What does the Cold War have to do with Jules Verne? It is clear that the novels of the French writer inspired more than one scientific discovery. When he didn’t dream of completing a world tour in 80 days, he was looking for a way to navigate under the sea to learn its secrets or a manned voyage to the Moon. AND The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union also spawned projects that seemed to have slipped Verne’s mind, but this time they were real.
One of the turning points of 20th century science took shape as follows: Kola Superdeep Well (Russia). AboutThe deepest sounding by man in history. Although its diameter was no larger than that of a plate, it entered the bowels of the planet to a depth of 12.2 kilometers; this is a human record that even later oil exploration efforts could not reach.
The deep hole is located on the Kola Peninsula – hence the name – in the icy depths of northwestern Russia near the Norwegian border.
Both Russia and the United States insisted on reaching the center of the Earth, as Otto Lindenbrock did in Verne’s novel. The United States began in the early 1960s with the Mohole project, which was also an attempt to drill through the Earth’s crust to sample the crust-mantle boundary.
To accomplish this feat, they planned to pierce the seafloor from a ship near a volcanic island in the Mexican Pacific. But, american project failed. It failed to receive funding or support from the scientific community, causing the US government to abandon efforts to achieve this.
Abandoned after achieving an unbroken record yet
The Russians, on the other hand, did not give up so easily. They started their project years later, on May 24, 1970, with some work postponed to 1992.coincides with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But why didn’t it continue? In the case of Russia, this had nothing to do with either political turmoil or famine, the Kola well. had to be abandoned as temperatures reached at the bottom of the perforation reached almost 200°Cdoubled what scientists had imagined.
The project wasn’t just about digging a single hole in Earth’s mantle. The fact is that he was trying to create a network of multiple holes branching out around a central hole. The deepest and named SG-3 is the protagonist of this story.
Month after month, year after year, the anticipation of the depth the excavators would reach led to speculation among the locals, which prompted them to go even further. The idea was to reach 15 kilometers in 1993, but various malfunctions and heat emitted from the bowels of the Earth did not allow them to advance more than 12.2 kilometers.
This turning point is not trivial. For perspective, the depth of this hole is the same as the height of Mount Everest and Mount Fuji if placed on top of each other. at the same time Deeper than the Mariana Trench, the ocean’s deepest cliff, located at a depth of 11 kilometers Below sea level.
What was found in the ‘super hole’?
Thanks to this expedition, many of the mysteries that still hang over Earth’s geology have been solved. On the one hand, he discovered it from a depth of 4 kilometers. the temperature rises drastically, reaching 200ºC in 12 kilometers.
Moreover revealed the fossil record of 14 different species that could have traveled through the planet’s past 1,400 million years.
Moreover deposits of gold, copper, and nickel were found, and they found that the deep rocks were filled with water.. Secondly, it was the reason why seismic waves always propagated at the same speed despite the so-called rock change that should have been 5 to 10 kilometers away.
Other The unexpected discovery was a large amount of hydrogen mixed with the boiling mud flowing out of the hole.
All that remains of that ominous hole is a small screwed-in metal hatch in the middle of a ruined city. The site has fallen into such disrepair that Russia announced plans to destroy the site in 2008. The facility is currently abandoned. While the Kola science facility was formally liquidated in 2008, the 23cm wide shaft is now enclosed by a 12-bolt metal cap.
Abandonment is also some urban legends. This is the case of the person confirming that the project has come to an end as scientists have found an extremely hot cave that emits infernal howls and excruciating screams. From that moment on, the Kola hole became known as the “entrance to hell”.
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