Inside the desert taklimakan -the largest of China– one of the most impressive excavations of the last decade. It’s about a well that already has 6 thousand meters deep in the Earth crustand is expected to reach a maximum of 11,100.
The specialists began drilling with scientific purposessince they will try to identify resources minerals and energetics, at the same time that it will help to assess the risks of environmental disasterssuch as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
This project represents the further excavation in Chinese history. So far, the deepest well dug by man remains the Kola super-deep well near Murmansk in the russian arcticwhich was started by the Soviet Union in 1970 and which reached a depth of 12,262 meters.
How is the exploration of the earth’s crust in China
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to that of a large truck driving on two fine steel cables,” he stated. sun jingshengscientist of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
According to what they reported, the well will penetrate more than 10 geographic strataand will reach the cretaceous outline of the earth’s crust, with rocks dating from about 145 million years. During the drilling process, it will penetrate the earth’s crust by means of drill bits and drill pipes that weigh more than 2,000 tons.
The tarim basinin the sector where the study is being carried out, is one of the areas more difficult to explore due to its harsh terrestrial environment and its complicated underground conditions.
Other expeditions to the center of the Earth
A group of scientists conducted an experiment on an underwater mountain in the middle of the sea. Atlantic Oceanwhere they drilled almost a mile below the ocean floor and obtained an unprecedented scientific treasure: fragments of the Earth’s rocky mantle.
This impressive achievement excited everyone geoscientistswho for decades sought to cross thousands of kilometers of the Earth’s crust to obtain samples of the Earth’s mantle, which It is a layer between the Earth’s crust and the core.. The mantle extends from about 35 kilometers below the ocean surface to about 2,900 kilometers deep.
The well, which received the name of U1601Cbegan to be drilled last May 1 and ended June 2. reached up 1.3 km deep under the seabed. From this extraction, a large number of dark stone pipes were obtained and extracted “peridotite”which is the main stone that abounds in this place on earth, which is rich in iron and magnesium.
Source: Ambito
