The world's deepest well (Kola over deep well) was not created to find oil.
The width of this well is only 23 centimeters, but the depth is 12,226 meters, which makes its base the deepest point on Earth that man has ever reached. And it appeared thanks to a duel between scientists. American and Soviet researchers tried to outdo each other in everything.
Everyone knows the space race: the Soviet Union was the first to send humans into space, but the Americans were the first to land on the moon.
But few people know that a similar race took place in underground space: in 1958, the Americans founded their “Mohole Project” off the Pacific coast of Mexico, which they stopped funding and closed in 1966, while the Russians drilled from 1970 to the early 1990s. x years.
The result was the Kola superdeep well, which is a system of several wells extending from the main hole. The deepest hole is called SG-3, and it goes an impressive way inside the crust Kola Peninsula.
If you have a hard time imagining how deep this hole is, that's okay. You could say she's almost 38 Eiffel Towers in depth. Well, or it is the same length as a chain of 13,000 adult badgers walking head to tail.
As one would expect, thanks to SG-3, a lot of unique geological data was obtained, but what paleontologists found there took everyone by surprise. The Smithsonian Institution says that despite the rather extreme environmental conditions, almost intact plankton fossils dating back 2 billion years were found at a depth of about 6.5 kilometers.
It was also discovered that much of the seismic data - at the depth where granite turns into basalt - was misunderstood by scientists, and what was previously thought to be an unknown geological layer was just slow changes in temperature and density.
Scientists also see freely flowing water there, which, due to enormous pressure, was squeezed out of the stones.
Such drilling projects (like the Mohole project and several other more recent ones) are most often abandoned due to lack of funding. Work on the Kola well stopped when it turned out that the temperature at such a depth was about 180⁰С, and not 100 degrees, as expected.
In general, drilling more than 12 kilometers seems like an incredible technical feat, and it is, but this entire well is nothing more than a small prick of the Earth's surface. Equatorial radius The Earth is 6,378 kilometers away, and such an impressive borehole was only 0.19 percent of the way to the center of the planet.
So can a person go even deeper? Is it ever possible to reach the red-hot mantle? It depends on where you will be drilling.
Thickness oceanic crust, on average, about 7 kilometers. The continental crust is somewhat less dense, but much thicker - on average about 35 kilometers. At these depths, the temperature and pressure are too high for any mechanism, so why not drill in the ocean?
And such attempts are being made. For example, a group of scientists is trying to drill into a relatively cold area earth's crust on the Atlantic Spit in the Indian Ocean.
The fact that this area is very dense and underwater presents significant challenges for engineers, which is why the project has been put on hold for the past few years. But this still won't stop scientists from trying to get to the primordial, slowly seething inner mantle.
Today there is no drilling on the Kola superdeep; it was stopped in 1992. SG was not the first and not the only one in the program for studying the deep structure of the Earth.
Three of the foreign wells reached a depth of 9.1 to 9.6 km. It was planned that one of them (in Germany) would surpass the Kola one. However, drilling at all three, as well as at SG, was stopped due to accidents and for technical reasons cannot yet be continued.
It can be seen that it is not for nothing that the tasks of drilling ultra-deep wells are compared in complexity to a flight into space, with a long space expedition to another planet. Rock samples extracted from the bowels of the earth are no less interesting than samples lunar soil.
The soil delivered by the Soviet lunar rover was studied at various institutes, including the Kola Science Center. It turned out that the composition of the lunar soil almost completely corresponds to the rocks extracted from the Kola well from a depth of about 3 km.
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 end of the world began,” says Huberman.
Theorists promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield would 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 ambient temperature exceeded 70 degrees Celsius, at seven - over 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 it was hotter than 220 degrees - 100 degrees higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters.
At school we were taught: there are young rocks, granites, basalts, mantle and core. But the granites turned out to be 3 kilometers lower than expected. Next there should have been basalts. They weren't found at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer. This is a very 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.
Tasks set in the project ultra-deep drilling, are completed. Special equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling, as well as for studying wells drilled to great depths, have been developed and created. We received information, one might say, “first hand” about physical condition, properties and composition rocks in their natural occurrence and on core to a depth of 12,262 m.
The well gave an excellent gift to the homeland at shallow depths - in the range of 1.6-1.8 km. Industrial copper-nickel ores were opened there - a new ore horizon was discovered. And it comes in handy, because the local nickel plant is already running short of ore.
As noted above, the geological forecast of the well section did not come true. The picture that was expected during the first 5 km in the well extended for 7 km, and then completely unexpected rocks appeared. The basalts predicted at a depth of 7 km were not found, even when they dropped to 12 km.
It was expected that the boundary that gives the greatest reflection during seismic sounding is the level where the granites transform into a more durable basalt layer. In reality, it turned out that less strong and less dense fractured rocks are located there - Archean gneisses. This was never expected. And this is fundamentally new geological and geophysical information, which allows us to interpret the data of deep geophysical research differently.
The data on the process of ore formation in the deep layers of the earth’s crust also turned out to be unexpected and fundamentally new. Thus, at depths of 9-12 km, highly porous fractured rocks were encountered, saturated with highly mineralized underground waters. These waters are one of the sources of ore formation. Previously, it was believed that this was possible only at much shallower depths.
It was in this interval that an increased gold content was found in the core - up to 1 g per 1 ton of rock (a concentration considered suitable for industrial development). But will it ever be profitable to mine gold from such depths?
Ideas about thermal mode of the earth's interior, about the deep distribution of temperatures in areas of basalt shields. At a depth of more than 6 km, a temperature gradient of 20°C per 1 km was obtained instead of the expected (as in the upper part) 16°C per 1 km. It was found that half heat flow is of radiogenic origin.
Having drilled the unique Kola superdeep well, we learned a lot and at the same time realized how little we still know about the structure of our planet.
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An attempt to study the geological section and thickness of volcanic rocks exposed 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 samples of rocks previously extracted from the bowels of the Earth and the Moon were then of equal interest for study. And the choice of the location of the mouth fell on the existing huge bowl-like trough, the origin of which is associated with the presence deep fault on a section 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 studied during the development of oil fields. Exploration for non-ferrous metals was rarely accompanied by drilling below the 2000-meter mark.
The Kola SG (ultradeep), below a depth of 5000 meters, expected to detect a separation of granite and basalt layers. This didn't happen. The drill pierced hard granite rocks up to 7000 meters. Further, the penetration went along, relatively, soft soils, which caused the collapse of the barrel walls and the formation of cavities. The crumbled soil jammed the tool head so much that during lifting the pipe string broke off, leading to an accident. Kola well was supposed to confirm or refute these long-established teachings. In addition, scientists did not risk indicating the intervals where exactly the boundaries between these three layers lie. The Kola well was intended for exploration and study of deposits mineral resources, determining the pattern and stage-by-stage 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 depths of the Earth. And reliable information about geological structure subsoil could only be obtained by ultra-deep shaft penetration.
Meanwhile, many years of preparation for the start of drilling operations included: the possibility of an increase in temperature with deepening, an increase in the hydrostatic pressure of the formations, unpredictability of the behavior of rocks, their stability due to the presence of rock and formation 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 lowering and lifting the projectile, a decrease in drilling speed due to a change in the category of rocks, and an increase in energy costs for downhole movers.
The most difficult factor was considered to be the constant increase in the weight of the casing and drill pipe as they deepened.
Technical developments in the field have become successful:
- increasing the lifting capacity, power and other characteristics of drilling rigs and equipment;
- heat resistance of rock cutting tools;
- automation of management of all stages of the drilling process;
- processing information coming from the bottomhole zone;
- warnings about emergency situations with the drill pipe or casing.
Drilling an ultra-deep shaft was supposed to reveal whether it was right or wrong scientific hypothesis about the deep structure of the planet.
The purpose of this very expensive construction included research:
1.
The deep structure of the Pechenga nickel deposit and the crystalline base of the Baltic shield of the peninsula. Deciphering the contour of the polymetallic deposit at Pechenga, coupled with the manifestations of ore bodies.
2.
Study of the nature and forces causing the separation of reservoir boundaries continental crust. Identification of formation zones, motives and nature of high temperature formation. Definition of physical and chemical composition water, gases formed in cracks and pores of rocks.
3.
Obtaining comprehensive material on material composition rocks and information about the intervals between the granite and basalt “gaskets” of the crust. Comprehensive Study physical and chemical properties extracted core.
4.
Development of advanced technical means and new technologies for sinking ultra-deep shafts. Possibility of using geophysical research methods in the zone of ore occurrences.
5.
Development and creation of the latest equipment for monitoring, testing, research, and monitoring the progress of the drilling process.
Kola well mostly answered scientific purposes. The task included studying the ancient rocks that made up the planet and learning the secrets of the processes occurring in them.
Geological justification for drilling on the Kola Peninsula
Exploration and production of deposits useful ores is always predetermined by drilling deep wells. And why on the Kola Peninsula and specifically in Murmansk region, and definitely in Pechenga. The prerequisite for this was the fact that this region was considered a real storehouse of mineral resources, with richest reserves a wide variety of ore raw materials (nickel, magnetites, apatites, mica, titanium, copper).
However, a geological calculation made on the basis of a core from a well revealed the absurdity of the world scientific opinion. The seven-kilometer depth turned out to be composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks (tuffs, sandstones, dolomites, breccias). Below this interval, it was assumed, there should have been rocks separating the granitic and basaltic structures. But, alas, the basalts never appeared.
In geological terms, the Baltic Shield of the peninsula, which partially covers the territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Karelia, has been subject to erosion and evolution for millions of centuries. Natural outbursts, destructive processes of volcanism, magmatism phenomena, metamorphic modifications of rocks, and sedimentation are most clearly imprinted on the geological record of Pechenga. This is the part of the Baltic folded shield where, over billions of years, geological history strata and ore occurrences.
Especially, the northern and eastern parts of the shield surface were subjected to centuries of corrosion. As a result, glaciers, wind, water and other natural disasters, as if they were tearing off (scraping) the upper layers of rocks.
The choice of location for the well was based on severe erosion upper layers and exposure of ancient Archean formations of the Earth. These outcrops significantly brought closer and easier access to the underground storehouses of nature.
Ultra-deep 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 diameter was 21.5.
The design guide column or so-called conductor with a diameter of 720 mm provided for penetration to a depth of 39 linear meters. The first technical column (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 level. Crystalline rocks made it possible to count on long-term stability of the uncased part of the walls. A second removable column, marked with magnetic markers, would allow for continuous core sampling along the entire length of the barrel. Radioactive tags on the downhole pipe were configured 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 using a Uralmash-4E installation, that is, serial equipment used for drilling deep oil and gas wells. Up to 2000 meters, the trunk was driven through steel drill pipes with a turbo drill at the end. This 46-meter-long turbine with a bit at the end was driven into rotation by the action of a clay solution that was pumped into the pipe at a pressure of 40 atmospheres.
Further, the excavation was carried out at an interval of 7264 meters using the domestic Uralmash-15000 installation, from an innovative point of view, a more powerful structure with a lifting 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. Intended to implement:
- shaft sinking, projectile lowering and lifting operations and other auxiliary actions;
- holding the leading and entire pipe string, both in weight and during the drilling process;
- placement of sections (candles) of drill pipes, including weighted drill pipes (drill collars), and the traveling system.
In internal space The towers also housed SP (descent and ascent) equipment and tools. Safety equipment and possible emergency evacuation of the horseman (assistant driller) were also located here.
2. Power and technological equipment, power and pumping units.
3. Circulation and blowout control system, cementing equipment.
4. Automation, management, process control system.
5. Electrical equipment, mechanization equipment.
6. A set of measuring equipment, laboratory equipment and much more.
In 2008, the Kola superdeep well was completely abandoned, all valuable equipment was dismantled and removed (most of it was sold for scrap).
It was dismantled until 2012 main tower drilling rig.
Now only the Kola Science Center is operating Russian Academy sciences in which to this day they study core extracted from an ultra-deep well.
The core itself has been removed to the city of Yaroslavl, where it is now stored.
Documentary video about the Kola superdeep well
New records for ultra-deep wells
The Kola superdeep well was considered the deepest well in the world until 2008.
In 2008, drilling was carried out in the Al Shaheen oil basin. acute angle to the surface of the earth is the oil well Maersk Oil BD-04A, the length of which is 12,290 meters.
In January 2011, this record was broken, and it was broken by an oil well drilled in the Northern Dome (Odoptu-Sea - a gas-oil field in Russia), this well was also drilled at an acute angle to the surface of the earth, the length was 12,345 meters.
In June 2013, well Z-42 of the Chayvinskoye field again broke the depth record, with a length of 12,700 meters.
It is no easier to penetrate into the secrets that are under our feet than to find out all the secrets of the Universe above our heads. And maybe even more difficult, because in order to look into the depths of the Earth, a very deep well is needed.
The purposes of drilling are different (oil production, for example), but ultra-deep (more than 6 km) wells are primarily needed by scientists who want to know what interesting things there are inside our planet. Where these “windows” to the center of the Earth are located and what the deepest drilled well is called, we will tell you in this article. First just one clarification.
Drilling can be done either vertically downwards or at an angle to the surface of the earth. In the second case, the length can be very large, but the depth, if estimated from the mouth (the beginning of the well on the surface) to the deepest point in the subsurface, is less than that of those that run perpendicularly.
An example is one of the wells of the Chayvinskoye field, the length of which reached 12,700 m, but in depth it is significantly inferior to the deepest wells.
This well, 7520 m deep, is located on the territory of modern Western Ukraine. However, work on it was carried out back in the USSR in 1975 - 1982.
The purpose of creating this one of the deepest wells in the USSR was the extraction of minerals (oil and gas), but the study of the bowels of the earth was also an important task.
9 Yen-Yakhinskaya well
Not far from the city Novy Urengoy V Yamalo-Nenets District. The purpose of drilling the Earth was to determine the composition of the earth's crust at the drilling site and determine the profitability of developing large depths for mining.
As is usually the case with ultra-deep wells, the subsoil presented the researchers with many “surprises.” For example, at a depth of about 4 km the temperature reached +125 (above the calculated value), and after another 3 km the temperature was already +210 degrees. Nevertheless, scientists completed their research, and in 2006 the well was abandoned.
8 Saatli in Azerbaijan
In the USSR, one of the deepest wells in the world, Saatli, was drilled on the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It was planned to bring its depth to 11 km and conduct various studies related to both the structure of the earth’s crust and the development of oil at different depths.
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However, it was not possible to drill such a deep well, as happens very, very often. During operation, machines often break down due to extreme high temperatures and pressure; the well is bent because the hardness of different rocks is not uniform; Often a minor breakdown entails such problems that their solution requires more money than creating a new one.
So in in this case, despite the fact that the materials obtained as a result of drilling were very valuable, work had to be stopped at around 8324 m.
7 Zisterdorf - the deepest in Austria
Another deep well was drilled in Austria, near the town of Zisterdorf. There were gas and oil fields nearby, and geologists hoped that an ultra-deep well would make it possible to obtain super-profits in the field of mining.
Indeed, natural gas was discovered at a very significant depth - to the despair of specialists, it was impossible to extract it. Further drilling ended in an accident; the walls of the well collapsed.
There was no point in restoring it; they decided to drill another nearby, but nothing interesting for industrialists could be found in it.
6 Universities in the USA
One of the deepest wells on Earth is University in the USA. Its depth is 8686 m. The materials obtained as a result of drilling represent significant interest, as they give new material about the structure of the planet on which we live.
Surprisingly, as a result, it turned out that it was not the scientists who were right, but the science fiction writers: in the depths there are layers of minerals, and on enormous depth there is life - it's true we're talking about about bacteria!
In the 90s, Germany began drilling the ultra-deep Hauptborung well. It was planned to bring its depth to 12 km, but, as is usually the case with ultra-deep mines, the plans were not successful. Already at just over 7 meters, problems with the machines began: drilling vertically down became impossible, and the shaft began to deviate more and more to the side. Every meter was difficult, and the temperature rose extremely.
Finally, when the heat reached 270 degrees, and endless accidents and failures exhausted everyone, it was decided to suspend work. This occurred at a depth of 9.1 km, making the Hauptborung well one of the deepest.
The scientific materials obtained from the drilling have become the basis for thousands of studies, and the mine itself is currently used for tourism purposes.
4 Baden Unit
In the United States, Lone Star attempted to drill an ultra-deep well in 1970. The location near the city of Anadarko in Oklahoma was not chosen by chance: here wildlife and high scientific potential create a convenient opportunity for both drilling a well and studying it.
The work was carried out for more than a year, and during this time they drilled to a depth of 9159 m, which makes it possible to include it among the most deep mines peace.
And finally, we present the three deepest wells in the world. In third place is Bertha Rogers - the world's first ultra-deep well, which, however, did not remain the deepest for long. Only a short time later, the deepest well in the USSR, the Kola well, appeared.
Bertha Rogers was drilled by GHK, which is involved in mineral exploration, mainly natural gas. The goal of the work was to search for gas in great depth. Work began in 1970, when very little was known about the bowels of the earth.
The company assigned the site in Ouachita County high hopes, because Oklahoma has a lot of mineral resources, and at that time scientists thought that there were entire layers of oil and gas in the earth. However, 500 days of work and huge funds invested in the project turned out to be useless: the drill melted in a layer of liquid sulfur, and gas or oil could not be detected.
In addition, during drilling no scientific research, since the well was only of commercial importance.
2 KTB-Oberpfalz
In second place in our ranking is the German Oberpfalz well, which reached a depth of almost 10 km.
This mine holds the record for the deepest vertical well, since without deviations to the side it goes to a depth of 7500 m! This is an unprecedented figure, because mines at great depths inevitably bend, but the unique equipment used by scientists from Germany made it possible to move the drill vertically downwards for a very long time.
The difference in diameter is not that great either. Ultra-deep wells start on the surface of the earth with a hole with a fairly large diameter (at Oberpfalz - 71 cm), and then gradually narrow. At the bottom, the German well has a diameter of only about 16 cm.
The reason why work had to be stopped is the same as in all other cases - equipment failure due to high temperatures.
1 The Kola well is the deepest in the world
We owe the stupid legend to the “duck” that was thrown into Western press, where, with reference to the mythical “world-famous scientist” Azzakov, they talked about a “creature” that escaped from a mine, the temperature in which reached 1000 degrees, about the groans of millions of people who recorded themselves on a microphone lowered down, and so on.
At first glance, it is clear that the story is sewn with white thread (and, by the way, it was published on April Fool's Day): the temperature in the mine was no higher than 220 degrees, however, at this temperature, as well as at 1000 degrees, no microphone can work ; the creatures did not escape, and the named scientist does not exist.
The Kola well is the deepest in the world. Its depth reaches 12262 m, which significantly exceeds the depth of other mines. But not the length! Now we can name at least three wells - Qatar, Sakhalin-1 and one of the wells of the Chayvinskoye field (Z-42) - which are longer, but not deeper.
Kola gave scientists colossal material, which has not yet been fully processed and comprehended.
| Place | Name | Country | Depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kola | USSR | 12262 |
| 2 | KTB-Oberpfalz | Germany | 9900 |
| 3 | USA | 9583 | |
| 4 | Baden-Unit | USA | 9159 |
| 5 | Germany | 9100 | |
| 6 | USA | 8686 | |
| 7 | Zisterdorf | Austria | 8553 |
| 8 | USSR (modern Azerbaijan) | 8324 | |
| 9 | Russia | 8250 | |
| 10 | Shevchenkovskaya | USSR (Ukraine) | 7520 |
Many scientific and industrial works involve drilling underground wells. Total quantity Such objects in Russia alone are hardly calculable. But legendary Kola superdeep has remained unsurpassed since the 1990s, extending more than 12 kilometers deep into the Earth! It was drilled not for economic gain, but out of purely scientific interest - to find out what processes are happening inside the planet.
Kola superdeep well. First stage drilling rig (depth 7600 m), 1974
50 candidates per position
The most amazing well in the world is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny. Its depth is 12,262 meters, the diameter of the upper part is 92 centimeters, the diameter of the lower part is 21.5 centimeters.
The well was laid in 1970 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin. The choice of location was not accidental - it is here, on the territory of the Baltic Shield, that the oldest rocks, which are three billion years old, come to the surface.
WITH late XIX century, the theory has been known that our planet consists of a crust, mantle and core. But where exactly one layer ends and the next begins, scientists could only guess. According to the most common version, granites go down up to three kilometers, then basalts, and at a depth of 15-18 kilometers the mantle begins. All this had to be tested in practice.
Underground exploration in the 1960s was reminiscent of space race- leading countries tried to get ahead of each other. It was suggested that at great depths there are rich deposits of minerals, including gold.
The Americans were the first to drill ultra-deep wells. In the early 1960s, their scientists discovered that the Earth's crust was much thinner under the oceans. Therefore, the area near the island of Maui (one of the group Hawaiian Islands), Where earth's mantle is located at a depth of approximately five kilometers (plus 4 kilometers of water). But both attempts by US researchers ended in failure.
The Soviet Union needed to respond with dignity. Our researchers proposed creating a well on the continent - despite the fact that it took longer to drill, the result promised to be successful.
The project became one of the largest in the USSR. 16 scientific workers worked at the well research laboratories. Getting a job here was no less difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Ordinary employees received triple salary and an apartment in Moscow or Leningrad. Not surprisingly, there was no staff turnover at all, and at least 50 candidates applied for each position.
Space sensation
Drilling to a depth of 7263 meters was carried out using a conventional serial installation, which at that time was used in oil or gas production. This stage took four years. Then there was a year-long break for the construction of a new tower and installation of a more powerful Uralmash-15000 installation, created in Sverdlovsk and called “Severyanka”. Its work used the turbine principle - when not the entire column rotates, but only the drilling head.
With every meter passed, the excavation became more difficult. Previously it was believed that the temperature of the rock, even at a depth of 15 kilometers, would not exceed 150 °C. But it turned out that at a depth of eight kilometers it reached 169 °C, and at a depth of 12 kilometers it reached 220 °C!
The equipment quickly broke down. But the work continued without stopping. The task of being the first in the world to reach the 12-kilometer mark was politically important. It was solved in 1983 - just in time for the start of the International Geological Congress in Moscow.
Congress delegates were shown samples of soil taken from record depth 12 kilometers, a trip to the well was organized for them. Photos and articles about the Kola Superdeep have circulated in all the world's leading newspapers and magazines, and in several countries they have published postage stamps.
But the main thing is that a real sensation was prepared especially for the congress. It turned out that rock samples taken at a 3-kilometer depth of the Kola well are completely identical to lunar soil (it was first delivered to Earth by the Soviet automatic space station Luna-16 in 1970).
Scientists have long assumed that the Moon was once part of the Earth and broke away from it as a result space catastrophe. Now it was possible to say that the breakaway part of our planet, billions of years ago, came into contact with the area of the current Kola Peninsula.
The ultra-deep well was a real triumph Soviet science. Researchers, designers, even ordinary workers were honored and awarded for almost a whole year.
Kola superdeep well, 2007
Gold in the deep
At this time, work on the Kola superdeep mine was suspended. They were resumed only in September 1984. And the very first launch led to biggest accident. The employees seemed to have forgotten what was inside underground passage There are constant changes. The well does not forgive stopping work - and forces you to start all over again.
As a result, the drill string broke, leaving five kilometers of pipes deep. They tried to get them, but after a few months it became clear that this would not be possible.
Drilling work began again from the 7-kilometer mark. They approached a depth of 12 kilometers for the second time only six years later. In 1990, the maximum was reached - 12,262 meters.
And then the operation of the well was affected by both failures on a local scale and events taking place in the country. The capabilities of the existing technology were exhausted, and government funding decreased sharply. After several serious accidents, drilling was stopped in 1992.
Scientific significance The Kola superdeep is difficult to overestimate. First of all, work on it confirmed the guess about rich deposits of minerals at great depths. Of course, precious metals were not found there in their pure form. But at the nine-kilometer mark, seams with a gold content of 78 grams per ton were discovered (active industrial mining is carried out when this content is 34 grams per ton).
In addition, the analysis of ancient deep rocks made it possible to clarify the age of the Earth - it turned out that it is one and a half billion years older than was commonly thought.
It was believed that at superdepths there is not and cannot be organic life, but in soil samples raised to the surface, whose age was three billion years, 14 previously unknown species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered.
Shortly before its closure, in 1989, the Kola Superdeep Pipe again became the center of international attention. The director of the well, academician David Guberman, suddenly began to receive calls and letters from all over the world. Scientists, journalists, and simply inquisitive citizens were interested in the question: is it true that an ultra-deep well has become a “well to hell”?
It turned out that representatives of the Finnish press talked with some employees of the Kola Superdeep. And they admitted: when the drill passed the 12-kilometer mark, strange noises began to be heard from the depths of the well. The workers lowered a heat-resistant microphone instead of the drill head - and with its help they recorded sounds reminiscent of human screams. One of the employees put forward the version that this the cries of sinners in hell.
How true are such stories? Technically, placing a microphone instead of a drill is difficult, but possible. True, the work to lower it may take several weeks. And it would hardly have been possible to carry it out at a sensitive facility instead of drilling. But, on the other hand, many well employees actually heard strange sounds that regularly came from the depths. And no one knew for sure what it could be.
At the instigation of Finnish journalists, the world press published a number of articles claiming that the Kola superdeep is “the road to hell.” Mystical meaning began to be attributed to the fact that the USSR collapsed when the drillers were excavating the “unlucky” thirteen thousand meters.
In 1995, when the station was already mothballed, an incomprehensible explosion occurred in the depths of the mine - if only for the reason that there was nothing there to explode. Foreign newspapers reported that through a passage made by people, a demon flew from the bowels of the Earth to the surface (the publications were full of headlines like “Satan escaped from hell”).
Well director David Guberman honestly admitted in his interview: he does not believe in hell and demons, but an incomprehensible explosion really took place, as did strange noises reminiscent of voices. Moreover, an examination carried out after the explosion showed that all equipment was in in perfect order.
Kola superdeep well, 2012
The well itself (welded), August 2012
Museum for 100 million
For a long time the well was considered mothballed, with about 20 employees working on it (in the 1980s their number exceeded 500). In 2008, the facility was completely closed and some of the equipment was dismantled. The above-ground part of the well is a building the size of a 12-story building, now it is abandoned and is gradually collapsing. Sometimes tourists come here, attracted by legends about voices from hell.
According to employees of the Kola Geological Institute scientific center RAS, which was previously in charge of the well, its restoration would cost 100 million rubles.
But oh scientific works at depth there is no longer any question: on the basis of this object it is only possible to open an institute or other enterprise for training offshore drilling specialists. Or create a museum - after all, the Kola well continues to be the deepest in the world.
Anastasia BABANOVSKAYA, magazine "Secrets of the 20th Century" No. 5 2017
Soil studies prove: the Moon has broken away from the Kola Peninsula
Kola superdeep section
Kola superdeep
Allegedly, on the approach to the 13th kilometer, the instruments recorded 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 that. A few seconds after the terrible sound appeared, an explosion thundered...
Space under your feet
In the late 70s and early 80s, getting a job at the Kola Superdeep Well, as residents of the village of Zapolyarny in the Murmansk Region affectionately call the well, was more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Out of hundreds of applicants, one or two were chosen. Along with the employment order, 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 operating at the well simultaneously, each the size of an average factory. Only the Germans dug the earth with such tenacity, 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 humanity much better than what is located under the earth’s crust a few kilometers away 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 was believed that the Earth consists of a crust, mantle and core. At the same time, no one could really say where one layer ends and the next begins. Scientists did not even know what these layers actually consist of. Some 40 years ago they were sure that the granite layer begins at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to 3 kilometers, and then there are basalts. The mantle was expected to be encountered at a depth of 15–18 kilometers. In reality, everything turned out completely different. And although in school textbooks everyone still writes that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists from the Kola superdeep have proven 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 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 emerge under the ocean floor and the mantle is located at a depth of approximately 5 kilometers under a four-kilometer layer of water. Alas, not a single ocean drilling site has penetrated deeper than 3 kilometers. In general, almost all projects of ultra-deep wells mysteriously ended at a depth of three kilometers. It was at this moment that something strange began to happen to the drills: either they found themselves in unexpected super-hot areas, or as if they were being bitten off by some unprecedented monster. Only 5 wells broke through deeper than 3 kilometers, 4 of which were Soviet. And only the Kola Superdeep was destined to overcome the 7-kilometer mark.
Initial domestic projects also assumed underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Lake Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced State Committee according to science and technology of the USSR is that it is necessary to create a well on the continent. Although it would take much longer to drill, he believed, the well would be much more valuable with scientific point sight, because it is in the thickness of the continental plates in prehistoric times the most significant movements of earth rocks occurred. The drilling point was not chosen on the Kola Peninsula 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 layers of the Baltic Shield is a visual history of the planet over the past 3 billion years.
Conqueror of the Depths
Appearance The Kola drilling rig is capable of disappointing the average person. The well is not like the mine that our imagination pictures. There are no descents underground, only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters goes into the thickness. The imaginary section of the Kola superdeep well looks like a tiny needle piercing the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors, located at the end of a needle, is raised and lowered over several days. You can’t go faster: 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 underground can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below really look like screams and howls. To this we can add long list accidents that plagued the Kola Superdeep when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers. Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures at which it can melt are comparable to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. One day, it was as if the cable had been pulled from below and was torn off. Subsequently, when they drilled in the same place, no remains of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents still remains a mystery. However, they were not the reason for stopping drilling in the Baltic Shield.
12,000 meters of discoveries and a little devilry
“We have the deepest hole in the world - so we must use it!” — David Guberman, the permanent director of the Kola Superdeep Research and Production Center, exclaims bitterly. In the first 30 years 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 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 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 end of the world began,” says Huberman. Theorists promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield would 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 hotter than 2200C - 1000C higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters. At school we were taught: there are young rocks, granites, basalts, mantle and core. But the granites turned out to be 3 kilometers lower than expected. Next there should have been basalts. They weren't found at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer. This is a very 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 turns out to have arisen 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there are no longer sediments, 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 almost fantastic sensations. When in the late 70s the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, researchers from the Kola Science Center found that it was like two peas in a pod 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 where exactly. By the way, the Americans, who brought half a ton of soil from the Moon, did nothing meaningful with it. They were placed in airtight containers and left for research by future generations.
The history of the Kola Superdeep is not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not - but it was in that year 1995 that a sound was heard in the depths of the mine. powerful explosion of unknown nature. Journalists from a Finnish newspaper broke through to the residents of Zapolyarny - and the world was shocked by the story of a demon flying out of the bowels of the planet.
“When UNESCO began to ask me about this mysterious story, 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 to us. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion... A few days later, nothing like that was found at the same depth,” recalls academician David Guberman.
Quite unexpectedly for everyone, Alexei Tolstoy’s predictions from the novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, a real treasure trove of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, was discovered. A real olivine layer, brilliantly predicted by the writer. It contains 78 grams of gold 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.
