In the 1960s, alongside the great space race, the United States and the Soviet Union also vied for power in another form: exploring "gateways" that could lead to the center of the Earth, or at least as close as possible.
Deep-sea drilling projects began in the 1960s. American scientists introduced the Mohole Project, aimed at understanding the components within the Earth's interior.
This project is named after the scientist Andrija Mohorovicic, who discovered the depth at which the Earth's crust and mantle meet.
Yuri Smirnov, a geologist and poet, volunteered to guard the "Kola superdeep borehole" until his death at the age of 87. (Photo: Topic)
By 1970, the Soviet Union joined the race with a project to drill a borehole called the "Kola Superdeep Borehole" in the port city of Murmansk, just outside the Norwegian border near the Barents Sea.
The project's initial goal was to drill to a depth of 15 kilometers underground. Although this depth could not be achieved, it remains the deepest man-made borehole ever drilled on land, and the process of collecting samples continues to amaze modern scientists.
The "disc" covers the world's deepest sinkhole.
Amidst the rubble of an abandoned construction site in Murmansk province lies a disc-shaped object. Beneath it, with a diameter of only 23 cm, lies the world's deepest borehole, known as the "Kola Superdeep Borehole".
The deepest man-made hole on land, located on Russia's Kola Peninsula, is over 12 kilometers deep. For comparison, the depth of the Kola borehole is equivalent to the combined heights of Mount Everest and Mount Fuji. Meanwhile, the world's deepest trench, the Mariana Trench, only reaches a maximum depth of 10,971 kilometers.
Despite its impressive depth, the Kola drill is still relatively shallow compared to the Earth's depth. In total, it has only penetrated about one-third of the Earth's crust and reached 0.2% of the Earth's core.
Compare the depth of the Kola Hole to many famous landmarks such as the Mariana Trench, Mount Everest, or the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. (Photo: Bored Therapy)
This project also took a very long time to reach a depth of over 12 km. Drilling at Kola began on May 24, 1970, with the goal of drilling as far as possible. At the time, scientists predicted the drill could penetrate to about 15 km.
By 1979, the project had broken all world records for man-made holes, exceeding approximately 9.5 km. By 1989, drilling reached a vertical depth of 12,262 km. The "Kola Superdeep Borehole" officially became the deepest point ever reached by humans.
However, by 1992 the scientists were unable to continue. The reason was that the temperature at a depth of 12 km had reached 180 degrees Celsius.
If drilling continues to the target depth of 15 km, the temperature there could reach nearly 300 degrees Celsius, which would certainly destroy any drilling equipment.
The cover protecting the world's deepest man-made sinkhole. (Photo: Topic)
Initially, the drill bits penetrated the granite layer quite easily. However, once the drills reached a depth of approximately 6.9 km, the soil became denser and more difficult to drill through.
As a result, the drill bit broke, and the drilling team had to change direction several times. The engineers continued drilling, but the deeper the drill went, the hotter the Earth's core became.
Fascinating discoveries beneath the gateway to the Earth's core.
The Soviet Union persisted with the project until 1992, but was never able to drill to the depth they had achieved in 1989. Eventually, the drilling site was officially closed and sealed in 2005.
Although they couldn't reach the expected depth, the scientists still discovered many interesting things about the Earth's crust. They found that water exists at a depth of 12 km below the surface, something previously thought impossible. Gases such as helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and even CO2 were also detected during the drilling process.
Researchers believe that water may have been forced out of the rock crystals by the extremely high pressure inside the Earth.
They also discovered 24 new species of single-celled organisms, excavating rocks dating back 2.7 billion years. The discovery of these organisms at a depth of 7 km underground raises the hypothesis that living organisms can withstand the pressure and high temperatures to adapt to life underground.
A core sample taken from the Kola drill and a piece of metabasalt rock found more than 6 km deep in the Earth's crust. (Photo: Pechenga)
The clearest evidence is the tiny fossils encased in remarkably intact organic compounds, despite the extreme pressure and temperature of the surrounding rock.
The Kola crater remains the deepest hole on land, but its depth has been surpassed at sea. In 2008, Qatar drilled a 12,289 km deep hole into the Al Shaheen oil field. In 2011, the Sakhalin-I project drilled a 12,376 km deep hole into the sea off the coast of Russia's Sakhalin Island.
Above the Kola borehole today is a rusted, welded-together metal cap, 23 cm in diameter. According to ABC, if someone could fall into this hole, it would take 3-4 minutes to reach the bottom. Locals say the hole is so deep that it has been nicknamed the "well of hell."
(Source: Zing News)
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