The deepest well for water. Superdeep well on the Kola Peninsula: history and secrets

In the USSR, they loved the scale, but more, and this applied to literally everything. So one well was dug in the Union, which today bears the title of the deepest on earth. It is noteworthy that the well was not drilled for oil production or geological exploration, but purely for scientific research.

Tips used to drill a well.

The Kola super-deep well, or SG-3, is the deepest man-made well in the earth. It is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny, in a western direction. The depth of the hole is 12,262 meters. Its diameter at the top is 92 centimeters. At the bottom - 21.5 centimeters. An important feature of the SG-3 is that, unlike any other wells for oil production or geological work, this one was drilled exclusively for scientific purposes.

The well was laid in 1970, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin. The chosen location is remarkable in that the well was drilled in outcropping volcanic rocks more than 3 billion years old. By the way, the age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years. When mining, wells are rarely drilled deeper than two thousand meters.

The work went on for days on end.

Drilling began on May 24, 1970. Up to the mark of 7,000 meters, drilling proceeded easily and calmly, but after the head hit the less dense rocks, problems began. The process has slowed down considerably. Only on June 6, 1979 a new record was set - 9583 meters. It was previously installed in the US by oil producers. The mark of 12,066 meters was passed in 1983. The result was achieved by the International Geological Congress, which was held in Moscow. Subsequently, two accidents occurred at the complex.

Now the complex looks like this.

In 1997, several legends were circulated in the media at once that the Kola super-deep well was the real road to hell. One of these legends said that when the team lowered the microphone to a depth of several thousand meters, human screams, groans and screams were heard there.

Of course, there was nothing of the kind. If only because special equipment is used to record sound in a well at such a depth - but it did not record anything either. There were indeed several accidents at the complex, including an underground explosion during drilling, but geologists definitely did not disturb any underground “demons”.

The well itself is mothballed.

It is really important that 16 research laboratories worked at SG-3. During the Soviet Union, domestic geologists were able to make many valuable discoveries and better understand how our planet works. The work at the site allowed to significantly improve the drilling technology. The scientists were also able to understand the local geological processes, received comprehensive data on the thermal regime of the bowels, underground gases and deep waters.

Unfortunately, today the Kola super-deep well is closed. The building of the complex has been deteriorating since the last laboratory was closed here in 2008, and all equipment was dismantled. The reason is simple - lack of funding. In 2010, the well was already mothballed. Now it is slowly but surely destroyed under the influence of natural processes.

In 1970, just in time for Lenin's 100th birthday, Soviet scientists launched one of the most ambitious projects of our time. On the Kola Peninsula, ten kilometers from the village of Zapolyarny, drilling of a well began, which as a result turned out to be the deepest in the world and entered the Guinness Book of Records.

The grandiose scientific project has been going on for more than twenty years. He brought a lot of interesting discoveries, went down in the history of science, and in the end was overgrown with so many legends, rumors and gossip that would be enough for more than one horror movie.

entrance to hell

During its heyday, the drilling rig on the Kola Peninsula was a cyclopean structure 20-story high. Up to three thousand people worked here per shift. The team was led by leading geologists of the country. The drilling rig was built in the tundra ten kilometers from the village of Zapolyarny, and in the polar night it shone with lights like a spaceship.

When all this splendor suddenly closed and the lights went out, rumors immediately spread. By all measures, the drilling was remarkably successful. No one in the world has yet managed to reach such a depth - Soviet geologists lowered the drill more than 12 kilometers.

The sudden end of a successful project looked as ridiculous as the fact that the Americans closed the program of flights to the moon. Aliens were blamed for the collapse of the lunar project. In the problems of the Kola Superdeep - devils and demons.

A popular legend says that from great depths, the drill was repeatedly taken out melted. There were no physical reasons for this - the temperature underground did not exceed 200 degrees Celsius, and the drill was designed for a thousand degrees. Then the audio sensors allegedly began to pick up some moans, screams and sighs. Dispatchers who monitored the instrument readings complained of feelings of panic fear and anxiety.

According to legend, it turned out that geologists had drilled to hell. The groans of sinners, extremely high temperatures, the atmosphere of horror at the drilling rig - all this explained why all work on the Kola Superdeep was suddenly curtailed.

Many were skeptical about these rumors. However, in 1995, after the work was stopped, a powerful explosion occurred at the drilling rig. Nobody understood what could explode there, even the head of the entire project, a prominent geologist David Guberman.

Today, excursions are led to an abandoned drilling rig and they tell tourists a fascinating story about how scientists drilled a hole into the underworld of the dead. As moaning ghosts roam the installation, and in the evening demons crawl out to the surface and strive to sneak into the abyss of a gaping extreme seeker.

underground moon

In fact, the whole story with the “well to hell” was invented by Finnish journalists by April 1st. Their comic article was reprinted by American newspapers, and the duck flew to the masses. Long-term drilling of the Kola superdeep proceeded without any mysticism. But what happened there in reality was more interesting than any legends.

To begin with, ultra-deep drilling by definition was doomed to numerous accidents. Under the yoke of gigantic pressure (up to 1000 atmospheres) and high temperatures, the drills could not withstand, the well was clogged, the pipes that strengthened the vent were broken. Countless times the narrow well was bent so that new branches had to be drilled.

The worst accident occurred shortly after the main triumph of geologists. In 1982, they were able to overcome the mark of 12 kilometers. These results were solemnly announced in Moscow at the International Geological Congress. Geologists from all over the world were brought to the Kola Peninsula, they were shown a drilling rig and rock samples mined at a fantastic depth that mankind had never reached before.

After the celebration, drilling continued. However, the break in work proved fatal. In 1984, the most terrible accident occurred at the drilling rig. As many as five kilometers of pipes came off and hammered the well. It was impossible to continue drilling. The results of five years of work were lost overnight.

I had to resume drilling from the 7-kilometer mark. Only in 1990, geologists again managed to cross over 12 kilometers. 12,262 meters - this is the final depth of the Kola well.

But in parallel with the terrible accidents, incredible discoveries also followed. Deep drilling is an analogue of a time machine. On the Kola Peninsula, the oldest rocks, whose age exceeds 3 billion years, come to the surface. Climbing deeper and deeper, scientists have gained a clear idea of what happened on our planet during its youth.

First of all, it turned out that the traditional scheme of the geological section, compiled by scientists, does not correspond to reality. “Up to 4 kilometers, everything went according to theory, and then the doomsday began,” Huberman later said.

According to calculations, having drilled a layer of granite, it was supposed to get to even harder, basalt rocks. But there was no basalt. After the granite came loose layered rocks, which constantly crumbled and made it difficult to move inland.

But among the rocks 2.8 billion years old, fossilized microorganisms were found. This made it possible to clarify the time of the origin of life on Earth. Huge deposits of methane have been found at even greater depths. This clarified the question of the origin of hydrocarbons - oil and gas.

And at a depth of more than 9 kilometers, scientists discovered a gold-bearing olivine layer, so vividly described by Alexei Tolstoy in the Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin.

But the most fantastic discovery occurred in the late 1970s, when the Soviet lunar station brought back samples of lunar soil. Geologists were amazed to see that its composition completely coincides with the composition of the rocks they mined at a depth of 3 kilometers. How was it possible?

The fact is that one of the hypotheses of the origin of the Moon suggests that several billion years ago the Earth collided with some kind of celestial body. As a result of the collision, a piece broke off from our planet and turned into a satellite. It is possible that this piece came off in the area of the current Kola Peninsula.

The final

So why did they close the Kola Superdeep?

Firstly, the main tasks of the scientific expedition were completed. Unique equipment for drilling at great depths was created, tested under extreme conditions and noticeably improved. The collected rock samples were studied and described in detail. The Kola well helped to better understand the structure of the earth's crust and the history of our planet.

Secondly, time itself was not conducive to such ambitious projects. In 1992, the scientific expedition was closed funding. Employees quit and went home. But even today, the grandiose building of the drilling rig and the mysterious well impress with their scale.

Sometimes it seems that the Kola Superdeep has not yet exhausted the entire supply of its wonders. The head of the famous project was also sure of this. “We have the deepest hole in the world - this is how you should use it!” exclaimed David Huberman.

In the second half of the 20th century, the world became sick with ultra-deep drilling. In the United States, a new program for studying the ocean floor (Deep Sea Drilling Project) was being prepared. Built specifically for this project, the Glomar Challenger vessel spent several years in the waters of various oceans and seas, drilling almost 800 wells in their bottom, reaching a maximum depth of 760 m. By the mid-1980s, the results of offshore drilling confirmed the theory of plate tectonics. Geology as a science was born again. Meanwhile, Russia went its own way. Interest in the problem, awakened by the success of the United States, resulted in the program "Study of the bowels of the Earth and ultra-deep drilling", but not in the ocean, but on the continent. Despite centuries of history, continental drilling seemed to be a completely new thing. After all, it was about previously unattainable depths - more than 7 kilometers. In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev approved this program, although he was guided by political motives rather than scientific ones. He did not want to lag behind the United States.

The well-known oilman, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolay Timofeev, headed the newly created laboratory at the Institute of Drilling Technology. He was instructed to substantiate the possibility of ultra-deep drilling in crystalline rocks - granites and gneisses. The research took 4 years, and in 1966 the experts issued a verdict - it is possible to drill, and not necessarily with the technology of tomorrow, the equipment that is already there is enough. The main problem is the heat at depth. According to calculations, as it penetrates into the rocks that make up the earth's crust, the temperature should increase by 1 degree every 33 meters. This means that at a depth of 10 km we should expect about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C. Drilling tools and devices will not withstand such heating. It was necessary to look for a place where the bowels are not so hot ...

Such a place was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. The report, prepared at the Institute of Physics of the Earth, said: over the billions of years of its existence, the Kola shield has cooled down, the temperature at a depth of 15 km does not exceed 150 ° C. And geophysicists have prepared an approximate section of the bowels of the Kola Peninsula. According to them, the first 7 kilometers are granite strata of the upper part of the earth's crust, then the basalt layer begins. Then the idea of a two-layer structure of the earth's crust was generally accepted. But as it turned out later, both physicists and geophysicists were wrong. The drilling site was chosen on the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi. In Finnish, it means "Under the wolf mountain", although there is no mountain or wolves in that place. Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.

The drilling of the Kola well SG-3 did not require the creation of fundamentally new devices and giant machines. We started working with what we already had: the Uralmash 4E unit with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light-alloy pipes. What was really needed at that time was non-standard technological solutions. Indeed, in solid crystalline rocks no one has drilled to such a great depth, and what will be there, they imagined only in general terms. Experienced drillers, however, understood that no matter how detailed the project was, the real well would be much more complicated. After 5 years, when the depth of the SG-3 well exceeded 7 kilometers, a new drilling rig "Uralmash 15,000" was installed - one of the most modern at that time. Powerful, reliable, with an automatic tripping mechanism, it could withstand a pipe string up to 15 km long. The drilling rig has turned into a fully sheathed tower 68 m high, recalcitrant to the strong winds raging in the Arctic. A mini-factory, scientific laboratories and a core storage facility have grown up nearby.

When drilling to shallow depths, a motor that rotates a string of pipes with a drill at the end is installed on the surface. The drill is an iron cylinder with teeth made of diamonds or hard alloys - a crown. This crown bites into the rocks and cuts out of them a thin column - core. To cool the tool and remove small debris from the well, drilling fluid is injected into it - liquid clay, which circulates all the time through the wellbore, like blood in vessels. After some time, the pipes are raised to the surface, freed from the core, the crown is changed and the column is lowered into the bottomhole again. This is how normal drilling works.

And if the barrel length is 10-12 kilometers with a diameter of 215 millimeters? The string of pipes becomes the thinnest thread lowered into the well. How to manage it? How to see what is happening in the face? Therefore, at the Kola well, miniature turbines were installed at the bottom of the drill string, they were launched by drilling fluid injected through pipes under pressure. The turbines rotated the carbide bit and cut out the core. The whole technology was well developed, the operator on the control panel saw the rotation of the crown, knew its speed and could control the process. Every 8-10 meters, a multi-kilometer column of pipes had to be lifted up. The descent and ascent took a total of 18 hours.

7 kilometers - the mark for the Kola superdeep fatal. Behind it began the unknown, many accidents and a continuous struggle with rocks. The barrel could not be kept upright. When 12 km were covered for the first time, the well deviated from the vertical by 21°. Although the drillers had already learned to work with the incredible curvature of the trunk, it was impossible to go any further. The well had to be re-drilled from the mark of 7 kilometers. To get a vertical hole in hard formations, you need a very rigid bottom of the drill string so that it enters the subsoil like butter. But another problem arises - the well is gradually expanding, the drill dangles in it, as in a glass, the walls of the barrel begin to collapse and can crush the tool. The solution to this problem turned out to be original - the pendulum technology was applied. The drill was artificially swung in the well and suppressed strong vibrations. Due to this, the trunk turned out vertical.

The most common accident on any drilling rig is a pipe string break. Usually they try to seize the pipes again, but if this happens at a great depth, then the problem becomes unrecoverable. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer well, they threw such a hole and started a new one, a little higher. Breakage and loss of pipes on SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part, the well looks like the root system of a giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be happiness for geologists, who unexpectedly received a three-dimensional picture of an impressive segment of ancient Archean rocks that formed more than 2.5 billion years ago. In June 1990, SG-3 reached a depth of 12,262 m. They began to prepare the well for drilling up to 14 km, and then an accident occurred again - at the level of 8,550 m, the pipe string broke. The continuation of the work required a long preparation, updating equipment and new costs. In 1994, drilling of the Kola Superdeep was stopped. After 3 years, she got into the Guinness Book of Records and still remains unsurpassed.

SG-3 was a secret facility from the very beginning. Both the border zone, and strategic deposits in the district, and scientific priority are to blame. The first foreigner to visit the rig was one of the leaders of the Academy of Sciences of Czechoslovakia. Later, in 1975, an article about the Kola Superdeep was published in Pravda signed by the Minister of Geology Alexander Sidorenko. There were still no scientific publications on the Kola well, but some information leaked abroad. The world began to learn more from rumors - the deepest well is being drilled in the USSR. The veil of secrecy, probably, would have hung over the well until the very “perestroika” had it not been for the World Geological Congress in Moscow in 1984. Carefully prepared for such a major event in the scientific world, a new building was even built for the Ministry of Geology - many participants were expecting. But foreign colleagues were primarily interested in the Kola Superdeep! The Americans did not believe that we had it at all. The depth of the well by that time had reached 12,066 meters. There was no point in hiding the object anymore. In Moscow, the congress participants were treated to an exhibition of achievements in Russian geology, one of the stands was dedicated to the SG-3 well. Experts from all over the world looked in bewilderment at an ordinary drill head with worn carbide teeth. And this is how they drill the deepest well in the world? Incredible! A large delegation of geologists and journalists went to the village of Zapolyarny. Visitors were shown the drilling rig in action, and 33-meter pipe sections were taken out and disconnected. There were heaps of exactly the same drilling heads around, like the one that lay on the stand in Moscow. From the Academy of Sciences, the delegation was received by a well-known geologist, Academician Vladimir Belousov. During the press conference, he was asked a question from the audience: - What was the most important thing shown by the Kola well? - Lord! The main thing is that it showed that we know nothing about the continental crust, - the scientist answered honestly.

The section of the Kola well refuted the two-layer model of the earth's crust and showed that the seismic sections in the bowels are not the boundaries of layers of rocks of different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the properties of the stone with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties of rocks, apparently, can change dramatically, so that granites in their physical characteristics become similar to basalts, and vice versa. But the "basalt" raised to the surface from a depth of 12 km immediately became granite, although it experienced a severe attack of "caisson sickness" along the way - the core crumbled and disintegrated into flat plaques. The further the well went, the fewer quality samples fell into the hands of scientists.

The depth contained many surprises. Previously, it was natural to think that with distance from the earth's surface, with an increase in pressure, rocks become more monolithic, with a small number of cracks and pores. SG-3 convinced scientists otherwise. Starting from 9 kilometers, the strata turned out to be very porous and literally crammed with cracks through which aqueous solutions circulated. Later, this fact was confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. At depth it turned out to be much hotter than expected: by as much as 80 °! At the mark of 7 km, the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it had already reached 230°C. In the samples of the Kola well, scientists discovered gold mineralization. Inclusions of the precious metal were found in ancient rocks at a depth of 9.5–10.5 km. However, the concentration of gold was too low to declare a deposit - an average of 37.7 mg per ton of rock, but sufficient to expect it in other similar places.

But, once the Kola Superdeep was at the center of a global scandal. One fine morning in 1989, the director of the well, David Guberman, received a phone call from the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper, the secretary of the regional committee, and a host of other people. Everyone wanted to know about the devil that the drillers allegedly raised from the bowels, as reported by some newspapers and radio stations around the world. The director was taken aback, and - it was from what! "Scientists have discovered hell", "Satan has escaped from hell" - read the headlines. As reported in the press, geologists working very far in Siberia, and maybe in Alaska or even the Kola Peninsula (journalists had no consensus on this matter), were drilling at a depth of 14.4 km, when suddenly the drill began to dangle strongly from side to side. So, there is a big hole below, the scientists thought, apparently, the center of the planet is empty. Sensors lowered into the depths showed a temperature of 2,000 ° C, and super-sensitive microphones sounded ... the screams of millions of suffering souls. As a result, drilling was stopped due to fears of releasing infernal forces to the surface. Of course, Soviet scientists refuted this journalistic "duck", but the echoes of that old story wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when stories about hell had already been forgotten, employees of the Kola superdeep visited Australia with lectures. They were invited to a reception by the Governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady, who greeted the Russian delegation with the question: “What the hell did you raise from there?”

From here you can listen to hellish sounds from the well.

In our time, the Kola well (SG-3), which is the deepest borehole in the world, will be liquidated due to unprofitability, Interfax reports, citing a statement by Boris Mikov, head of the territorial department of the Federal Property Management Agency for the Murmansk region. The exact closing date of the project has not yet been determined.

Earlier, the prosecutor's office of the Pechenga district fined the head of the SG-3 enterprise for salary delays and threatened to initiate a criminal case. As of April 2008, the well's staffing included 20 people. In the 1980s, about 500 people worked at the well.

Film: Kola Superdeep: Last Salute

At a depth of 410-660 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, the ocean of the Archean period. Such discoveries would not have been possible without the ultra-deep drilling methods developed and used in the Soviet Union. One of the artifacts of those times is the Kola super-deep well (SG-3), which, even 24 years after the cessation of drilling, remains the deepest in the world. Why it was drilled and what discoveries it helped to make, says Lenta.ru.

The pioneers of ultra-deep drilling were the Americans. True, in the vastness of the ocean: in a pilot project, they involved the ship Glomar Challenger, designed just for this purpose. In the meantime, the corresponding theoretical base was being actively developed in the Soviet Union.

In May 1970, in the north of the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny, drilling began on the Kola superdeep well. As expected, this was timed to coincide with the centenary of the birth of Lenin. Unlike other ultra-deep wells, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for scientific purposes and even organized a special exploration expedition.

The drilling site was unique: it is on the Baltic Shield in the Kola Peninsula region that ancient rocks come to the surface. Many of them are three billion years old (our planet itself is 4.5 billion years old). In addition, here the Pechenga-Imandra-Varzug rift trough is a cup-like structure pressed into ancient rocks, the origin of which is explained by a deep fault.

It took scientists four years to drill a well to a depth of 7263 meters. So far, nothing unusual has been done: the same installation was used as in the extraction of oil and gas. Then the well stood idle for a whole year: the installation was modified for turbine drilling. After the upgrade, it was possible to drill about 60 meters per month.

A depth of seven kilometers brought surprises: the alternation of hard and not very dense rocks. Accidents have become more frequent, and many caverns have appeared in the wellbore. Drilling continued until 1983, when the depth of SG-3 reached 12 kilometers. After that, the scientists gathered a large conference and talked about their successes.

However, due to careless handling of the drill, a five-kilometer section remained in the mine. For several months they tried to get it, but did not succeed. It was decided to start drilling again from a depth of seven kilometers. Due to the complexity of the operation, not only the main shaft was drilled, but also four additional ones. It took six years to restore the lost meters: in 1990, the well reached a depth of 12,262 meters, becoming the deepest in the world.

Two years later, drilling was stopped, subsequently the well was mothballed, but in fact it was abandoned.

Nevertheless, many discoveries were made at the Kola superdeep well. Engineers have created a whole system of ultra-deep drilling. The difficulty was not only in depth, but also in high temperatures (up to 200 degrees Celsius) due to the intensity of the work of the drills.

Scientists not only moved deep into the Earth, but also raised rock samples and cores for analysis. By the way, it was they who studied the lunar soil and found out that its composition almost completely corresponds to the rocks extracted from the Kola well from a depth of about three kilometers.

At a depth of more than nine kilometers, they found deposits of minerals, including gold: in the olivine layer it is as much as 78 grams per ton. And this is not so little - gold mining is considered possible at 34 grams per ton. A pleasant surprise for scientists, as well as for the nearby plant, was the discovery of a new ore horizon of copper-nickel ores.

Among other things, the researchers learned that granites do not pass into a super-strong basalt layer: in fact, Archean gneisses, which are traditionally classified as fractured rocks, were located behind it. This made a kind of revolution in geological and geophysical science and completely changed the traditional ideas about the bowels of the Earth.

Another pleasant surprise is the discovery at a depth of 9-12 kilometers of highly porous fractured rocks saturated with highly mineralized waters. According to the assumption of scientists, it is they who are responsible for the formation of ores, but before it was believed that this occurs only at much shallower depths.

Among other things, it turned out that the temperature of the bowels is slightly higher than expected: at a depth of six kilometers, a temperature gradient of 20 degrees Celsius per kilometer was obtained instead of 16 expected. The radiogenic origin of the heat flux was established, which also did not agree with previous hypotheses.

In the deep layers more than 2.8 billion years old, scientists have found 14 types of petrified microorganisms. This made it possible to shift the time of the origin of life on the planet by one and a half billion years ago. The researchers also found that there are no sedimentary rocks at the depths and there is methane, forever burying the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons.

The 20th century was marked by the triumph of man in the air and the conquest of the deepest depressions in the oceans. Only the dream of penetrating to the heart of our planet and knowing the hitherto hidden life of its bowels still remains unattainable. "Journey to the Center of the Earth" promises to be extremely difficult and exciting, fraught with a lot of surprises and incredible discoveries. The first steps on this path have already been taken - several dozen ultra-deep wells have been drilled in the world. The information obtained with the help of ultra-deep drilling turned out to be so stunning that it shook the well-established ideas of geologists about the structure of our planet and provided the richest materials for researchers in various fields of knowledge.

touch the mantle

Hardworking Chinese in the 13th century dug wells 1,200 meters deep. Europeans broke the Chinese record in 1930, having learned to pierce the earth's firmament with the help of drilling rigs for 3 kilometers. In the late 1950s, the wells were extended to 7 kilometers. The era of ultra-deep drilling began.

Like most global projects, the idea to drill into the Earth's upper shell arose in the 1960s, at the height of space flight and belief in the limitless possibilities of science and technology. The Americans conceived nothing less than to penetrate the entire earth's crust with a borehole and obtain samples of the rocks of the upper mantle. Ideas about the mantle then (as, indeed, now) were based only on indirect data - the speed of propagation of seismic waves in the bowels, the change in which was interpreted as the boundary of rock layers of different ages and compositions. Scientists believed that the earth's crust is like a sandwich: young rocks on top, ancient ones on the bottom. However, only ultra-deep drilling could give a true picture of the structure and composition of the outer shell of the Earth and the upper mantle.

Mohol project

In 1958, the Mohol ultra-deep drilling program appeared in the United States. This is one of the most daring and mysterious projects of post-war America. Like many other programs, Mohol was designed to overtake the USSR in scientific rivalry by setting a world record in ultra-deep drilling. The name of the project comes from the words "Mohorovićić" - the name of a Croatian scientist who identified the interface between the earth's crust and mantle - the Moho border, and "hole", which in English means "well". The creators of the program decided to drill in the ocean, where, according to geophysicists, the earth's crust is much thinner than on the continents. It was necessary to lower the pipes several kilometers into the water, go 5 kilometers of the ocean floor and reach the upper mantle.

In April 1961, off the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean Sea, where the water column reaches 3.5 km, geologists drilled five wells, the deepest of which entered the bottom at 183 meters. According to preliminary calculations, in this place, under sedimentary rocks, they expected to meet the upper layer of the earth's crust - granite. But the core lifted from under the sediments contained pure basalts - a kind of antipode of granites. The result of drilling discouraged and at the same time inspired scientists, they began to prepare a new phase of drilling. But when the cost of the project exceeded $100 million, the US Congress stopped funding. "Mohol" did not answer any of the questions posed, but it showed the main thing - ultra-deep drilling in the ocean is possible.

Funeral postponed

Ultra-deep drilling made it possible to look into the bowels and understand how rocks behave at high pressures and temperatures. The idea that rocks become denser with depth and their porosity decreases turned out to be wrong, as well as the point of view about dry bowels. This was first discovered when drilling the Kola Superdeep, other wells in ancient crystalline strata confirmed the fact that at a depth of many kilometers the rocks are broken by cracks and penetrated by numerous pores, and aqueous solutions move freely under pressure of several hundred atmospheres. This discovery is one of the most important achievements of ultra-deep drilling. It made us turn again to the problem of radioactive waste disposal, which was supposed to be placed in deep wells, which seemed completely safe. Given the information on the state of the subsoil, obtained during ultra-deep drilling, projects for the creation of such burial sites now look very risky.

In search of the cooled hell

Since then, the world has become ill with ultra-deep drilling. In the United States, a new program for studying the ocean floor (Deep Sea Drilling Project) was being prepared. Built specifically for this project, the Glomar Challenger vessel spent several years in the waters of various oceans and seas, drilling almost 800 wells in their bottom, reaching a maximum depth of 760 m. By the mid-1980s, the results of offshore drilling confirmed the theory of plate tectonics. Geology as a science was born again. Meanwhile, Russia went its own way. Interest in the problem, awakened by the success of the United States, resulted in the program "Study of the bowels of the Earth and ultra-deep drilling", but not in the ocean, but on the continent. Despite centuries of history, continental drilling seemed to be a completely new thing. After all, it was about previously unattainable depths - more than 7 kilometers. In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev approved this program, although he was guided by political motives rather than scientific ones. He did not want to lag behind the United States.

The well-known oilman, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolay Timofeev, headed the newly created laboratory at the Institute of Drilling Technology. He was instructed to substantiate the possibility of ultra-deep drilling in crystalline rocks - granites and gneisses. The research took 4 years, and in 1966 the experts issued a verdict - it is possible to drill, and not necessarily with the technology of tomorrow, the equipment that is already there is enough. The main problem is the heat at depth. According to calculations, as it penetrates into the rocks that make up the earth's crust, the temperature should increase by 1 degree every 33 meters. This means that at a depth of 10 km we should expect about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C. Drilling tools and devices will not withstand such heating. It was necessary to look for a place where the bowels are not so hot ...

The disappointment of the Swedes

In the late 1980s, in Sweden, in search of non-biological natural gas, a well was drilled to a depth of 6.8 km. Geologists decided to test the hypothesis that oil and gas are formed not from dead plants, as most scientists believe, but through mantle fluids - hot mixtures of gases and liquids. Fluids saturated with hydrocarbons seep from the mantle into the earth's crust and accumulate in large quantities. In those years, the idea of the origin of hydrocarbons not from the organic matter of sedimentary strata, but through deep fluids was a novelty, many wanted to test it. It follows from this idea that hydrocarbon reserves may contain not only sedimentary, but also volcanic and metamorphic rocks. That is why Sweden, mostly located on an ancient crystalline shield, undertook to make an experiment.

Silyan Ring crater with a diameter of 52 km was chosen for drilling. According to geophysical data, at a depth of 500-600 meters there were calcined granites - a possible seal for the underlying hydrocarbon reservoir. Measurements of the acceleration of gravity, the change in which can be used to judge the composition and density of rocks occurring in the bowels of the rocks, indicated the presence of highly porous rocks at a depth of 5 km - a possible reservoir of oil and gas. The drilling results disappointed scientists and investors who invested $60 million in these works. The passed strata did not contain commercial reserves of hydrocarbons, only manifestations of oil and gas of clearly biological origin from ancient bitumen. In any case, no one has been able to prove the opposite.

Tool for the underworld

Every 8-10 meters, a multi-kilometer column of pipes had to be lifted up. The descent and ascent took a total of 18 hours.

Diamond dreams of the Volga region

When small diamonds were found in the Nizhny Novgorod region, this puzzled geologists a lot. Of course, it was easiest to assume that the gems were brought by a glacier or river waters from somewhere in the north. But what if the local subsoil hides a kimberlite pipe - a reservoir of diamonds? It was decided to test this hypothesis in the late 1980s, when the scientific drilling program in Russia was gaining momentum. The location for drilling was chosen to the north of Nizhny Novgorod, in the center of a giant ring structure, which stands out well in the relief. Some considered it to be a meteorite crater, others - an explosion pipe or a volcano vent. Drilling was stopped when the Vorotilovskaya well reached a depth of 5,374 m, of which more than a kilometer was in the crystalline basement. Kimberlites were not found there, but in fairness it should be said that the dispute about the origin of this structure was also not put an end to. The facts extracted from the depths were equally suitable for the supporters of both hypotheses, in the end, each remained unconvinced. And the well was turned into a deep geolaboratory, which still operates today.

The insidiousness of the number "7"

In June 1990, SG-3 reached a depth of 12,262 m. They began to prepare the well for drilling up to 14 km, and then an accident occurred again - at the level of 8,550 m, the pipe string broke. The continuation of the work required a long preparation, updating equipment and new costs. In 1994, drilling of the Kola Superdeep was stopped. After 3 years, she got into the Guinness Book of Records and still remains unsurpassed. Now the well is a laboratory for studying deep bowels.

Secret subsoil

The veil of secrecy, probably, would have hung over the well until the very “perestroika” had it not been for the World Geological Congress in Moscow in 1984. They carefully prepared for such a major event in the scientific world, they even built a new building for the Ministry of Geology - many participants were waiting. But foreign colleagues were primarily interested in the Kola Superdeep! The Americans did not believe that we had it at all. The depth of the well by that time had reached 12,066 meters. There was no point in hiding the object anymore. In Moscow, the congress participants were treated to an exhibition of achievements in Russian geology, one of the stands was dedicated to the SG-3 well. Experts from all over the world looked in bewilderment at an ordinary drill head with worn carbide teeth. And this is how they drill the deepest well in the world? Incredible! A large delegation of geologists and journalists went to the village of Zapolyarny. Visitors were shown the drilling rig in action, and 33-meter pipe sections were taken out and disconnected. There were heaps of exactly the same drilling heads around, like the one that lay on the stand in Moscow.

From the Academy of Sciences, the delegation was received by a well-known geologist, Academician Vladimir Belousov. During a press conference from the audience, he was asked a question:
- What is the most important thing shown by the Kola well?
- Lord! The main thing is that it showed that we know nothing about the continental crust, - the scientist answered honestly.

Deep Surprise

Of course, they knew something about the earth's crust of the continents. The fact that the continents are composed of very ancient rocks, aged from 1.5 to 3 billion years, was not refuted even by the Kola well. However, the geological section compiled on the basis of the SG-3 core turned out to be exactly the opposite of what scientists imagined earlier. The first 7 kilometers were composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks: tuffs, basalts, breccias, sandstones, dolomites. Deeper lay the so-called Conrad section, after which the velocity of seismic waves in the rocks increased sharply, which was interpreted as the boundary between granites and basalts. This section was passed long ago, but the basalts of the lower layer of the earth's crust did not appear anywhere. On the contrary, granites and gneisses began.

The section of the Kola well refuted the two-layer model of the earth's crust and showed that the seismic sections in the bowels are not the boundaries of layers of rocks of different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the properties of the stone with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties of rocks, apparently, can change dramatically, so that granites in their physical characteristics become similar to basalts, and vice versa. But the “basalt” raised to the surface from a depth of 12 km immediately became granite, although it experienced a severe attack of “caisson disease” along the way - the core crumbled and disintegrated into flat plaques. The further the well went, the fewer quality samples fell into the hands of scientists.

The depth contained many surprises. Previously, it was natural to think that with distance from the earth's surface, with an increase in pressure, rocks become more monolithic, with a small number of cracks and pores. SG-3 convinced scientists otherwise. Starting from 9 kilometers, the strata turned out to be very porous and literally crammed with cracks through which aqueous solutions circulated. Later, this fact was confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. At depth it turned out to be much hotter than expected: by as much as 80 °! At the mark of 7 km the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it reached 230°C. In the samples of the Kola well, scientists discovered gold mineralization. Inclusions of the precious metal were found in ancient rocks at a depth of 9.5-10.5 km. However, the concentration of gold was too low to declare a deposit - an average of 37.7 mg per ton of rock, but sufficient to expect it in other similar places.

Warmth of the home planet

The high temperatures met by underground drillers led scientists to the idea of using this almost inexhaustible source of energy. For example, in young mountains (which are the Caucasus, the Alps, the Pamirs) at a depth of 4 km, the temperature of the bowels will reach 200°C. This natural battery can be made to work for you. It is necessary to drill two deep wells side by side and connect them with horizontal drifts. Then water is pumped into one well, and hot steam is extracted from the other, which will be used to heat the city or receive another type of energy. A serious problem for such enterprises can be caustic gases and fluids, which are not uncommon in seismically active areas. In 1988, the Americans had to complete the drilling of a well on the shelf of the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Alabama, reaching a depth of 7,399 m. The reason for this was the subsurface temperature, which reached 232 ° C, very high pressure and acid gas emissions. In those areas where there are deposits of hot groundwater, they can be extracted directly from wells from fairly deep horizons. Such projects are suitable for the regions of the Caucasus, the Pamirs, the Far East. However, the high cost of the work limits the depth of production to four kilometers.

Following the Russian trail

The demonstration of the Kola well in 1984 made a deep impression on the world community. Many countries have begun to prepare projects for scientific drilling on the continents. Such a program was approved in Germany in the late 1980s. The ultra-deep well KTB Hauptborung was drilled from 1990 to 1994, according to the plan, it was supposed to reach a depth of 12 km, but due to unpredictably high temperatures, it was only possible to reach the mark of 9.1 km. Thanks to the openness of data on drilling and scientific work, good technology and documentation, the KTV ultra-deep well remains one of the most famous in the world.

The location for drilling this well was chosen in the southeast of Bavaria, on the remains of an ancient mountain range, whose age is estimated at 300 million years. Geologists believed that somewhere here there is a zone of connection of two plates, which were once the shores of the ocean. According to scientists, over time, the upper part of the mountains was erased, exposing the remains of the ancient oceanic crust. Even deeper, ten kilometers from the surface, geophysicists discovered a large body with an abnormally high electrical conductivity. Its nature was also hoped to be clarified with the help of a well. But the main task was to reach a depth of 10 km in order to gain experience in ultra-deep drilling. Having studied the materials of the Kola SG-3, the German drillers decided to first go through a test well 4 km deep in order to get a more accurate idea of the working conditions in the bowels, test the equipment and take a core. At the end of the pilot work, much of the drilling and scientific equipment had to be redone, something to be created anew.

The main - ultra-deep - well KTV Hauptborung was laid just two hundred meters from the first one. For the work, they built an 83-meter tower and created the most powerful drilling rig at that time with a lifting capacity of 800 tons. Many drilling operations have been automated, primarily the mechanism for lowering and retrieving a pipe string. A self-guided vertical drilling system made it possible to make an almost sheer shaft. Theoretically, with such equipment it was possible to drill to a depth of 12 kilometers. But the reality, as always, turned out to be more complicated, and the plans of scientists did not come true.

Problems at the KTV well began after a depth of 7 km, repeating much of the fate of the Kola Superdeep. At first, it is believed that due to the high temperature, the vertical drilling system broke down and the shaft went sideways. At the end of the work, the bottomhole deviated from the vertical by 300 m. Then, more complicated accidents began - a break in the drill string. As well as on Kolskaya, new shafts had to be drilled. The narrowing of the well caused certain difficulties - at the top its diameter was 71 cm, at the bottom - 16.5 cm.

It cannot be said that the scientific results of the KTV Hauptborung captured the imagination of scientists. At depth, amphibolites and gneisses, ancient metamorphic rocks, were mainly deposited. The zone of convergence of the ocean and the remains of the oceanic crust were not found anywhere. Perhaps they are in another place, there is also a small crystalline massif, uplifted to a height of 10 km. A graphite deposit was discovered a kilometer from the surface.

In 1996, the KTV well, which cost the German budget $338 million, came under the patronage of the Research Center for Geology in Potsdam, and it was turned into a laboratory for deep subsurface observations and a tourist attraction.

Why isn't the moon made of cast iron?

“Because there would not be enough cast iron for the Moon” - probably, this is how the opponents of the hypothesis that the Moon broke away from the Earth could answer its supporters. This hypothesis, however, did not arise from scratch, and scientists are considering several regions of the Earth, from where a piece of the planet the size of the moon could be knocked out. The Kola well offered its own version. In the 1970s, Soviet stations delivered several hundred grams of lunar soil to Earth. The substance was divided among the leading scientific centers of the country in order to conduct independent analyzes. A tiny sample also went to the Kola Science Center. Scientists from all over the region came to take a look at the curiosity, including employees of the well, which later became the deepest in the world. Is it a joke? Touch unearthly dust, look at it through a microscope. Later, experts investigated the lunar soil and published a monograph on this subject. By that time, the well in Zapolyarny had reached a decent depth, and the rocks lifted from the borehole were described in detail. And what? Samples of lunar soil, which the drillers once looked with awe, turned out to be one to one diabases from their well, from a depth of 3 km. Immediately, a hypothesis arose that the Moon broke away only from the Kola Peninsula about 1.5 billion years ago - such is the age of diabases. Although the question involuntarily arose - what was the size of this peninsula then? ..

To drill or not to drill?

The record of the Kola well is still unsurpassed, although it is certainly possible to go 14 or even 15 km deep into the Earth. However, it is unlikely that such a single effort will provide fundamentally new knowledge about the earth's crust, while ultra-deep drilling is a very expensive business. The times when it was used to test a variety of hypotheses are long gone. Wells deeper than 6-7 km for purely scientific purposes have almost ceased to be drilled. For example, only two objects of this kind remained in Russia - the Ural SG-4 and the En-Yakhinskaya well in Western Siberia. They are run by the state enterprise NPC Nedra, located in Yaroslavl. There are so many ultra-deep and deep wells drilled in the world that scientists do not have time to analyze the information. In recent years, geologists have been striving to study and generalize the facts obtained from great depths. Having learned to drill to great depths, people now want to better master the horizon available to them, to concentrate their efforts on practical tasks that will be useful right now. So in Russia, having completed the program of scientific drilling, having drilled all 12 planned ultra-deep wells, they are now working on a system for the entire state, in which geophysical data obtained by means of "transmission" of the subsoil with seismic waves will be linked with information obtained by ultra-deep drilling. Without wells, sections of the earth's crust built by geophysicists are just models. In order for specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately.

In the United States, they continue to engage in a program of deep drilling of the ocean floor and are conducting several interesting projects in zones of volcanic and tectonic activity in the earth's crust. So, in the Hawaiian Islands, researchers hoped to study the underground life of the volcano and get closer to the mantle tongue - the plume, which is believed to have given rise to these islands. The well at the foot of the Mauna Kea volcano was planned to be drilled to a depth of 4.5 km, but due to the enormous temperatures, only 3 km could be mastered. Another project is a deep observatory on the San Andreas Fault. Drilling of the well through this largest fault in the North American continent began in June 2004 and covered 2 out of 3 planned kilometers. In the deep laboratory, they intend to study the origin of earthquakes, which, perhaps, will make it possible to better understand the nature of these natural disasters and make their forecast.

While current ultra-deep drilling programs are no longer as ambitious as they used to be, they clearly have a bright future ahead of them. The day is not far off when the turn of great depths will come - there they will search for and discover new deposits of minerals. Already, oil and gas production in the United States from depths of 6-7 km is becoming commonplace. In the future, Russia will also have to pump hydrocarbons from such levels. As the Tyumen superdeep well showed, there are sedimentary rock strata promising for gas deposits 7 kilometers from the surface.

It is not for nothing that ultra-deep drilling is compared with the conquest of space. Such programs, on a global scale, incorporating all the best that humanity currently has, give impetus to the development of many industries, technology, and ultimately pave the way for a new breakthrough in science.

Devilish machinations

Once the Kola Superdeep was at the center of a global scandal. One fine morning in 1989, the director of the well, David Guberman, received a phone call from the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper, the secretary of the regional committee, and a host of other people. Everyone wanted to know about the devil that the drillers allegedly raised from the bowels, as reported by some newspapers and radio stations around the world. The director was taken aback, and - it was from what! "Scientists have discovered hell", "Satan has escaped from hell" - read the headlines. As reported in the press, geologists working very far in Siberia, and maybe in Alaska or even the Kola Peninsula (journalists had no consensus on this matter), were drilling at a depth of 14.4 km, when suddenly the drill began to dangle strongly from side to side. This means that there is a big hole below, the scientists thought, apparently, the center of the planet is empty. Sensors lowered into the depths showed a temperature of 2,000 ° C, and super-sensitive microphones sounded ... the screams of millions of suffering souls. As a result, drilling was stopped due to fears of releasing infernal forces to the surface. Of course, Soviet scientists refuted this journalistic "duck", but the echoes of that old story wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when stories about hell had already been forgotten, employees of the Kola superdeep visited Australia with lectures. They were invited to a reception by the Governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady, who greeted the Russian delegation with the question: “What the hell did you raise from there?”

The deepest wells in the world

1. Aralsor SG-1, Caspian lowland, 1962-1971, depth - 6.8 km. Search for oil and gas.
2. Biikzhalskaya SG-2, Caspian lowland, 1962-1971, depth - 6.2 km. Search for oil and gas.
3. Kola SG-3, 1970-1994, depth - 12,262 m. Design depth - 15 km.
4. Saatlinskaya, Azerbaijan, 1977-1990, depth - 8324 m. Design depth - 11 km.
5. Kolvinskaya, Arkhangelsk region, 1961, depth - 7,057 m.
6. Muruntau SG-10, Uzbekistan, 1984, depth -
3 km. Design depth - 7 km. Search for gold.
7. Timan-Pechora SG-5, North-East of Russia, 1984-1993, depth - 6904 m, design depth - 7 km.
8. Tyumenskaya SG-6, Western Siberia, 1987-1996, depth - 7,502 m. Design depth - 8 km. Search for oil and gas.
9. Novo-Elkhovskaya, Tatarstan, 1988, depth - 5,881 m.
10. Vorotilovskaya well, Volga region, 1989-1992, depth - 5374 m. Search for diamonds, study of the Puchezh-Katunkka astroblem.
11. Krivorozhskaya SG-8, Ukraine, 1984-1993, depth - 5382 m. Design depth - 12 km. Search for ferruginous quartzites.

Ural SG-4, Middle Urals. Founded in 1985. Design depth - 15,000 m. Current depth - 6,100 m. Search for copper ores, study of the structure of the Urals. En-Yakhtinskaya SG-7, Western Siberia. Design depth - 7,500 m. Current depth - 6,900 m. Oil and gas exploration.

Wells for oil and gas

early 70s
University, USA, depth - 8,686 m.
Baden Unit, USA, depth - 9,159 m.
Bertha Rogers, USA, depth - 9,583 m.

80s
Zisterdorf, Austria, depth 8,553 m.
Siljan Ring, Sweden, depth - 6.8 km.
Bighorn, USA, Wyoming, depth - 7,583 m.
KTV Hauptbohrung, Germany, 1990-1994, depth -
9,100 m. Design depth - 10 km. Scientific drilling.

At the edge of life

At the Limits of Life Extremophilic Bacteria Found in Rocks Excavated from a Depth of Kilometers DOSSIER One of the most amazing discoveries that scientists have made by drilling is the presence of life deep underground. And although this life is represented only by bacteria, its limits extend to incredible depths. Bacteria are ubiquitous. They mastered the underworld, it would seem, completely unsuitable for existence. Huge pressures, high temperatures, lack of oxygen and living space - nothing could become an obstacle to the spread of life. According to some estimates, the mass of microorganisms living underground can exceed the mass of all living creatures that inhabit the surface of our planet.

As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the American scientist Edson Bastin discovered bacteria in water from an oil-bearing horizon from a depth of several hundred meters. The microorganisms living there did not need oxygen and sunlight, they fed on organic compounds of oil. Bastin suggested that these bacteria have been living in isolation from the surface for 300 million years - since the oil field was formed. But his bold hypothesis remained unclaimed, they simply did not believe in it. Then it was believed that life is just a thin film on the surface of the planet.

Interest in deep life forms can be quite practical. In the 1980s, the US Department of Energy was looking for safe methods to dispose of radioactive waste. For these purposes, it was supposed to use mines in impenetrable rocks, where bacteria that feed on radionuclides live. In 1987, deep drilling of several wells began in South Carolina. From a depth of half a kilometer, scientists took samples, observing all kinds of precautions so as not to bring bacteria and air from the surface of the Earth. The samples were studied by several independent laboratories, their results were positive: the so-called anaerobic bacteria lived in the deep layers, which do not need oxygen access.

The bacteria were also found in the rocks of a gold mine in South Africa at a depth of 2.8 km, where the temperature was 60°C. They also live deep under the bottom of the oceans at temperatures above 100 °. As the Kola super-deep well showed, there are conditions for the habitation of microorganisms even at a depth of more than 12 km, since the rocks turned out to be quite porous, saturated with aqueous solutions, and where there is water, life is possible.

Microbiologists also found colonies of bacteria in an ultra-deep well that opened the Siljan Ring crater in Sweden. It is curious that microorganisms lived in ancient granites. Although these were very dense rocks under great pressure, groundwater circulated through a system of micropores and cracks. The rock mass at a depth of 5.5-6.7 km became a real sensation. It was saturated with a paste of oil with magnetite crystals. One possible explanation for this phenomenon was given by the American geologist Thomas Gold, author of The Deep Hot Biosphere. Gold suggested that magnetite-oil paste is nothing more than a waste product of bacteria that feed on methane coming from the mantle.

As studies show, bacteria are content with truly Spartan conditions. The limits of their endurance remain a mystery, but it seems that the temperature of the interior still sets the lower limit for the habitat of bacteria. They can multiply at 110°C and withstand, albeit for a short time, temperatures of 140°C. If we consider that on the continents the temperature increases by 20-25 ° with each kilometer, then living communities can be found up to a depth of 4 km. Under the ocean floor, the temperature does not rise as quickly, and the lower limit of life can lie at a depth of 7 km.

This means that life has a colossal margin of safety. Consequently, the Earth's biosphere cannot be completely destroyed even in the event of the most serious cataclysms, and, probably, on planets devoid of an atmosphere and hydrosphere, microorganisms may well exist in the depths.

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