Kola ultradeep. On the threshold of the underworld ... Bashny.Net

"Dr. Huberman, what the hell are you dug down there?" - A replica of the hall interrupted the report of the Russian scientist at a meeting of UNESCO in Australia.
A couple of weeks earlier, in April 1995, around the world, a wave of reports of a mysterious accident at the Kola super-deep borehole.

Allegedly, on the approach to the 13th kilometer of the instruments recorded a strange noise coming from the bowels of the planet - yellow paper in one voice assured that this sound can only cries of sinners from hell.
A few seconds after the terrible explosion of sound ...





Space underfoot

In the late 70's - early 80's get to work on the Kola super-deep as well zapanibratski called villagers Polar Murmansk region, it was more difficult than to get into the cosmonaut corps. Out of hundreds of applicants chose odnogodvuh. Together with the order for a job lucky received a separate apartment and a salary equal to the salary of a triple-double of the Moscow professors. At the same time it worked well 16 research laboratories, each with an average -size plant. With such tenacity earth dug only Germans, but, as evidenced by the Guinness Book of Records, the deepest borehole German almost half the length of our.

Distant galaxies studied by mankind much better than what is in the Earth's crust in some few kilometers from us. Kola ultradeep - a kind of a telescope into the mysterious inner world of the planet.



Since the beginning of the XX century it was believed that the earth consists of crust, mantle and core.
At the same time no one really could not tell where one ends and the next begins layer. Scientists do not even know of what, in fact, these layers are composed.
Even some 40 years ago, they were convinced that the granite layer begins at a depth of 50 meters and extends to 3 kilometers and then go basalts. Meet the mantle was expected at a depth of 15-18 kilometers.
The reality turned out quite differently.
Although schoolbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, the scientists from the Kola ultradeep proved that it is not so.



Baltic Shield

Projects journey into the depths of the Earth appeared in the early '60s in several countries. We tried to drill wells in places where the crust had to be thinner - the aim was to achieve mantle.
For example, Americans are drilled near the island of Maui in Hawaii, where, according to seismic surveys, the ancients come under the ocean floor and the mantle is approximately at a depth of 5 kilometers under 4kilometrovoy water column.
Alas, none of ocean drilling deeper than 3 kilometers do not try.
In general, almost all projects ultradeep wells mysteriously ended on 3kilometrovoy depth.
It was at this point with the Boers began to happen something strange: they fall into unexpected superhot field, they bit off like some unseen monster.
Deeper than 3 kilometers broke only 5 wells, 4 of them - the Soviet.
Only Kola ultradeep was destined to overcome the mark of 7 kilometers.



Initial domestic projects also suggested underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or Lake Baikal.
But in 1963, a scientist Nikolai Timofeev-driller persuaded the State Committee on Science and Technology of the USSR that the need to create a hole in the continent. Although the drill will have much longer, he thought, the well will be much more valuable from a scientific point of view, because it is in the interior of continental plates in prehistoric times there were the most significant movement of terrestrial rocks.
The drilling on the Kola Peninsula have chosen not by chance. The peninsula is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which is composed of the oldest rocks known to mankind.

Many kilometers of cross-section layers of the Baltic Shield - a visual history of the planet over the last 3 billion years.



Subjugator depths

Appearance Kola drill able to disappoint the layman.
Well it is not like mine that draws us to the imagination. No runs under the ground, leaving only the thickness of the drill diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters.
Imaginary section of the Kola super-deep well tonyusenkaya looks like a needle, piercing the earth's strata.
Bur with numerous sensors located at the end needles, raised and lowered in a few days.
Faster impossible: Rugged, composite cable may break off under its own weight.



What happens in the depth is not known.
Ambient temperature, noise, and other parameters are passed upwards with a minute delay.
However, drillers say that even such a contact with the dungeon can not outright scare.

Sounds coming from below, and really like the shrieks and howls. Add to this a long list of failures, pursuing Kola super-deep, when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers.
Double-fused drill fetched, although temperatures from which it may melt, comparable with the surface temperature of the sun.
Once the rope as though pulled from the bottom s broken.
Later, when drilled in the same place, remnants of the cable was not found.
What caused this and many other accidents, still remains a mystery.
However, they did not stop drilling caused the bowels of the Baltic Shield.



12,000 meters of discovery and a little devilry

"We have the deepest hole in the world - because it is necessary to use it!" - Bitterly exclaims permanent director of research and production center "Kola ultradeep" David Huberman.
In the first 30 years of the Kola ultradeep Soviet and then Russian scientists have broken a depth of 12 262 meters.
But since 1995, the drilling stopped: no one was to finance the project.
What stands out in the framework of UNESCO's science programs, only enough to maintain the drilling station in working condition, and the study of rock samples extracted earlier.



Huberman ruefully remembers how scientific discoveries took place at the Kola super-deep.
Literally every meter was a revelation. The well showed that almost all of our previous knowledge of the structure of the crust wrong.
It turned out that the Earth does not look like a layer cake. "Up to 4 km everything went according to the theory, and then began doomsday", - says Huberman.
Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers.
Accordingly, the well will be dug almost 20 kilometers, just before the mantle.
But at 5 kilometers of the ambient temperature exceeded 700C, seven - for the 1200C, and at a depth of 12 roasted stronger 2200C - 1000C in the above predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of layered crustal structure - at least in the range of up to 12 262 meters.
At school we were taught: there are young breed, granite, basalt, mantle and core.
But the granites were on the 3 kilometer lower than expected. Next were to be basalts. They never found. All drilling took place in the granite layer. E

It is an extremely important discovery, because the theory of layered structure of the Earth are connected all our ideas about the origin and distribution of mineral resources.

Another surprise: life on Earth originated, it appears, at 1, 5 billion years earlier than expected. In the depths, where it was considered that there is no organic matter, found 14 species of fossilized microorganisms - the age of the deep layers of greater than 2, 8 billion years.
At even greater depths, where there is no sediment methane appeared in large concentrations.
It is completely and utterly destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons, such as oil and gas.



Demons

There were almost fantastic sensation.
When in the late '70s the Soviet automatic space station to Earth brought 124 grams of lunar soil, the researchers Kola Science Center found that he, as two drops of water similar to the samples from a depth of 3 kilometers.
And a hypothesis: the moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula.
Now, looking for where it was.
By the way, the Americans, who brought a half-ton lunar soil, so anything sensible with it and did not do.
Placed in sealed containers and left for future generations to study.



In the history of the Kola ultradeep not without mystery.
Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped because of lack of funds.
Coincidence or not - but it is in 1995 in the depths of the mine there was a powerful explosion of unknown nature. For residents of the Polar broke Finnish newspaper journalists - and the world has shaken off from the story of the planet's interior demon.

"When I was about this mysterious stories began to ask to UNESCO, I do not know what to say.
On the one hand, bullshit. On the other - I, as an honest scientist could not say that I know what it is that we happen.
It was recorded a very strange noise, then there was an explosion ...
A few days later nothing at the same depth it was not found "- recalls the academician David Huberman.



Unexpectedly for all confirmed the forecast of Alexei Tolstoy's novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin".
At a depth of more than 9, 5 kilometers found a real storehouse of all kinds of minerals, particularly gold.
This olivine layer brilliantly predicted writer.
Gold therein 78 grams per ton.
By the way, industrial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per tonne.
Perhaps in the near future, humanity will be able to take advantage of this wealth.

Author: Yury Granovsky
On this Site: superdeep.pechenga.ru, popmech.ru
via nnmbuster



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