Ultra-deep well on the Kola Peninsula: history and secrets. Well to hell: why drilling of the deepest well was stopped

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

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

Such a place was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. A report prepared at the Institute of Physics of the Earth stated: over the billions of years of its existence, the Kola Shield has cooled, the temperature at a depth of 15 km does not exceed 150 ° C. And geophysicists have prepared an approximate section of the subsoil of the Kola Peninsula. According to them, the first 7 kilometers are granite strata of the upper part of the earth’s crust, then the basalt layer begins. At that time, the idea of ​​a two-layer structure of the earth's crust was generally accepted. But as it turned out later, both physicists and geophysicists were wrong. The drilling site was chosen at the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi. In Finnish it means “Under the Wolf Mountain,” although there are neither mountains nor wolves in that place. Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.

But

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

Film: Kola Superdeep: The Last Fireworks

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



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



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




7 kilometers is the fatal mark for the Kola superdeep. Behind her began the unknown, many accidents and a continuous struggle with rocks. There was no way to keep the barrel vertical. When we covered 12 km for the first time, the well deviated from the vertical by 21°. Although the drillers had already learned to work with the incredible curvature of the barrel, it was impossible to go any further. The well had to be drilled from the 7 kilometer mark. To get a vertical shaft in hard rocks, you need a very rigid bottom of the drill string so that it penetrates into the subsurface like butter. But another problem arises - the well gradually expands, the drill dangles in it, like 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 - pendulum technology was used. The drill was artificially rocked in the well and suppressed strong vibrations. Due to this, the trunk turned out vertical.



The most common accident on any drilling rig is a broken pipe string. Usually they try to capture the pipes again, but if this happens at great depths, then the problem becomes irreparable. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer well; such a shaft was abandoned and a new one was started, a little higher. Breakage and loss of pipes at SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part the well looks like the root system of a giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be a blessing for geologists, who unexpectedly received a three-dimensional picture of an impressive stretch of ancient Archean rocks formed more than 2.5 billion years ago. In June 1990, SG-3 reached a depth of 12,262 m. They began to prepare the well for digging up to 14 km, and then an accident occurred again - at around 8,550 m, the pipe string broke. Continuing the work required long preparations, equipment upgrades and new costs. In 1994, drilling of the Kola superdeep mine was stopped. After 3 years, she entered the Guinness Book of Records and remains unsurpassed to this day.



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



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



The depth contained many surprises. Previously, it was natural to think that with distance from the earth's surface, with increasing pressure, rocks become more monolithic, with a small number of cracks and pores. SG-3 convinced scientists otherwise. Starting from 9 kilometers, the strata turned out to be very porous and literally stuffed with cracks through which aqueous solutions circulated. This fact was later confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. It turned out to be much hotter at depth than expected: as much as 80°! At the 7 km mark the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it had already reached 230°C. Scientists discovered gold mineralization in samples from the Kola well. Insertion of the precious metal was 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.



N O, one day the Kola Superdeep Pipeline found itself at the center of a global scandal. One fine morning in 1989, well director David Guberman received a call from the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper, the secretary of the regional committee and a host of other people. Everyone wanted to know about the devil, which the drillers allegedly raised from the depths, as reported by some newspapers and radio stations around the world. The director was taken aback, and for good reason! “Scientists have discovered hell,” “Satan has escaped from hell,” the headlines read. As reported in the press, geologists working very far away in Siberia, and perhaps in Alaska or even the Kola Peninsula (journalists did not have a common opinion on this matter), were drilling at a depth of 14.4 km, when suddenly the drill began to wobble violently from side to side. This means there is a big hole below, the scientists thought, apparently the center of the planet is empty. Sensors lowered deep showed a temperature of 2,000°C, and super-sensitive microphones sounded...the cries of millions of suffering souls. As a result, drilling was stopped due to fears of releasing hellish forces to the surface. Of course, Soviet scientists refuted this journalistic “canard,” but the echoes of that ancient story wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when stories about hell had already been forgotten, employees of the Kola Superdeep Well visited Australia to give lectures. They were invited to a reception with the governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady who greeted the Russian delegation with the question: “And what the hell did you get up from there?”

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






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



Earlier, the prosecutor's office of the Pechenga district fined the head of the SG-3 enterprise for delays in wages and threatened to initiate a criminal case. As of April 2008, the well's staffing included 20 people. In the 80s, about 500 people worked at the well.

Film: Kola Superdeep: The Last Fireworks

It occupies the first position in the list of "Ultradeep Wells of the World". It was drilled to study the structure of deep earth rocks. Unlike other existing wells on the planet, this one was drilled solely from a scientific research point of view and was not used for the purpose of extracting useful resources.

Location of the Kola Superdeep Station

Where is the Kola superdeep well located? ABOUT located in the Murmansk region, near the city of Zapolyarny (about 10 kilometers from it). The location of the well is truly unique. It was founded in the area of ​​the Kola Peninsula. It is where the earth pushes various ancient rocks to the surface every day.

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

Kola superdeep well: history of appearance

In honor of the centennial anniversary of the birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, drilling of the well began in the first half of 1970.

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

As a result of constant breaks of lifting mechanisms and broken drill heads, as well as regular collapses, the walls of the well were subject to the cementing process. However, due to constant problems, the work continued for several years and proceeded extremely slowly.

On June 6, 1979, the well depth reached 9,583 meters, thereby breaking the world record for oil production in the United States of America by Bertha Rogers, located in Oklahoma. At this time, about sixteen scientific laboratories were continuously working in the Kola well, and the drilling process was personally controlled by the Minister of Geology of the Soviet Union, Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Kozlovsky.

In 1983, when the depth of the Kola superdeep 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 broken, and the well collapsed once again. 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 another column broke, an order was received to stop drilling the well and complete the work.

Current state of the Kola well

At the beginning of 2008, an ultra-deep well on the Kola Peninsula was considered abandoned, the equipment was dismantled, and a project to demolish existing buildings and laboratories had already been launched.

At the beginning of 2010, the director of the Kola Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported that the well was currently undergoing a conservation process and was being destroyed on its own. Since then the question about it has not been raised.

Well depth today

Currently, the Kola superdeep well, photos of which are 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, workers began to hear strange sounds coming from the depths. At first they didn't attach any importance to it. However, when all the drilling equipment froze, and deathly silence hung in the well, unusual sounds were heard, which the workers themselves called “the screams of sinners in hell.” Since the sounds of an ultra-deep well were considered quite unusual, it was decided to record them using heat-resistant microphones. When the recordings were listened to, everyone was amazed - they sounded like people screaming and screaming.

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

When the investigation into the origin of the 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 them off with the phrase: “I heard something strange...” Only after a large amount of time and after the project was closed, a version was put forward that sounds of unknown origin were the sound of the movement of tectonic plates. This version was eventually refuted.

The secrets that shroud the wells

In 1989, the Kola superdeep 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 as reality. The article said that every drilled kilometer on the way to the 13th brought complete misfortune to the country. As the legend goes, at a depth of 12 thousand 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, disasters occurred in the country, for example, on the above path the USSR collapsed.

It was also noted that, having drilled a well to 14.5 thousand meters, the workers came across empty “rooms”, the temperature in which reached 1100 degrees Celsius. By lowering one of the heat-resistant microphones into one of these holes, they recorded moans, grinding sounds and screams. These sounds were called the “voice of the underworld,” and the well itself began to be called nothing less than “the road to hell.”

However, soon the research group itself refuted this legend. 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 remains unrefuted, thanks to which the Kola superdeep well has such a dubious reputation - sounds.

Interview with one of the workers of the Kola superdeep well

In one of the interviews dedicated to refuting the legend of the Kola well, David Mironovich Guberman 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 this is complete nonsense. But to be honest, I cannot deny the fact that we are faced with 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 benefits did drilling the Kola superdeep well bring?

Of course, one of the main advantages of the appearance of this well is significant progress in the field of drilling. New methods and types of drilling were developed. Drilling and scientific equipment was also personally created for the Kola superdeep well, which is still used today.

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

The main scientific goal of the project to study the deep layers of the earth has been achieved. Many existing theories (including those about the basalt layer of the earth) were refuted.

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 on the territory of the former USSR, but about 8 are located all over the world.

Ultra-deep wells located in the territory of the former USSR

There were a huge number of ultra-deep wells on the territory of the Soviet Union, but the following should be especially highlighted:

1. Muruntau well. The depth of the well reaches only 3 thousand meters. Located in the Republic of Uzbekistan, in the small village of Muruntau. Drilling of the well began in 1984 and has not yet been completed.
2. Krivoy Rog well. The depth reaches only 5383 meters out of 12 thousand planned. 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. Located in the Sverdlovsk region, near the city of Verkhnyaya Tura. The work lasted for 20 years, from 1985 to 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 greater than Biikzhalskaya and is only 6800 meters. The year of drilling and the location of the well are completely identical to the Bizhalskaya well.
7. Timan-Pechora well. Its depth reaches 6904 meters. Located in the Komi Republic. To be more precise, in the Vuktylsky district. The work 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 city and village of Korotchaevo. Drilling took place from 1987 to 1996.
9. Shevchenkovskaya well. It was drilled during one year in 1982 with the aim of extracting oil in Western Ukraine. The depth of the well is 7520 meters. Located in the Carpathian region.
10. Yen-Yakhinskaya well. It has a depth of about 8250 meters. The only well that exceeded the drilling plan (originally planned 6,000). It is located in Western Siberia, near the city of Novy Urengoy. Drilling lasted from 2000 to 2006. Currently, it was the last operating ultra-deep well in Russia.
11. Saatlinskaya well. Its depth is 8324 meters. Drilling was carried out from 1977 to 1982. It is located in Azerbaijan, 10 kilometers from the city of Saatly, within the Kursk Bulge.

The world's ultra-deep wells

In other countries there are also a number of ultra-deep wells that cannot be ignored:

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

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

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

However, the mysteries and secrets of the Kola superdeep well have not been revealed or explained to this day. Regarding the sounds present during its drilling, new theories arise to this day. Who knows, maybe this is really the fruit of a wild human imagination? Well, where do so many eyewitnesses come from then? 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...

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

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

Well depth today

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

Sounds of Hell from the Kola Well

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

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

They say that at the moment when the workers of the deepest well crossed the 12,000 m mark, eerie sounds began to be heard.

Initially, no attention was paid to them, but over time the situation changed dramatically. With the onset of complete silence, sounds of various types were heard from the well.

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

While listening to the recordings, we were able to hear human screams and screams.

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

Drilling of the Kola superdeep well was suspended for some time.

When work resumed, everyone still expected to hear human groans, but this time everything was quiet.

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

Several years later, when the project was officially frozen, scientists suggested that the sounds arose due to movement.

After some time, this explanation was rejected as untenable. No other explanation was offered.

Secrets and mysteries of the Kola well

In 1989, the Kola well began to be called “the road to the underworld” because of the sounds coming from it. There is an opinion that with each successive kilometer drilled, on the way to the 13th, one or another cataclysms occurred. As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed.

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

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

Human screams were also clearly audible and even recorded. However, this whole story is not supported by facts.

Dimensions of the deepest well

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

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

In this case, the maximum temperature did not exceed 220 °C. In this whole story, only sounds of unknown origin remain inexplicable.

The benefits of drilling the Kola well

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

The world's ultra-deep wells

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

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

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

World records for ultra-deep wells in the world

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

Photo of the Kola well

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

Now there is nothing here except garbage and remnants of its former greatness. Reinforced concrete walls and empty, abandoned rooms with randomly scattered things are depressing. There is silence all around.

Stories related to the Kola well have not subsided to this day. At present, scientists have not given a definitive answer about the origin of mystical sounds.

In this regard, new theories are emerging that try to explain this phenomenon. Perhaps in the near future, scientists will be able to find out the nature of the “hell sounds”.

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

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Soil studies prove: the Moon has broken away from the Kola Peninsula

Kola superdeep section

Kola superdeep

Allegedly, on approaching 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 that. A few seconds after the terrible sound appeared, an explosion occurred...

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 school textbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists with the Kola Superdeep Site 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 involved underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Lake Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology that it was 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 from a scientific point of view, because it was in the thickness of the continental plates that the most significant movements of earth rocks took place in prehistoric times. 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 rocks known to mankind.

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

The appearance of the Kola drilling rig can disappoint 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 a long list of 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 is allocated within the framework of UNESCO's scientific programs 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 at 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, it was precisely in 1995 that a powerful explosion of unknown origin was heard in the depths of the mine. 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.

Despite the fact that we are in the 21st century, the internal structure of our planet has been studied very little. We know quite well what is going on in deep space, but at the same time, the degree of penetration into the secrets of the Earth can be compared to a light pinprick into the surface of the rind of a watermelon.
In the mid-1950s, when drillers learned to make wells more than 7 km deep, humanity came closer to achieving a very ambitious task - to go through the earth's crust and see what lies beneath it. Our compatriots came closest to this goal when they drilled the Kola superdeep well.
The Earth's solid shell is surprisingly thin relative to its size - the thickness of the crust varies between 20-65 km on land and 3-8 km under the ocean, occupying less than 1% of the planet's volume. Behind it is a vast layer - the mantle - which accounts for the bulk of the Earth's volume. Even lower is the dense core, consisting primarily of iron, but also nickel, lead, uranium and other metals. Between the crust and the mantle there is a boundary zone, named after the Yugoslav scientist who discovered it, the Mohorovic surface (border), or Moho for short. In this zone, the speed of propagation of seismic waves increases sharply. There are a number of hypotheses designed to explain this phenomenon, but in general it remains unsolved.

The most important goal of the most serious deep drilling projects launched in the second half of the 20th century was precisely this mysterious layer. Researchers were never able to reach it, but the data on the structure of the earth’s crust obtained during drilling of ultra-deep wells turned out to be so unexpected that the Mohorovic boundary seemed to fade into the background. First it was necessary to explain the mysteries discovered in higher layers.
The Americans were the first to begin deep drilling of the earth's crust for scientific purposes. In the 1960s, they launched the Mohole scientific project, which involved the creation of underwater ones using special drilling ships. Over the next thirty years, more than 800 wells appeared in the seas and oceans, many of which are located at depths of more than 4 km. The longest well was able to go only 800 m into the seabed, and yet the data obtained were of enormous importance for geology. In particular, they served as significant confirmation of the so-called. tectonic theory, according to which the continents are based on solid lithospheric plates, slowly floating, immersed in a liquid mantle.

Of course, the USSR could not lag behind its overseas competitor, so in the mid-1960s, we launched numerous projects to study the earth’s crust. Soviet scientists took a slightly different path, deciding to drill wells not in the sea, but on land. The most famous and successful project of this kind is the Kola superdeep well - the deepest “hole in the ground” ever made by man. The well is located at the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula. This place was not chosen by chance - over hundreds of millions of years, natural erosion destroyed the surface of the Kola crystalline shield, stripping off the upper layers of the rock. As a result, ancient Archean layers appeared on the surface, corresponding to depths of 5-10 km for the average section of the continental-type earth's crust. The 15-kilometer design depth of the well allowed scientists to hope to reach the mysterious Mohorovic surface.
Drilling of the Kola well began in 1970, and it ended more than 20 years later - in 1994. At first, the drillers worked using completely traditional methods: a column of light-alloy pipes was lowered into the well, at the end of which a cylindrical metal drill with diamond teeth and sensors was attached. The column was rotated by an engine located on the surface. As the depth of the well increased, new sections were added to the pipes. Periodically, the entire column had to be lifted to the surface to remove the cut rock core and replace the dull crown. Unfortunately, this proven technology becomes ineffective when the well depth exceeds a certain mark: the friction of the pipes against the walls of the well becomes too great for this entire huge shaft to be rotated. To overcome this difficulty, engineers developed a design in which only the drill head rotated. Turbines were installed at the end of the column, through which drilling fluid was passed - a special liquid that acts as a lubricant and circulates through the pipes. These turbines made the drill rotate.

The samples brought to the surface during the drilling process made a real revolution in geology. Existing ideas about the structure of the earth's crust turned out to be far from reality. The first surprise was the absence of a transition from granite to basalt, which scientists expected to see at a depth of about 6 km. Seismological studies indicate that in this area the speed of propagation of acoustic waves changes sharply, which has been interpreted as the beginning of a basaltic foundation of the earth's crust. However, even after the transition zone, granites and gneisses continued to rise to the surface. From this point on, it became clear that the prevailing model of a two-layer earth's crust was incorrect. Now the presence of a seismic transition is explained by a change in the properties of the rock under conditions of increased pressure and temperature.
An even more surprising discovery was the fact that rocks located at depths of more than 9 km turned out to be extremely porous. Before this, it was believed that as depth and pressure increase, they, on the contrary, should become increasingly dense. The miniature cracks were filled with an aqueous solution, whose origin remained completely unclear for a long time. Later, a theory was put forward according to which the discovered water is formed from hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which are “squeezed out” from the surrounding rock under the influence of colossal pressures.
Another surprise: life on planet Earth turns out to have arisen 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At a depth of 6.7 km, where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered. They were found in extremely uncharacteristic carbon-nitrogen deposits (instead of the usual limestone or silica) that were over 2.8 billion years old. 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.
Scientists were also extremely surprised by the speed with which the temperature increased as the well deepened. At the 7 km mark it reached 120 °C, and at a depth of 12 km it was already 230 °C, which was a third higher than the planned value: the temperature gradient of the crust was almost 20 degrees per 1 km, instead of the expected 16. It was also found that half of the heat flow is of radiogenic origin. The high temperature negatively affected the operation of the bit, so the drilling fluid began to be cooled before pumping it into the well. This measure turned out to be quite effective, however, after passing the 12 km mark, it was no longer able to provide sufficient heat removal. In addition, the compressed and heated rock acquired some properties of a liquid, as a result of which the well began to float the next time the drill string was removed. Further progress turned out to be impossible without new technological solutions and significant financial costs, so in 1994 drilling was suspended. By that time, the well had deepened to 12,262 m.