton of rock. However, it is unlikely that mining from such a depth will ever be profitable. But the very existence and properties of the gold-bearing layer made it possible to clarify the models of the evolution of minerals - petrogenesis.

Separately, it is necessary to talk about the studies of temperature gradients and radiation. For such experiments, downhole instruments are used, which are lowered on wire-cables. big problem it was necessary to ensure their synchronization with ground equipment, as well as to ensure operation at great depths. For example, difficulties arose with the fact that the cables, with a length of 12 kilometers, were stretched by about 20 meters, which could greatly reduce the accuracy of the data. To avoid this, geophysicists had to create new methods for marking distances.

Most commercial devices were not designed to work in harsh conditions lower levels of the well. Therefore, for research at great depths, scientists used equipment designed specifically for the Kola Superdeep.

The most important result of geothermal research is much higher temperature gradients than expected to be seen. Near the surface, the rate of temperature increase was 11 degrees per kilometer, to a depth of two kilometers - 14 degrees per kilometer. In the interval from 2.2 to 7.5 kilometers, the temperature rose at a rate approaching 24 degrees per kilometer, although existing models predicted a value one and a half times less. As a result, already at a five-kilometer depth, the instruments recorded a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius, and by 12 kilometers this value reached 220 degrees Celsius.

The Kola super-deep well turned out to be unlike other wells - for example, when analyzing the heat release of the rocks of the Ukrainian crystalline shield and Sierra Nevada batholiths, geologists showed that heat release decreases with depth. In SG-3, on the contrary, it grew. Moreover, measurements have shown that the main source of heat, providing 45-55 percent heat flow, is the decay of radioactive elements.

Despite the fact that the depth of the well seems colossal, it does not reach even a third of the thickness of the earth's crust in the Baltic Shield. Geologists estimate that the base of the earth's crust in this area runs about 40 kilometers underground. Therefore, even if SG-3 had reached the planned 15-kilometer cutoff, we still would not have reached the mantle.

Such an ambitious task was set by American scientists when developing the Mohol project. Geologists planned to reach the border of Mohorovichich - an underground area where there is a sharp change in the speed of propagation sound waves. It is believed to be related to the boundary between the crust and the mantle. It is worth noting that the drillers chose the bottom of the ocean near the island of Guadalupe as a place for the well - the distance to the border was only a few kilometers. However, the depth of the ocean itself reached 3.5 kilometers here, which significantly complicated drilling work. The first tests in the 1960s allowed geologists to drill holes only 183 meters.

Plans were recently made to revive the deep ocean drilling project with the help of the exploration drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution. As new goal geologists chose a point in the Indian Ocean, not far from Africa. The depth of the Mohorovichic border there is only about 2.5 kilometers. In December 2015 - January 2016, geologists managed to drill a well with a depth of 789 meters - the fifth largest in the world of underwater wells. But this value is only half of what was required at the first stage. However, the team plans to return and complete what they started.

***

0.2 percent of the path to the center of the Earth is not such an impressive figure compared to the scale of space travel. However, it should be borne in mind that the boundary of the solar system does not pass along the orbit of Neptune (or even the Kuiper belt). The gravity of the Sun prevails over the stellar one up to distances of two light years from the star. So if you carefully calculate everything, it turns out that Voyager 2 also flew only a tenth of a percent of the path to the outskirts of our system.

Therefore, do not be upset by how little we know the "insides" of our own planet. Geologists have their own telescopes - seismic research - and their own ambitious plans to conquer the bowels. And if astronomers have already managed to touch a solid part celestial bodies in solar system, then geologists have all the most interesting things yet to come.

Vladimir Korolev

In the 50-70s of the last century, the world was changing at an incredible speed. Things have appeared without which it is difficult to imagine today's world: the Internet, a computer, cellular, space exploration and sea ​​depths. Man was rapidly expanding the spheres of his presence in the Universe, but he still had rather rough ideas about the structure of his "home" - the planet Earth. Although even then the idea ultra-deep drilling was not new: back in 1958, the Americans launched a project Mohole. Its name is derived from two words:

Moho a surface named after Andriy Mohorovichich- Croatian geophysicist and seismologist, who in 1909 singled out lower bound the earth's crust, on which there is an abrupt increase in the speed seismic waves;
hole- well, hole, orifice. Based on the assumption that the thickness of the earth's crust under the oceans is much less than on land, 5 wells were drilled near the island of Guadelupe with a depth of about 180 meters (with an ocean depth of up to 3.5 km). In five years, the researchers drilled five wells, collected many samples from the basalt layer, but did not reach the mantle. As a result, the project was declared a failure and the work was curtailed.

Vessel CUSS, which carried out the Mohole project

One of the main goals of the expedition "On the roads of the Arctic" was the Kola super-deep well (or object SG-3) - the deepest in the world. I first learned about it back in 2004, when I was a first-year student at the Geological Faculty of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, at a lecture on general geology. And since then I hoped to see everything with my own eyes.

Times have changed and, once hard-to-reach, the territory of the SG-3 facility is now in close proximity to the mining and processing plant of the Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company. And the passage to the well goes through technological roads.

If you go by the navigator, then after the city of Zapolyarny it will lead to the checkpoint of the mining and processing plant. The guards, of course, will not let you into the territory, but allegedly I have not heard anything about the Kola Superdeep.

The management of the plant is expectedly tired of the constant pilgrimage to the Kola Superdeep different kind neo-stalkers, lovers of geology and metal hunters, so the road to the well was dug up with excavators and, for the sake of fidelity, covered with cobblestones.

Therefore, we return to the place where in last time the mobile Internet worked and we are looking for a well-trimmed alternative road by satellite. Having found the cherished lapel, we raise the hydropneumatic suspension of our Toyota Land Cruiser 200 Executive to the top position, and crawl along the hills towards the well.

The road, as befits a real adventure, abounded with all sorts of obstacles - fords, stones, even lakes.

Having already returned to Murmansk and analyzing the gps track (we wrote the entire route using the locme.ru service, I will talk about it later), I noticed that we were not going to the well by the optimal route and somewhere lost our way, but back passed as it should. What, I don't regret it one bit.

The track was recorded using the LocMe service.

And now, having climbed another hill, we have a view of the once majestic research and production complex of the Kola Superdeep Well.

In an effort to take a leading position in all industries at once, in 1962 the USSR launched its ultra-deep drilling program.

It took 4 years to prepare the project: the main difficulty was that, according to the geothermal gradient ( physical quantity describing the increase in the temperature of rocks with depth), the temperature at a depth of 10 km should be about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C. Neither the drilling tool nor the measuring equipment was designed for such a temperature. By 1970, just in time for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin, a drilling site was found - an ancient crystal shield Kola Peninsula. According to a report by the Institute of Physics of the Earth, the Kola Shield has cooled over billions of years, the temperature at a depth of 15 km should not have exceeded 150°C. According to an approximate section, the first 7 kilometers should be composed of granite strata of the upper part of the earth's crust, and basalts begin below. The drilling site was chosen on northern tip Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi (in Finnish it means "Under the wolf mountain"). Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.

Despite the non-trivial task, no special equipment was developed for the work - they worked with what they had. At the first stages, the Uralmash 4E drilling rig with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light-alloy aluminum pipes were used. Expensive aluminum was used for a number of reasons: pipes made of "winged metal" have much less weight, and at temperatures above 150-160 degrees, the steel of serial pipes softens and holds multi-ton loads worse - because of this, the likelihood of dangerous deformations and breakage of the column increases. When the well reached depth 7000 meters, a new drilling rig was installed on the site "Uralmash 15000"- 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 68 m high, fully sheathed derrick, recalcitrant strong winds, raging in the Arctic. The weight of the drill string alone at 15 km depth would reach 200 tons. And the installation itself could lift loads up to 400 tons. A repair and mechanical plant, scientific laboratories and a core store have grown nearby. : in the 70s, rotary drilling was the most widespread, when the entire pipe string was turned by a rotor located on the surface. This method was excellent for relatively shallow wells, but when the length of the trunk approaches 7,000 or even 10,000 meters, rotary drilling becomes powerless. At SG-3, drilling was carried out using a turbodrill - a hydraulic engine, the rotation of which was provided by the energy of the circulating drilling fluid. Installed at the lower end of the string, 46 meter sections rotated the drill bit. Neither in the USSR, nor in the world at that time, there was any experience of drilling in the rocks of the crystalline basement at such depths and, in addition to purely technological problems, the work was complicated by 100% core sampling. Penetration in one trip, determined by the wear of the drill head, is usually 7-10 m the rise of the 12-kilometer column takes about 18 hours. When lifting, the string is automatically disassembled into sections (candles) 33 m long. On average, 60 m were drilled per month. 50 km of pipes were used to drill the last 5 km of the well. That's how worn they are.

Approaching the territory of SG-3, we saw the "Loaf" and people fussily folding pieces of iron inside. This picture has long become familiar to the once advanced scientific center - it was assumed that the Kola superdeep well, after completion of its drilling, would be turned into a unique natural laboratory for research using special devices deep processes occurring in the earth's crust. However, in 2008 the facility was finally abandoned, and all more or less valuable equipment was dismantled. From that moment on, a period of plundering of everything that was of at least some value began - primarily metal.

The metal thieves, however, turned out to be quite sociable guys, they were sincerely surprised why we had come here from Moscow - “there was nothing left right there!” and showed the legendary well. Now it is mothballed, and its mouth is covered with a steel plate. What happens in the trunk itself - no one knows.

On the basis of SG-3, in addition to the drilling site itself, several research institutes worked, their own design department, turning shop, forge. The most daring technical solutions were born right on the site, implemented on their own, and after a few days they were already tested in work. All this required energy and the Kola Superdeep was served by its own substation. Now the power unit looks like this, once 48 people worked here.

Crates piled up at the entrance unique equipment. Everything valuable is torn out “with meat”:

A little further away are the pylons of the power lines. All wires, of course, have long been cut off.

According to the directive “from above”, only domestic equipment was used at SG-3, and it could not be otherwise: at first, the well was a top-secret security facility. To a depth of 7 km, serial instruments were used. Work at great depths and at more high temperatures required the creation of special heat and pressure resistant devices. Particular difficulties arose in last step drilling; when the temperature in the well approached 200 ° C, and the pressure exceeded 1000 atmospheres, serial devices could no longer work. The geophysical design bureaus and specialized laboratories of several research institutes came to the rescue, producing single copies of thermal pressure-resistant equipment. The competition for employment amounted to dozens of people per place, and those who passed a rigorous selection were immediately given an apartment. At a time when an ordinary Soviet engineer received 120 rubles a month, an engineer at the Kola Superdeep was earning an incredible 850 rubles - three salaries and you can buy a car. In total, about 300 people worked at the Kola Superdeep.

The depth of 7000 meters turned out to be fatal for the Kola super-deep

Depth in 7000 meters turned out to be fatal for the Kola super-deep. Higher up the section, drilling proceeded relatively calmly, the drill passed through homogeneous strong granites. But after this depth, the drill head entered the less durable layered rocks, and the barrel could not be kept vertical. When the well passed the 12 km mark for the first time, the wellbore deviated 21° from the vertical. 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 bowels like a knife through 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. June 6, 1979 the first historical event happened. Drillers reported on reaching the mark in 9584 meters. The Kola well became the deepest well in the world, surpassing the American oil record holder "Bertha Rogers" (9583 meters).

On June 6, 1979, the drilling foreman Fedor Atarshchikov made a triumphant entry in the logbook: “Full face - 9584 meters. Bertha Rogers, chao, goodbye.

Early 1980s There was also a second historical event. Kola Superdeep Passed 11,022 meters bypassing the Mariana Trench. At such a depth inside its own cradle, mankind has not yet fallen. One of the most common drilling accidents is a sticking of the drilling tool, a situation where crumbling walls of the well block the string and do not allow the tool to rotate. Often, attempts to pull out a stuck column end in its breakage. 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 root system 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.

Walking through the deserted corridors of the complex, despite the general monstrous devastation, you feel the former greatness of what happened here. In one of the offices, the floor is littered with rare scientific literature - issues of the Defectoscopy magazine for several years and a manual for calculating drill strings for ultra-deep wells - uniqueness scientific work Roughly comparable to "Dummies' instructions for flying to the moon" if it existed.

In the other, there is a miraculously preserved workplace of a drilling foreman. The first well in Russia was drilled in 1864 in the Kuban. Since then and until now - the master almost always works directly at the drilling site - to see and control everything that happens. But it was not so on the Kola Superdeep! The operator was sitting as far as 250 meters from the mouth and watched everything remotely, including drilling parameters. Space!

The walls are shabby, the windows are shattered by the harsh north wind, but it does not leave the feeling that a laboratory assistant is about to enter the office and kick out uninvited guests.

AT September 1984 depth was first reached in 12,066 meters, and then another break in the drill string happened. It has become real tragedy for the drilling crew, because they had to start all over again, all from the same 7 kilometers, again and again passing cracks and caverns of the lower layer of the earth's crust. At the same time, within the framework of the World Geological Congress, the work carried out in the Arctic was declassified. AT scientific world well SG-3 made a splash. 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. Around were dozens of exactly the same drill bits as the one on the stand in Moscow. The USSR confirmed the status of an advanced power in the field of deep drilling.

AT June 1990 when SG-3 reached depth 12,262 m, started preparatory work to the tunneling up to 14 km, an accident occurred again. At the level of 8550 m, the pipe string broke. The continuation of the work required a long and expensive update of the techniques, so in 1994 drilling of the Kola super-deep was stopped. All possibilities modern technology were exhausted. After 3 years, she got into the Guinness Book of Records and still remains unsurpassed.

What did ultra-deep drilling on the Kola Peninsula give to mankind?

First of all, she refuted the simple two-layer structure of the Earth. Compiled on the basis of the SG-3 core, the geological section turned out to be exactly the opposite of what scientists had previously imagined. The first 7 kilometers were composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks: tuffs, basalts, breccias, sandstones, dolomites. Deeper lay the so-called Conrad section, after which the velocity of seismic waves in the rocks increased sharply, which was interpreted as the boundary between granites and basalts. This section was passed long ago, but the basalts of the lower layer of the earth's crust did not appear anywhere. On the contrary, granites and gneisses began.
One of the most important goals of drilling was to obtain a core (cylindrical column rock) over the entire length of the well. The longest core in the world was marked out like a ruler in meters and placed in the appropriate order in boxes. The box number and sample numbers are indicated at the top. There are almost 900 such boxes in stock.

Seismic sections in the bowels, as it turned out, are not the boundaries of layers of rocks different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the petrophysical properties of rocks with depth. At high pressure and temperature properties change so much that granites in their physical characteristics become similar to basalts, and vice versa. It was believed that with depth and increasing pressure, the porosity and fracturing of rocks decrease. However, starting from the 9 km mark, the strata turned out to be anomalously porous and fractured. Through a dense system of cracks circulated aqueous solutions. 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 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. The Kola superdeep well aged the Earth by as much as 1.5 billion years: life appeared on the planet earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, more than 17 types of fossilized microorganisms, microfossils, were found, and in fact the age of these deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. And more than a dozen narrowly targeted discoveries.

In total, about 30 ultra-deep wells were drilled in the USSR

Few people know, but more than 30 ultra-deep wells were drilled in the territory of the former USSR (today, all or almost all of them have been destroyed). By special transects (measurement lines) they were connected to each other, obtaining regional geological profiles many thousands of kilometers long. Along the transect, special geophysical equipment was placed, which recorded all the processes occurring in the bowels in a single time. Until 1991, underground nuclear explosions were used as sources of excitation (an impulse that was recorded in wells).

This fundamentally new technical and methodological approach to solving the regional deep structure of the Earth's crust and upper mantle was based on the integration of data from ultra-deep and deep drilling, as well as seismic deep sounding and other geophysical and geochemical methods. For the territory of the USSR, a system was developed for the mutual linking of geophysical profile data based on superdeep reference wells. All this made it possible to carry out a fairly detailed zoning, primarily of promising zones in terms of oil, gas and ore content, throughout the country.

The price of restoration is 100 million rubles?

In his interviews, the director of the Geological Institute of the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences claims that for 100 million rubles it is possible even now to restore the complex of the Kola superdeep well, open a scientific and technical center on its basis and train specialists in offshore drilling. It is quite clear to me that this is not the case. And the question, unfortunately, is not about money. A unique object comparable in scale and significance to humanity only with a manned flight into space has been lost. And lost forever.

After SG-3, many attempts have been made and are being made in the world to look into the deep horizons of the bowels of the Earth, but unfortunately, not a single project has come close in importance to the work carried out in the Arctic.

- What is the most important thing shown by the Kola well?
- Lord! Most importantly, she showed that we know nothing about the continental crust

How to get to the Kola Superdeep Well? Points, coordinates, etc.

1. From Murmansk by road A138 we are moving towards the city of Nikel;
2. At the point 69.479533, 31.824395 there will be a checkpoint where documents will be checked;
3. We go further to 69.440422, 30.594060 where we turn left;
4. We continue to move along the technological road to 69.416088, 30.684387 ;
5. The backfilled road should be right hand at the point 69.408826, 30.661051 ;
6. We go further and carefully look at the lapel on left hand. I went here: 69.414850, 30.613894 ;
7. Then we move along the knurled path, but at the point 69.411232, 30.608956 you need to keep to the right.
8. The coordinates of the well itself 69.396326, 30.609513 .

At a depth of 410-660 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, the ocean of the Archean period. Such discoveries would not have been possible without the ultra-deep drilling methods developed and used in the Soviet Union. One of the artifacts of those times is the Kola super-deep well (SG-3), which, even 24 years after drilling was stopped, remains the deepest in the world. Why it was drilled and what discoveries it helped to make, says Lenta.ru.

The pioneers of ultra-deep drilling were the Americans. True, in the vastness of the ocean: in a pilot project, they involved the Glomar Challenger vessel, designed just for this purpose. In the meantime, the corresponding theoretical base was being actively developed in the Soviet Union.

In May 1970, in the north of the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny, drilling began on the Kola superdeep well. As expected, this was timed to coincide with the centenary of the birth of Lenin. Unlike other ultra-deep wells, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for scientific purposes and even organized a special exploration expedition.

The drilling site was unique: it is on the Baltic Shield in the Kola Peninsula region that ancient rocks come to the surface. Many of them are three billion years old (our planet itself is 4.5 billion years old). In addition, here the Pechenga-Imandra-Varzug rift trough is a cup-like structure pressed into ancient rocks, the origin of which is explained by a deep fault.

It took scientists four years to drill a well to a depth of 7263 meters. So far, nothing unusual has been done: the same installation was used as in the extraction of oil and gas. Then the well stood idle whole year: The rig has been modified for turbine drilling. After the upgrade, it was possible to drill about 60 meters per month.

A depth of seven kilometers brought surprises: the alternation of hard and not very dense rocks. Accidents have become more frequent, and many caverns have appeared in the wellbore. Drilling continued until 1983, when the depth of SG-3 reached 12 kilometers. After that, the scientists gathered a large conference and talked about their successes.

However, due to careless handling of the drill, a five-kilometer section remained in the mine. For several months they tried to get it, but did not succeed. It was decided to start drilling again from a depth of seven kilometers. Due to the complexity of the operation, not only the main shaft was drilled, but also four additional ones. It took six years to restore the lost meters: in 1990, the well reached a depth of 12,262 meters, becoming the deepest in the world.

Two years later, drilling was stopped, subsequently the well was mothballed, but in fact it was abandoned.

Nevertheless, many discoveries were made at the Kola superdeep well. Engineers have created a whole system of ultra-deep drilling. The difficulty was not only in depth, but also in high temperatures (up to 200 degrees Celsius) due to the intensity of the work of the drills.

Scientists not only moved deep into the Earth, but also raised rock samples and cores for analysis. By the way, it was they who studied the lunar soil and found out that in composition it almost completely corresponds to the rocks extracted from the Kola well from a depth of about three kilometers.

At a depth of more than nine kilometers, they found deposits of minerals, including gold: in the olivine layer it is as much as 78 grams per ton. And this is not so little - gold mining is considered possible at 34 grams per ton. A pleasant surprise for scientists, as well as for the nearby plant, was the discovery of a new ore horizon of copper-nickel ores.

Among other things, the researchers learned that granites do not pass into a super-strong basalt layer: in fact, Archean gneisses, which are traditionally classified as fractured rocks, were located behind it. This made a kind of revolution in geological and geophysical science and completely changed the traditional ideas about the bowels of the Earth.

Another pleasant surprise is the discovery at a depth of 9-12 kilometers of highly porous fractured rocks saturated with highly mineralized waters. According to the assumption of scientists, it is they who are responsible for the formation of ores, but before it was believed that this occurs only at much shallower depths.

Among other things, it turned out that the temperature of the bowels is slightly higher than expected: at a depth of six kilometers, a temperature gradient of 20 degrees Celsius per kilometer was obtained instead of 16 expected. The radiogenic origin of the heat flux was established, which also did not agree with previous hypotheses.

In the deep layers more than 2.8 billion years old, scientists have found 14 types of petrified microorganisms. This made it possible to shift the time of the origin of life on the planet by one and a half billion years ago. The researchers also found that there are no sedimentary rocks at the depths and there is methane, forever burying the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons.

"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 chosen. 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. 16 research laboratories, 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. Kola Superdeep - a kind of telescope in the mysterious inner world planets.

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 in 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 were drilling near the island of Maui, in Hawaii, where, according to seismic research, ancient rocks go under ocean floor and the mantle is about 5 kilometers deep 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 with scientific point vision, because it is in the thickness of the continental plates in prehistoric times 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 known to mankind breeds.

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. Temperature environment, 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 stands out within scientific programs UNESCO, is only enough to maintain the drilling station in working condition and study previously extracted rock samples.

Huberman recalls with regret how much 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 to Earth 124 grams of lunar soil, the researchers of the Kola Science Center found that it is 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 in the depths of the mine there was a powerful explosion undetermined nature. 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 me about this mysterious history began to ask questions 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.