The Earth's Deepest Hole

Posted by Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on August 25, 2008 at 12:34 pm


During the Cold War, the Unites States and the Soviet Union raced to see who would reach the moon first. But they also competed going the other way -drilling down through the earth. Both countries wanted to bore all the way through the Earth’s crust to reach the mantle. The Soviets went down seven miles, and dug the earth’s deepest hole.

At the Kola Institute, pictured, the Russians drilled for more than 15 years to reach a crust depth of 40,226 feet, a record that’s never been broken. But however successful the mission was as an exploration, the geological findings from the site remain murky and obscured by the way they emanated out of the fading Soviet scientific machine.

Stanford geologist and drilling expert, Mark Zoback, said that the Kola borehole was “an anomaly” even within the rather grandiose field of superdeep drilling projects.

Read how they did it at Wired. Link


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COMMENT

9 comments to "The Earth's Deepest Hole"

  1. sigh
    August 25th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Supposedly, Maersk oil has the deepest hole now, done in May 2008, at 40,320 feet (12.3 km).

    Deepest Hole

  2. anon
    August 25th, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    Ok, I was good last time, but 2 hole posts in a month is asking for it...

    Yo mama

  3. Reechard
    August 25th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    'Damn Interesting' had a good article on this. Pretty neat

  4. FedEazel
    August 25th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    That Maersk Well is a horizontal well. It is only 4000 or so feet below surface, but extends the rest of the way out horizontally. That well, while incredibly challenging to drill, is not the deepest hole, it is the longest.

  5. ted
    August 25th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    Glad we could clear up this hole business.

  6. Snappy
    August 25th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    Wasn't the Kola hole the subject of the 'hole to Hell' hoax? There was supposed to be a recording Russian scientists made of tormented souls screaming, etc. The story was supposedly picked up by Christian news sources. Or am I just spreading the wonderful myth? Snopes ahoy!

  7. Slim
    August 26th, 2008 at 8:52 am

    No jokes about the national debt or Courtney Love? Come on, people.

  8. Krooz
    August 27th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    They came 6" away from instigating the Crack in The World!

  9. meisee
    August 28th, 2008 at 9:34 am

    ???????


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