The deepest hole on earth is to hear the heartbeat of the earth. Journey to the center of the earth

Many scientific and production works associated with the drilling of underground wells. The total number of such objects in Russia alone is hardly quantifiable. But legendary Kola superdeep since the 1990s, it has remained unsurpassed, going into the Earth's thickness for more than 12 kilometers! It was drilled not for economic gain, but out of purely scientific interest - to find out what processes are taking place inside the planet.

Kola superdeep well. First stage drilling (depth 7600 m), 1974

50 candidates for a seat

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 the site was not accidental - it is here, on the territory of the Baltic Shield, that the most ancient rocks come to the surface, the age of which is three billion years old.

WITH late XIX century, the theory is 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 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 like a space race - leading countries were trying to get ahead of each other. The opinion was expressed that the richest deposits of minerals, including gold, are located at great depths.

The first superdeep wells were drilled by the Americans. In the early 1960s, their scientists figured out that the earth's crust is much thinner beneath the oceans. Therefore, an area near the island of Maui (one of the Hawaiian islands), where the earth's mantle is at a depth of about five kilometers (plus a 4-kilometer water column), was chosen as the most promising place for work. But both attempts by researchers from the United States ended in failure.

The Soviet Union needed to respond with dignity. Our researchers proposed to create a well on the continent - despite the fact that it took longer to drill, the result promised to be successful.

The project has become one of the largest in the USSR. The well was operated by 16 scientific research laboratories... It was no less difficult to get a job here than to get into the cosmonaut corps. Ordinary employees received a triple salary and an apartment in Moscow or Leningrad. Unsurprisingly, there was no staff turnover at all, and at least 50 candidates applied for each seat.

Space sensation

To a depth of 7263 meters, the drilling was carried out using a conventional serial installation, which was used at that time 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 the installation of a more powerful unit "Uralmash-15000", created in Sverdlovsk and named "Severyanka". In its work, the turbine principle was used - when not the entire string rotates, but only the drill head.

With each meter passed, it became more difficult to drill. Previously, it was believed that the temperature of the rock, even at a depth of 15 kilometers, will not be higher than 150 ° C. But it turned out that at a depth of eight kilometers it reached 169 ° С, and at a depth of 12 kilometers it was 220 ° С!

The equipment quickly broke down. But the work continued without stopping. The goal 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.

The congress delegates were shown samples of soil taken from a record depth of 12 kilometers, and a trip to the well was organized for them. Photos and articles about the Kola Superdeep have gone around all the world's leading newspapers and magazines, and postage stamps have been issued in her honor in several countries.

But the main thing is that a real sensation was prepared specially for the congress. It turned out that rock samples taken at a 3-kilometer depth of the Kola well are completely identical to the lunar soil (it was first brought 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 of a cosmic catastrophe. Now it could be said that the breakaway part of our planet billions of years ago was in contact with the area of the present Kola Peninsula.

The superdeep well has become a real triumph for Soviet science. Researchers, designers, even ordinary workers have been honored and awarded for almost a year.

Kola superdeep well, 2007

Gold deep

At this time, work on the Kola Superdeep was suspended. They were renewed only in September 1984. And the very first launch led to the largest accident. The employees seemed to have forgotten that changes are constantly taking place inside the underground passage. The well does not forgive the stoppage of work - and forces you to start all over again.

As a result, the drill string was broken, and five kilometers of pipes remained in the depth. 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 km mark. They came to 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 work of the well was affected by both local failures and events taking place in the country. The possibilities of the available technology were exhausted, and government funding dropped sharply. After several serious accidents, drilling was stopped in 1992.

The scientific significance of the Kola Superdeep is difficult to overestimate. First of all, the work on it confirmed the conjecture about the rich deposits of minerals at great depths. Of course, no pure precious metals were found there. But at the nine kilometers mark, seams were found with a gold grade of 78 grams per tonne (active commercial production is carried out when this grade is 34 grams per tonne).

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 it was commonly thought.

It was believed that at super-depths there is and cannot be organic life, but in the samples of soil raised to the surface, the age of which was three billion years, 14 previously unknown species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered.

Shortly before its closure, in 1989, the Kola Superdeep was once again in the center of international attention. The director of the well, academician David Guberman, suddenly began to call and write from all over the world. Scientists, journalists, just curious citizens were interested in the question: is it true that a superdeep well has become a "well to hell"?

It turned out that representatives of the Finnish press talked with some workers 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. Someone from the staff put forward a version that it is the cries of sinners in hell.

How true are these stories? Technically, placing a microphone instead of a drill is difficult, but possible. However, the work on its descent can take several weeks. And it would hardly have been possible to carry out it at a secure facility instead of drilling. But, on the other hand, many well employees did hear strange sounds that were regularly heard from the depths. And what it could be, no one knew for certain.

At the suggestion of Finnish journalists, the world press has published a number of articles claiming that the Kola Superdeep is a "road to hell". Mystical significance was also attributed to the fact that the USSR collapsed when the drillers were driving the "unlucky" thirteenth 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 to explode there. Foreign newspapers reported that a demon flew from the bowels of the earth to the surface through the passage made by people (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 did take place, as well as strange noises resembling voices... Moreover, the survey carried out after the explosion showed that all the equipment is 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 to be mothballed; about 20 employees worked on it (in the 1980s, their number exceeded 500). In 2008, the facility was completely closed and part of the equipment was dismantled. The ground part of the well is a building the size of a 12-storey building, now it is abandoned and is gradually being destroyed. Sometimes tourists come here, attracted by the legends of the voices from hell.

According to the employees of the Kola Geological Institute scientific center RAS, which used to be in charge of the well, its restoration would have cost 100 million rubles.

But oh scientific works at depth, it is no longer a question: on the basis of this object, it is only possible to open an institute or other enterprise to train specialists in offshore drilling. Or create a museum - after all, the Kola well continues to be the deepest in the world.

Anastasia BABANOVSKAYA, magazine "Secrets of the XX century" №5 2017

The deepest well in the world (the Kola superdeep 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 a person has ever reached. And it appeared thanks to a duel between scientists. American and Soviet researchers tried to surpass each other in everything.

Everyone knows the space race: he was the first to send man into space Soviet Union, but the Americans were the first to land on the moon.

But few know that there was a similar race in underground space: in 1958, the Americans founded their "Project Mohale" off the Pacific coast of Mexico, which they stopped funding and it closed in 1966, but the Russians drilled from 1970 to early 1990. x years.

The result was the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which is a system of several wells extending from the main hole. The deepest well is called SG-3, and it runs an impressive path inside the crust of the Kola Peninsula.

If you find it difficult to imagine how deep this well is, that's okay. It can be said to be almost 38 Eiffel Towers deep. Or it has the same length as a chain of 13,000 adult badgers head-to-tail.

As you might expect, the SG-3 yielded a lot of unique geological data, but what the paleontologists found there took everyone by surprise. The Smithsonian says that despite the rather extreme conditions the environment, at a depth of about 6.5 kilometers, almost intact fossils of plankton, 2 billion years old, were found.

It was also found that much of the seismic data - at the depths 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 are also ours there freely flowing water, which was squeezed out of the stones due to the tremendous pressure.

Drilling projects (such as the Mohale project and several others, later) are most often terminated due to lack of funding. Work at the Kola well was stopped when it turned out that the temperature at such a depth was about 180⁰C, and not 100 degrees, as it was supposed.

In general, drilling more than 12 kilometers seems like an incredible technical feat, and it is, but this whole well is nothing more than a small prick of the Earth's surface. The equatorial radius of the Earth is 6378 kilometers, and such an impressive borehole covered only 0.19 percent of the way to the center of the planet.

So can a person go even deeper? Can a red-hot mantle ever be reached? It depends on where you will be drilling.

The thickness of the oceanic crust is, on average, about 7 kilometers. The continental crust is somewhat less dense, but much thicker - on average about 35 kilometers. At such 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 a relatively cold area crust on the Atlantic Spit in the Indian Ocean.

The fact that the site is very dense and underwater poses significant challenges to the engineers, which is why the project has been put on hold for the past few years. But that still won't stop scientists from trying to get to the pristine, slowly bubbling inner mantle.

Today, drilling is not carried out 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.

From foreign wells, three have reached a depth of 9.1 to 9.6 km. It was planned that one of them (in Germany) would surpass the Kola. However, drilling on all three, as well as on the SG, was stopped due to accidents and cannot be continued for technical reasons.

It can be seen that it is not for nothing that the task of drilling super-deep wells is compared in complexity to a flight into space, with a long space expedition to another planet. Samples of rocks extracted from the earth's interior are of no less interest than samples of lunar soil.

The soil delivered by the Soviet lunar rover was examined 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 borehole 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 wrong. It turned out that the Earth does not at all look like a layer cake. “Up to 4 kilometers everything went according to theory, and then the end of the world began,” says Guberman.

Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will remain relatively low down to a depth of at least 15 kilometers. Accordingly, the well can be dug up to almost 20 kilometers, just to the mantle.

But already at 5 kilometers the ambient temperature exceeded 70 degrees Celsius, by seven - over 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 it was more than 220 degrees - 100 degrees higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layer-by-layer 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. Then there should have been basalts. They were not 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 layer-by-layer structure of the Earth.

The tasks set in the ultra-deep drilling project have been completed. Special equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling, as well as for the study of wells drilled to great depths, have been developed and created. Received information, one might say, "first-hand" about the physical condition, properties and composition rocks in their natural occurrence and along the core to a depth of 12,262 m.

The well gave an excellent gift to the homeland at a shallow depth - in the interval of 1.6-1.8 km. Commercial copper-nickel ores were uncovered there - a new ore horizon was discovered. And very handy, because the local nickel plant is already short of ore.

As noted above, the geological forecast of the well section did not come true. The picture, which was expected during the first 5 km, stretched in the well 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 pass into the stronger basalt layer. In fact, it turned out that there are less strong and less dense fractured rocks - Archean gneisses. This was not supposed in any way. And this is a fundamentally new geological and geophysical information that allows you to interpret the data of deep geophysical research in a different way.

The data on the process of ore formation in the deep layers of the earth's crust also turned out to be unexpected, fundamentally new. Thus, at depths of 9-12 km, highly porous fractured rocks saturated with highly mineralized underground waters were encountered. These waters are one of the sources of ore formation. Previously, it was believed that this is 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 that is considered suitable for industrial development). But will it ever be profitable to mine gold from this depth?

The ideas about the thermal regime of the earth's interior, about the deep distribution of temperatures in the regions of basalt shields have also changed. At a depth of more than 6 km, a temperature gradient of 20оС per 1 km was obtained instead of the expected (as in the upper part) 16оС per 1 km. It was revealed that half of the heat flux 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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Today, the scientific research of mankind has reached the borders of the solar system: we have planted spacecraft to the planets, their satellites, asteroids, comets, they sent missions to the Kuiper belt and crossed the border of the heliopause. With the help of telescopes, we see events that took place 13 billion years ago - when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. Against this background, it is interesting to assess how well we know our Earth. The best way to get to know her internal structure- to drill a well: the deeper the better. The deepest well on Earth is the Kola Superdeep, or SG-3. In 1990, its depth reached 12 kilometers 262 meters. If you compare this figure with the radius of our planet, it turns out that this is only 0.2 percent of the way to the center of the Earth. But even this turned out to be enough to overturn ideas about the structure of the earth's crust.

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

Well scheme

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

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

Yu.N. Yakovlev et al. / Bulletin of the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2014

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

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

How was the superdeep well drilled?

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

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

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

The crowns that used the drill string to bite into the granite evoke futuristic robot details - several rotating spiked discs connected to the top of a turbine. One such bit was enough for only four hours of work - this roughly corresponds to a passage of 7-10 meters, after which the entire drill string must be lifted, disassembled and then lowered again. The constant descents and ascents themselves took up to 8 hours.

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

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

One of such major accidents forced the drillers in 1984 to concreted a branch of the well, which reached a depth of 12,066 meters. Drilling had to start over from the 7 km mark. This was preceded by a pause in work with the well - at that moment the existence of SG-3 was declassified, and an international geological congress Geoexpo was held in Moscow, whose delegates visited the facility.

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

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

Superdeep Science Mission

Seismic test pattern at SG-3

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

The well was investigated with a whole range of geological and geophysical methods, ranging from core sampling (a column of rocks corresponding to given depths) to radiation and seismological measurements. For example, the core was taken using core drills with special drills - they look like pipes with jagged edges. In the center of these pipes there are 6-7 cm holes where the rock gets.

But even with this seemingly simple (except for the need to raise this core from a multi-kilometer depth) method, difficulties arose. Due to the drilling fluid - the one that set the drill in motion - the core was saturated with liquid and changed its properties. In addition, the conditions in depth and on the surface of the earth are very different - the samples were cracked from the pressure drop.

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

Micrograph of rocks raised from a depth of 8028 meters

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

Studies of the material raised from the borehole led to several important conclusions. First, the structure of the earth's crust cannot be simplified to a composition of several layers. This was previously indicated by seismological data - geophysicists saw waves that seemed to be reflected from a smooth boundary. Studies on SG-3 have shown that such visibility can also occur with complex rock distribution.

This assumption affected the design of the well - scientists expected that at a depth of seven kilometers, the wellbore would enter the basalt rocks, but they did not meet even at the 12-kilometer mark. But instead of basalt, geologists discovered rocks with a large number of cracks and low density, which could not be expected from a depth of many kilometers. Moreover, traces of groundwater were found in the cracks - it was even suggested that they were formed by a direct reaction of oxygen and hydrogen in the Earth's mass.

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

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

Most of the production tools were not designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the lower wells. Therefore, for research at great depths, scientists used equipment designed specifically for the Kola Superdeep.

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Therefore, you should not be upset with how poorly we know the "insides" of our own planet. Geologists have their own telescopes - seismic studies - and their own ambitious plans to conquer the bowels. And if astronomers have already touched a solid part celestial bodies v Solar system, then for geologists all the most interesting is yet to come.

Vladimir Korolev

The famous abandoned well is located in the Murmansk region in the Pechenga ore region, which is famous for its copper-nickel deposits. The nearest settlement is the city of Zapolyarny, which is located 10 km from SG-3.

Kola superdeep - photo from space

To this day, the Kola well is the deepest in the world. Its depth is a record 12,262 m, the diameter at the surface is 92 cm, and at the maximum depth - 21.5 cm. research activities.

Of course, the choice of this hard-to-reach place with a harsh climate is not accidental. Before, a special geological expedition was organized, which indicated exactly this point for the construction of the entire drilling facility and the subsequent drilling of a well. The entire territory of the peninsula has a lot settlements with very strange names: New Titanium, Nickel, Mica, Apatite, Magnetite, etc. But in fact, there is nothing strange about this, because the peninsula is just a huge storehouse of minerals. Important from the conclusions of the expedition was the fact that over the course of millions of years, the destructive effects of water, wind and ice, the surface of the Baltic Shield seemed to be more "bare" to the oldest terrestrial formations, which are usually hidden in other regions, due to a milder climate and less impact of erosion ... Those. it was in this place that the drillers had an advantage of 5-8 km in comparison with the cut of the earth's crust on the continent. Therefore, if you drill a well here to a depth of 15 km, then this is comparable to 20-23 km on the continent.

By that time, the surface layers of the earth's crust were very well studied in oil drilling and oil production. And for the extraction of minerals there were enough wells of about 2000-3000 m. But SG-3 had a completely different and very difficult task - to reach a depth of 15,000 m. technical equipment... And as it turned out, the similarity and not only in this. Well, more on that later. It was very difficult to get a job at the well at that time, only the best engineers and workers were selected there. Each of them received an apartment and a very decent salary, about eight times more than the specialists in the central part of the union.

D. Guberman and academician Timofeev discuss drilling prospects

In science since the twentieth century, it has been accepted that the Earth consists of a crust, mantle and core. And the boundaries of all layers were established theoretically, i.e. it was assumed that the granite layer has a depth of 3 km, and from a depth of 3 km a layer of basalts begins. Scientists expected to find the mantle at a depth of 15-18 km. But just the same SG-3 destroyed all these ideas and gave other results, on which scientists are working to this day.

Drilling started on May 24, 1970. By the way, it is worth noting that the main condition of the government was to use only its own tools and equipment. Therefore, the drilling equipment was Soviet-made by the Uralmash enterprise. The first stage of drilling was carried out with a typical drilling rig, the maximum depth of which was 5,000 m, but on SG-3 it was possible to break through with its help to a depth of 7,000 m. This was a very good result. The process of drilling itself to the first point of 7,000 m took place without any emergency situations, the drill easily coped with homogeneous granites and all this work took 4 years.

To continue working on deep drilling, it was necessary to rebuild the tower for another more powerful installation and complete its installation. All these refurbishment works took about a year. The Uralmash-15000 was specially developed for the next stage of drilling, which had cardinal differences in the device. Firstly, the lifting and sinking of the drill with the column was automated, and secondly, thanks to the new design, not the entire column rotated, but only the tool itself. Its rotation was carried out by feeding a special solution. The crown itself has a special design, due to which the workers periodically removed rock samples in the form of cylinders, they are called core. During drilling, crushed rock rises to the surface together with a special solution. Then the solution is cleaned and started in a new way. The entire string, complete with the bit and drilling fluid, has a mass of about 200 tons. The pipes from which the string is assembled of the required length are made of aluminum alloys. Drilling at great depths is a very complex technological process, and even more so it was the conquest of new depths, so in the process a lot of problems arose that were promptly and professionally solved at the expense of the best specialists at the station. The descent and ascent of the drill string takes a very large amount of time, about 18 hours, and the drilling process itself takes 4 hours. Therefore, work on the well was carried out around the clock in three shifts.

The next stage of drilling from a depth of 7,000 meters was complicated by loose irregular rocks, the tool constantly deviated towards softer rocks and the process slowed down significantly, but more unpleasant situations arose due to damage to the drill and the breakage of the entire drill string. So, due to accidents and loss of tools, it was necessary to cement this area and start drilling from the previous stages. By June 6, 1979, the record of 9,583 meters was broken, which belonged to the Bertha Rogers oil well.

By 1983, a new record for drilling depth of 12,066 meters. Work on the well had to be temporarily suspended due to preparations for the International Geological Congress, which was scheduled for 1984 in Moscow.

After a break on September 27, 1984, drilling operations were resumed. But at the very first stage, an accident occurred - a break in the drill string. Specialists have lost 5 km of pipes in the column. All attempts to get equipment out of the well ended in failure. Therefore, it was necessary to start drilling from 7000 m. And in 6 years by 1990 the new well reached a record mark of 12 262 m. All attempts to continue drilling further ended in failures, so the project was frozen and after a while was completely stopped due to lack of funding and the political situation in the country. But this depth remains a record!

Kola superdeep today

In the end, in 2008, everything was finally abandoned, the well was mothballed, some of the equipment was dismantled, the rest was destroyed from time to time and from the hands of marauders. According to some information, about 100 million rubles will be required to restore all equipment and continue research and development work, but most likely this is already unrealistic.
Below is a photo of the current state of the object.

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The Kola Superdeep Borehole is the deepest borehole in the world. It is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny, on the territory of the geological Baltic shield. Its depth is 12,262 meters. Unlike other superdeep wells, which were made for oil production or geological exploration, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for the study of the lithosphere in the place where the Mohorovichich boundary comes close to the Earth's surface.

The Kola superdeep well was laid in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin, in 1970.
Sedimentary rock strata by that time were well studied in oil production. It was more interesting to drill where volcanic rocks about 3 billion years old (for comparison: the age of the Earth is estimated at 4.5 billion years) come to the surface. For mining, such rocks are rarely drilled deeper than 1-2 km. It was assumed that already at a depth of 5 km, the granite layer would be replaced by a basalt one.

On June 6, 1979, the well broke the record of 9,583 meters previously held by the Bertha-Rogers well (an oil well in Oklahoma). In the best years, 16 research laboratories worked at the Kola superdeep well, they were personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR.

What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upstairs with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the dungeon can be intimidating. The sounds coming from below are really like screams and howls. To this can be added a long list of accidents that followed the Kola Superdeep, when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers.

Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures from which it can melt are comparable to the temperature of the sun's surface. Once the cable seemed to be pulled from below - and cut off. Subsequently, when they drilled in the same place, no remnants of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents is still a mystery. However, they were not at all the reason for stopping the drilling of the bowels of the Baltic Shield.

Excavation of a core to the surface.

Extracted core.

Although it was expected that there would be a pronounced boundary between granites and basalts, only granites were found in the core throughout the depth. However, due to the high pressure, the compacted granites greatly changed the physical and acoustic properties.
As a rule, the lifted core scattered from active gas release into the cuttings, as it could not withstand a sharp change in pressure. It was possible to pull out a solid piece of core only with a very slow rise of the drill, when the "excess" gas, while still being pressed to a high pressure, had time to come out of the rock.
The density of cracks at great depths, contrary to expectations, increased. There was also water at depth, filling the cracks.

Tricone bit.

Eruptive breccia of basalts from a depth of 2977.8 m

"We have the deepest hole in the world - this is how we should use it!" - David Guberman, the permanent director of the Kola Superdeep Research and Production Center, bitterly exclaims. In the first 30 years of the existence of the Kola superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,262 meters. But since 1995, drilling stopped: there was no one to finance the project. What stands out within scientific programs UNESCO, only enough to maintain the drilling station in working order and study previously extracted rock samples.

Huberman regretfully recalls how many scientific discoveries took place on 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 wrong. It turned out that the Earth does not at all look like a layer cake. “Up to 4 kilometers everything went according to theory, and then the end of the world began,” says Guberman. Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will remain relatively low down to a depth of at least 15 kilometers. Accordingly, the well can be dug up to almost 20 kilometers, just to the mantle.

Another surprise: life on planet Earth appeared, it turns out, 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 found - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there is no longer any sedimentary rocks, methane appeared in huge concentrations. This completely and completely destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas.

There were also almost fantastic sensations. When, at the end of the 70s, the Soviet automatic space station brought to Earth 124 grams of lunar soil, the researchers of the Kola Science Center found that it is like two drops of water similar to samples from a depth of 3 kilometers. And a hypothesis arose: the moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula. Now they are looking for exactly where. By the way, the Americans, who brought half a ton of soil from the Moon, did nothing sensible with it. Placed in sealed containers and left for future generations to research.

The history of the Kola superdeep was not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not - but it was in that 1995 in the depths of the mine that powerful explosion of unknown nature.

“When they began to ask me about this mysterious story at UNESCO, I did not know what to answer. On the one hand, bullshit. On the other hand, as an honest scientist, I could not say that I knew what exactly happened here. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion ... A few days later nothing of the kind was found at the same depth, ”recalls academician David Guberman.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, the predictions of Alexei Tolstoy from the novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, they discovered a real mine of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold. A real olivine layer, brilliantly predicted by the writer. It contains 78 grams of gold per ton. By the way, commercial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per tonne. Perhaps, in the near future, humanity will be able to use this wealth.

This is what the Kola superdeep looks like now, in a deplorable state.