Scientists Dug the Deepest Hole But Something Broke Their Drill

[Music] ladies and gentlemen your attention please all right just listen up the guinness world records award for the deepest human invasion into the earth's crust goes to the cola super deep borehole its depth is 7.4 miles you can find it in the icy part of russia where the winter temperature of minus 40 degrees fahrenheit is a common thing while that's chilling global scientists started to dig it in the 1970s the grand plan was to reach a depth of 9.3 miles it was a purely scientific project to study the earth's crust and maybe get to the hot mantle well when it's so cold outside it kind of makes sense up to the depth of 4.3 miles the drill easily coped with granite rock then denser layers came and broke the drill the scientists had to change the drilling pattern in the end it resembled a tree with many branches the deeper it went the hotter it became the temperature went up to 350 degrees the equipment was constantly out of order and work was stopped completely in 1992. if you see this legendary place with your own eyes you'd hardly realize there's an abyss right beneath your feet the borehole looks like a rather small and unambitious hole in the ground the place is now abandoned overgrown with moss and rust it has its fair share of myths surrounding it too one of them says people hear strange sounds like moans and screams from the death in reality of course none of this is true at the time many countries were engaged in the study of the earth's crust for example germany they duly noted the experience of the cola borehole and made a supertech drill that could withstand extreme temperatures a location was chosen in bavaria at the junction of two tectonic plates in the past they were the shores of an ancient ocean in the early 90s a group of researchers began drilling a well there but already at a depth of four miles the earth fought back it deflected the drill from the vertical and then the temperature made a surprise spike to 520 degrees all these problems forced scientists to stop at a depth of 5.6 miles in 1977 a company in austria started drilling a well at a site with plentiful resources or so they thought they did find large gas reserves but there was an unexpected problem as the drill entered the chamber the well collapsed they tried again and made a new even bigger borehole that went as deep as 5.3 miles but ironically they weren't able to drill into the gas chamber again in sweden expectations from drilling weren't met either at the site of a huge crater 30 miles in diameter they started the search for gas and oil it's the largest crater in europe which must have appeared because of a meteorite the well went deep but unfortunately nothing of interest was found at four miles down the drilling stopped one of the deepest oil wells in the world is bertha rogers in oklahoma its depth is almost six miles in 1974 the lone star company achieved such a stunning result in just over 500 days for five years it was the deepest borehole in the world until the cola super deep was drilled bertha rogers could probably have gone even deeper but the drill suddenly struck a molten sulfur deposit it grew solid around the drill string breaking the rig if you can't get to the earth's mantle from the ground do it from the water project moho was just about that it got its name from moho the threshold between crust and mantle and well a hole you know moho well anyway the project was launched in the 1960s and was overseen by the u.s national science foundation the crust on the ocean floor is thinner than on land and the mantle is closer scientists had hope that a three-mile deep underwater borehole would bring them there they chose a location in the pacific ocean where the bottom was at a depth of about two miles there were two phases planned for the project and the first was a success a total of five wells were drilled each not exceeding 600 feet in depth unfortunately the second phase never happened too many problems were involved so apparently there ain't no mojo um holes today underwater wells are commonplace their main purpose is extraction of oil and gas the eva 4000 american drilling platform is located in the gulf of mexico this huge structure rises above the water at a height of a 20-story building the platform moves around looking for oil at depths of over six thousand feet and when it finds a good spot it's capable of drilling up to six miles into the seabed now let's move to africa here at the very south of the continent there's a huge quarry the kimberley diamond mod now it's easy to drill through the ground when you have the best equipment but this hole was literally dug by hand about 50 000 workers dug it tirelessly in the late 19 and early 20th centuries using ordinary shovels and no they hardly wanted to get to the opposite side of the earth they were attracted by the enchanting brilliance of diamonds one of the most famous precious stones tiffany weighing 128.5 carats was found in the kimberley mine the depth of the hole reached 790 feet just imagine how difficult it was to return from work it was like climbing 66 floors on foot when the work stopped the bottom of the pit was partially filled with soil and then water flooded the place today it's a popular site among tourists and surely each of them secretly hopes to find a diamond there with the industrial boom oil became even more popular than diamonds and the oil wells around the world are getting deeper for example in 2008 qatar drilled the longest oil well at that time el shahid it was 7.6 miles long and it only took them a little over a month the vertical part of the shaft reaches 6.7 miles stretched up instead of down the shaft would reach the height of commercial airplane flights the record was broken in 2012 by the z44 chavo oil well when they measured its length the new hole beat the one in qatar by about 300 feet just for a clearer picture either of these two oil wells would fit almost 15 burj khalifa's or 40 eiffel towers moving on to canada and high up into the sky to look at it from space see those two huge holes if you don't know those are diamond mining sites you might think that an alien invasion happened while you slept right through this enormous place is on the island of lac de gras not far from the arctic circle this is a whole city with industrial and administrative buildings a boiler house living quarters for workers and even an airstrip in 2018 the largest diamond in north america was found here it weighed 552 carats apart from diamonds and oil the bowels of the earth have a lot of other useful stuff one example is copper let's go to utah and see the giant bingham canyon mine copper has been mined here for over a century the width of this quarry reaches 2.5 miles and it goes half a mile down just imagine how breathtaking a paragliding flight would be over this powerful structure but the greatest treasure of the planet is of course fresh water and to get to it people would dig as deep as they have to the deepest water well in the world is found in great britain it was dug by hand in the 19th century people just had to keep on digging because they couldn't get to water and as a result they reached almost 1300 feet when the water finally gushed from under the ground the workers barely managed to escape from the well many of us spend a huge part of our life under the ground yeah i mean the subway the deepest underground station in the world is in kiev ukraine it takes over five minutes for the escalator to lower you to the platform after all you're traveling nearly 350 feet down sometimes nature decides to dig something deep on its own most likely the mariana trench is the deepest point in the ocean its bottom called the challenger deep is 6.8 miles below sea level sunlight never gets there the pressure down below is more than a thousand times higher than on the surface if you decide to dive to the bottom you'll spend four hours of your time and a whole lot of money on the necessary equipment scientists have even found mountains there by the way if everest was moved to the bottom of the mariana trench we wouldn't be able to see its top on the surface a little riddle can you dig water the answer is yes if it's in the form of ice the urine observatory in antarctica made it by digging bore holes up to one and a half miles deep using hot water optical detector filaments pass through them they capture elementary particles neurons in fact this is a telescope that's directed not upwards but downwards into the eyes but that's a completely different story

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

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Keywords: eiffel tower, deepest hole ever dug, project mohole, burj khalifa, antarctica, largest diamond, deepest hole on earth, how deep can you dig on the beach, kola superdeep borehole, geology, earth’s crust, bright side, the largest crater, hole in the bottom of the ocean, how deep can you dig in the earth, deepest human-made hole, meteorite, deepest oil wells, diamond mines, challenger deep, deepest things in the world, deepest hole in the world, mariana trench, brightside, tiffany

Id: lVQ8X4sQwiw

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020