Scientists have spent decades digging down into the middle of the earth on a small peninsula in north-west Russia. Their borehole, at over 40,000 feet, is the deepest man has ever walked. Then something unforeseen occurs, though, and the scientists are forced to lock up their experiment for good. What is it that they have discovered? Should we be troubled by it? Keep reading to find out.
After Scientists Discovered Mysterious Fossils, They Decided To Seal Earth’s Deepest Hole
A Mysterious World
Unsurprisingly, humans are intrigued by what lies deep beneath the earth’s surface. But since the first artificial satellite was sent into orbit in 1957, people have often been intrigued by gazing up high to discover the stars’ secrets. And now, we know more about the cosmos than ever before, with the aid of global space agencies and private companies. But as we continue to gaze in wonder at the heavens, are we overlooking another equally mysterious world back on Earth?
A Mysterious World
What We Know
Shockingly, some claim that our understanding of space is now greater than that of what lies under the surface of the Earth. And while many people are acquainted with the space race that captured the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, few recall the equally intriguing struggle to conquer our underground planet.
What We Know
Digging Into Earth
Competing teams of American and Soviet scientists started organizing elaborate experiments aimed at penetrating the Earth’s crust in the late 1950s. This thick shell thought to reach as far as 30 miles to the middle of our planet, gradually gives way to the mantle, the elusive inner layer that makes up a whopping 40 percent of our planet’s mass.
Digging Into Earth
Project Mohole
Then, with the start of Project Mohole in 1958, the U.S. took the lead. Located in Mexico near Guadalupe, the operation saw a team of engineers dig to a depth of over 600 feet through the Pacific Ocean bed. Eight years later, however, their funding was reduced, and Project Mohole was abandoned. Never did the Americans get to the mantle.
Project Mohole
Their Turn
Then, it was the turn of the Soviets. A team of researchers began drilling down into the earth below the Pechengsky District, a sparsely inhabited area on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, on May 24, 1970. Their aim was simple: to penetrate into the crust of the earth as far as possible.
Their Turn
Digging Deep
What’s more, the Soviets were aiming for a depth of some 49,000 feet below the surface of the Earth. And researchers started to dig a series of boreholes, forking off from a single main cavity, using specialist equipment. But as they slowly worked their way down, America’s prospectors made some of their own gains.
Digging Deep
Bertha Rogers Hole
In 1974, the Lone Star Producing Company drilled for oil in western Oklahoma’s Washita District. The firm created the “Bertha Rogers hole” in the process – a man-made wonder that reached more than 31,400 feet, or nearly six miles, below the earth’s surface.
Bertha Rogers Hole
Deepest Hole
Even though Lone Star did not find what it was searching for, its effort remained the deepest hole on the earth for another five years. Then one of the Kola boreholes, called SG-3, broke the record on June 6, 1979. And by 1983, just nine inches deep, the hole had traveled a whopping 39,000 miles through the surface of the Earth.
Deepest Hole
Technical Difficulties
With this milestone reached, scientists on the Kola Peninsula have temporarily downgraded instruments. They stopped their work on the borehole for 12 months so that different people could visit the fascinating site. However, a technical issue forced drilling to come to a halt when the experiment was restarted the following year.
Technical Difficulties
Starting Again
The researchers abandoned the previous borehole, not to be defeated, and started again from a depth of 23,000 feet. And the drilling had reached a record 40,230 feet by 1989, an unbelievable 7.5 miles. Encouraged, those involved in the project were hopeful about the future, anticipating that by late 1990, 44,000 feet would pass through the hole.
Starting Again
An Unexpected Change
Perhaps more impressively, the borehole was expected to hit its 49,000-foot target by as early as 1993. But under the remote Russian tundra, something unexpected was lurking. And bizarrely, as the drill inched closer and closer to the core of the Planet, a totally unexpected change took place.
An Unexpected Change
Hotter Than Expected
Temperatures within the borehole had more or less adhered to what the researchers had planned to find for the first 10,000 feet. After that depth, however, the amount of heat shot up much more quickly. And the hole had heated up to a whopping 180 °C (356 °F) by the time the drilling had started close to its target, a complete 80 °C (176 °F) hotter than expected.
Hotter Than Expected
Fascinating Discovery
However, before sealing up what has been called the Kola Superdeep Borehole, researchers were able to learn some interesting things. For starters, they found tiny fossils of marine plants at a depth of some four miles. Given how long they had spent enclosed below several miles of rock, these relics were amazingly intact, which itself was thought to be over two billion years old.
Fascinating Discovery
What They Discovered
At the farthest reaches of the Kola Superdeep Borehole, an even more exciting discovery was made. Experts had previously predicted that the rock beneath our feet was moving from granite to basalt at around two to four miles below the surface by calculating seismic waves. However, they soon discovered that this was not the case, at least not on the Kola Peninsula.
What They Discovered
Only Granite
Instead, researchers found only granite, even at the deepest point of the borehole. They were finally able to infer that the change in seismic waves, rather than a transition to basalt, was the result of metamorphic changes in the rock. But it wasn’t that, either. Amazingly, several miles below the Ground, at depths where nobody predicted it would occur, they have found flowing water.
Only Granite
Biblical Flood
But while some enthusiastic commenters have jumped on this discovery of subterranean water as proof of biblical floods, this phenomenon is instead assumed to be the result of heavy pressure pulling oxygen and hydrogen atoms out of the rock. Impermeable rocks subsequently caused the newly created water to become trapped below the surface.
Biblical Flood
An Environmental Hazard
The timing of the closure of the Kola Superdeep Borehole coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the project was permanently shut down by 1995. Today, the site is flagged as an environmental hazard, although some remnants from the experiment can still be seen by tourists in the nearby town of Zapolyarny, some six miles away. And, impressively, researchers have yet to beat their record, which means that the borehole remains the deepest man-made point on the earth.
An Environmental Hazard
The Race Isn’t Over
The race to the center of the World, though, isn’t quite over yet. Drilling platforms from the International Ocean Discovery Program aim to delve deep under the seafloor beyond the world’s oceans, fighting failing machinery and extreme temperatures to find out what mysteries are waiting to be discovered.
The Race Isn’t Over
Plunge Into The Unknown
However, not every journey under the waves in an effort to reach the core of the Planet. For example, a two-man submersible was dropped in the cold waters of the Antarctic on a journey of exploration in a literal plunge into the unknown. The crew members’ purpose? To go further under the waves near the South Pole than has previously been done by any other expedition in human history. And what they have found is an unbelievable insight into a world that no one has ever looked at before.
Plunge Into The Unknown
Years Of Careful Planning
However, this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment idea. Two years of meticulous planning actually went into discovering the right time and location to make the monumental plunge. And for that, there is a very good explanation. You see, in our solar system, we know more about other planets than we do about the Earth’s ocean floor.
Years Of Careful Planning
We Have Mapped Mars
Indeed, we have succeeded in mapping the surfaces of Mars in greater detail than the surfaces of the seas around us. The average distance between Mars and Earth is 140 million miles, to put that in some context. In comparison, the ocean’s average depth is just over 12,000 feet, which is nearly two miles.
We Have Mapped Mars
It Wasn’t Simple
But if you think that makes it sound like it was an easy dive under the Antarctic, then you are really wrong. Scientists had to figure out the best position to make their descent, for a start. Eventually, though, they selected a spot called “Iceberg Alley”-and for a good reason, the place was not given that name for no reason at all.
It Wasn’t Simple
A Huge Challenge
The alley in question forms a channel close to one of the northernmost points of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is a stretch of sea covered by moving ice chunks; some of these parts are approximately the size of a motor car, while others occupy half a square mile. So it was a big challenge to just get the boat carrying the submersible into the right position.
A Huge Challenge
Sailing Into The Unknown
A documentary has also documented the crew’s journey to set sail into the unknown. And there were some snags along the way, according to executive producer James Honeyborne, as he told the BBC that making it through Iceberg Alley was analogous to “a giant game of Space Invaders.” But it was not only getting to the right place that presented team problems; there were other factors at play that also made this task challenging.
Sailing Into The Unknown
Discovering Strange Creatures
For one thing, the team wasn’t certain how the submarines they intended to use would work under the deep-water pressure. But as they started their 3,000-foot descent, those fears may have died away. About why? Well, they found an incredible world of strange creatures underneath the waves, including one they named after a key component of the Star Wars movie series.
Discovering Strange Creatures
Otherworldly Sea Creatures
And while life is harsh and unforgiving above the Antarctic waves, beneath them lies a vast abundance of bizarre, almost otherworldly sea creatures. One of the dive team members, Mark Taylor, told LADbible, “Within a square yard there is more life in the deep of the Antarctic than there is in the reefs of the Barrier Reef of Australia.” But for that, there are a variety of amazing explanations.
Otherworldly Sea Creatures
Marine Snow
For example, according to Dr. Jon Copley of the University of Southampton, the marine snow that the researchers saw under the Antarctic was “thicker than [he’s] seen it anywhere else in the world’s oceans.” But what is marine snow, and why did they say that it is essential to life on the seafloor?
Marine Snow
Why It’s Important
Marine snow is basically organic matter that flows down to the land from the ocean’s upper part. It is an incredibly important food source for deep-sea animals since it transfers nutrients and energy from areas of the ocean that receive sunlight to parts of the ocean that do not.
Why It’s Important
Another Crucial Food Source
However, there is yet another important food source in the waters deep under the Antarctic: krill poo. Krill are tiny crustaceans that live in the oceans of our world and play a significant role there. In particular, their excrement transforms the seafloor into a perfect muddy environment for life. And the life that thrives in that area, as it happens, is some of the strangest that you’re ever likely to see.
Another Crucial Food Source
The Death Star
The Antarctic Sunstar is regarded as one of the most bizarre creatures that the team found, although the researchers gave it a much more sinister name. They called the creature, and with good reason, a Death Star. A relative of the common starfish is a species whose Latin name is Labidiaster annulatus; however, it is a total stranger beast.
The Death Star
Up To 50 Arms
The Death Star, for one thing, can have as many as 50 arms and can become larger than a hubcap. Often, the skin on his arms is covered with tiny pincers, and they snap shut if anything hits them. More often than not, a passing krill is an unfortunate survivor. And there is something else about this Sunstar that is strange.
Up To 50 Arms
How Different Antarctica Can Be
While fish are the dominant predators in the world’s other oceans, the Death Star is a prime example of how different Antarctica things are. Since the water is so cold at the South Pole, few fish are able to live there. This ensures that the top of the food chain is made up of invertebrates such as the Antarctic Sunstar.
How Different Antarctica Can Be
How Earth Used To Be
In addition, diving in the Antarctic is literally like peering through a window that shows you what it was like in the oceans long before humans ever walked on Earth. Dr. Copley said, “It’s the animals without backbones that dominate and that dominate as predators,” Dr. Copley continued, “And that’s how the oceans were more than 250 million years ago.”
How Earth Used To Be
Another Strange Creature
The ice dragonfish, or Cryodraco antarcticus, is another unusual creature living in the Antarctic Ocean that has adapted in an incredible way to survive in extremely cold conditions. For one thing, to keep it from icing up, its blood contains proteins that act like antifreeze. And the blood is also clear because we humans don’t need the hemoglobin that we do to carry oxygen throughout the body.
Another Strange Creature
Understanding Life In The Antarctic
The project that Dr. Copley and his team undertook was not just about seeing unusual animals for the first time in their natural environment. In the ongoing conservation efforts in and around the South Pole, a greater understanding of how the Antarctic Ocean’s life persists may also play a key role.
Understanding Life In The Antarctic
Remote Yet Fragile Environment
Dr. Copley explained to the BBC, “On these dives, we watched the everyday lives of Antarctic deep-sea animals, helping us to understand them much better than studying specimens collected by nets or trawls from ships,” Dr. Copley continued, “And [it’s] helping us to investigate how our own lives are connected to this remote yet fragile environment.”
Remote Yet Fragile Environment
Still A Mystery
Even the areas of the oceans that are accessible to us remain a mystery, even though Dr. Copley hopes this exploration will change that somehow. “Sending people a kilometer deep into the ocean around Antarctica for the first time shows that there is no longer any part of our blue planet that is inaccessible to us, if we can find the will to go there,” he added.
Still A Mystery
A Better Understanding Of The World
And beyond the sense of scientific revelations and a greater understanding of our own universe, maybe there is something much deeper about traveling to a location that is so difficult to reach. Dr. Copley said, “What we’re doing now is exploration in its purest sense,” Dr. Copley continued, “If we all share in the exploration of our planet, then… we’ll all feel involved in its stewardship for the future.”
A Better Understanding Of The World