The deepest well on earth is to hear the heartbeat of the Earth. underground unearthly depth of the deepest well

The USSR is a country that surprised the world with many projects, grandiose both in scale and in cost. One of these projects was called "Kola superdeep well" (SG-3). Its implementation began in the Murmansk region, 10 km west of the city of Zapolyarny.

Scientists wanted to learn more about the depths of the earth, and “wipe the nose” of the American scientists who abandoned their Mohol project due to lack of funds. To the question about what is the deepest well in the world, Soviet geologists dreamed of proudly answering: ours!

We will talk in detail about whether such an ambitious idea was a success and what fate awaited the Kola well in this article.

Why did the USSR need a “journey to the center of the Earth”

Back in the 50s of the twentieth century, most of the material about the structure of the Earth was theoretical. Everything changed in the early 60s and 70s, when the United States and the Soviet Union began a new version of the “space race” - a race to the center of the Earth, so to speak.

The Kola superdeep well was a unique project funded by the USSR and then Russia from 1970 to 1995. It was not drilled for the extraction of “black gold” or “blue fuel”, but purely for scientific research purposes.

• First of all, Soviet scientists were interested in whether the assumption about the structure of the lower (granite and basalt) layers of the earth's crust would be confirmed.
• They also wanted to find and explore the boundaries between these layers and the mantle - one of the “engines” that ensures the constant evolution of the planet.
• At that time, geologists and geophysicists had only indirect evidence of what was happening in the earth's crust, and ultra-deep boreholes were needed to better understand the processes underlying geology. Moreover, the most reliable way is direct observation.

The drilling site was chosen in the northeastern part of the Baltic shield. There are little-studied igneous rocks there that are believed to be three billion years old. And on the territory of the Kola Peninsula there is the Pechenga structure, shaped like a bowl. There are deposits of copper and nickel there. One of the scientists’ tasks was to study the process of ore formation.

Even to this day, the information collected through this project is still being analyzed and interpreted.

Features of drilling an ultra-deep well

For the first four years, while excavation was going on to a depth of 7263 meters, a standard drilling rig called “Uralmash-4E” was used. But then her capabilities began to fall short.

Therefore, the researchers decided to use the powerful Uralmash-15000 installation with a 46-meter turbo drill. It rotated due to the pressure of the drilling fluid.

The Uralmash-15000 installation was designed so that samples of the mined rock were collected in a core receiver - a pipe passing through all sections of the drill. The crushed rock reached the surface along with the drilling fluid. This way, geologists received the latest information about the composition of the well as the drilling rig went deeper and deeper down.

As a result, several boreholes were drilled, which branched out from one central well. The deepest branch was named SG-3.

As one of the scientists on the Kola Exploration Exploration team said: “Every time we start drilling, we find the unexpected. It's exciting and disturbing at the same time."

Granite, granite everywhere

The first surprise that the drillers encountered was the absence of the so-called basalt layer at a depth of about 7 km. Previously, the most up-to-date geological information about the deeper parts of the Earth's crust came from the analysis of seismic waves. And based on it, scientists expected to find a granite layer, and as they deepened, a basalt layer. But, to their great surprise, when they moved deeper into the bowels of the Earth, they found more granite there, but did not reach the basalt layer at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer.

This is extremely important, as it is connected with the theory of the layer-by-layer structure of the Earth. And this, in turn, is associated with ideas about how minerals arise and are located.

The Kola superdeep well is a source of not only valuable knowledge, but also a terrible urban legend.

Having reached a depth of 14.5 thousand meters, the drillers allegedly discovered voids. Having lowered equipment capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures there, they found that the temperature in the voids reaches 1100 degrees Celsius. And the microphone, before melting, recorded 17 seconds of audio, which was immediately dubbed the “sounds of hell.” These were the cries of damned souls.

The first appearance of this story was recorded in 1989, and its first large-scale publication took place on the American television network Trinity Broadcasting Network. And she borrowed material from a Finnish Christian publication called Ammennusastia.

The story was then widely reprinted in small Christian publications, newsletters, etc., but received virtually no coverage from the mainstream media. Some evangelists cited this incident as evidence of the existence of a physical hell.

• People familiar with the operating principles of acoustic well exploration tools only laughed at this story. After all, in this case, acoustic logging probes are used, which catch the wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations.
• Maximum depth of SG-3 - 12,262 meters. This is deeper than even the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep (10,994 meters).
• The highest temperature in it did not rise above 220 C.

• And one more important fact: it is unlikely that a microphone or drilling equipment could withstand hellish heat above a thousand degrees.

In 1992, the American newspaper Weekly World News published an alternative version of the story, which took place in Alaska, where 13 miners were killed after Satan broke out of Hell.

If you are interested in this legend, then you can easily find videos with relevant investigations on Youtube. Just don't take them too seriously, some (if not all) of the audio purporting to be the screams of sufferers in the Underworld is taken from the 1972 film Baron Blood.

What scientists found at the bottom of the Kola superdeep well

• Firstly, water was discovered at a depth of 9 km. It was believed that it simply should not exist at this depth - and yet it was there. We now understand that even deep-lying granite in the ground can develop cracks that fill with water. Technically speaking, water is simply hydrogen and oxygen atoms forced out by enormous pressure caused by depth and trapped in layers of rock.

• Second, the researchers reported recovering mud that was "boiling with hydrogen." Such a large amount of hydrogen at great depths was a completely unexpected phenomenon.
• Thirdly, the bottom of the Kola well turned out to be incredibly hot - 220°C.
• Without a doubt, the biggest surprise was the discovery of life. At depths of over 6,000 meters, microscopic plankton fossils have been discovered that have been there for three billion years. In total, about 24 ancient species of microorganisms were discovered that somehow survived the extreme pressure and high temperatures below the earth's surface. This has raised many questions about the potential survival of life forms at great depths. Modern research has shown that life can exist even in the oceanic crust, but at the time the discovery of these fossils came as a shock.

Despite all the efforts of the drillers and decades of hard work, the Kola superdeep well was only 0.18% of the way to the center of the Earth. Scientists believe that the distance to it is about 6,400 kilometers.

Abandoned but not forgotten

Currently there are no personnel or equipment on SG-3. This is one of . And only a rusty hatch in the ground reminds of the grandiose project, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the deepest human invasion into the planet’s crust.

The project was closed in 1995 due to (you guessed it) lack of funding. Even earlier, in 1992, drilling work in the well was curtailed, as geologists were faced with higher than expected temperatures - 220 degrees. Heat causes damage to equipment. And the higher the temperature, the more difficult it is to drill. It's like trying to create and hold a hole in the center of a pot of hot soup.

By 2008, the research and production center operating at the well was completely abolished. And all drilling and research equipment was disposed of.

Results of the work

The valiant efforts of the Kola GRE participants lasted several decades. However, the final goal - the 15 thousand meters mark - was never achieved. But the work done in the USSR and then in Russia provided a wealth of information about what lies just below the earth's surface, and it remains scientifically useful.

• Unique equipment and ultra-deep drilling technology were developed and successfully tested.
• Valuable information was obtained about what rocks are made of and what properties they have at different depths.
• At a depth of 1.6-1.8 km, copper-nickel deposits of industrial importance were found.
• The theoretical picture expected at 5000 meters was not confirmed. No basalts were found either in this or in the deeper sections of the well. But unexpectedly they discovered not very strong rocks called granite gneisses.
• Gold was found in the interval from 9 to 12 thousand meters. However, they did not mine it from such a depth - it was unprofitable.

• Changes were made to the theories about the thermal regime of the earth's interior.
• It turned out that the origin of 50% of the heat flow is associated with the decay of radioactive substances.

SG-3 revealed many secrets to geologists. And at the same time it raised many questions that still remain unanswered. Perhaps some of them will be produced during the operation of other ultra-deep wells.

The deepest wells on Earth (table)

Vladimir Khomutko

Reading time: 4 minutes

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Where is the deepest oil well?

Man has long dreamed of not only flying into space, but also penetrating deep into his native planet. For a long time, this dream remained unrealizable, since existing technologies did not allow us to go any significantly deeper into the earth’s crust.

In the thirteenth century, the depth of the wells that the Chinese dug reached a fantastic 1,200 meters for that time, and starting in the thirties of the last century, with the advent of drilling rigs, people in Europe began to drill three-kilometer-long pits. However, all this, so to speak, was only shallow scratches on the earth's surface.

The idea to drill through the upper shell of the earth into a global project took shape in the 60s of the twentieth century. Previously, all assumptions about the structure of the earth's mantle were based on data from seismic activity and other indirect factors. However, the only way to look into the bowels of the Earth in the literal sense of the word was to drill deep wells.

Hundreds of wells drilled for these purposes, both on land and in the ocean, have provided numerous data that help answer a lot of questions about the structure of our planet. However, now ultra-deep workings pursue not only scientific, but also purely practical goals. Next, we look at the deepest wells ever drilled in the world.

This well, 8,553 meters deep, was drilled in 1977 in the area where the Vienna oil and gas province is located. Small oil deposits were discovered in it, and the idea arose to look deeper. At a depth of 7,544 meters, experts found unrecoverable gas reserves, after which the well suddenly collapsed. The OMV company decided to drill a second one, but despite its great depth, the miners were unable to find any minerals.

Austrian well Zistersdorf

Federal Republic of Germany – Hauptbohrung

German specialists were inspired to organize this deep mining operation by the famous Kola superdeep well. In those days, many countries in Europe and the world began to develop their own deep drilling projects. Among them, the Hauptborung project stood out, which was implemented over four years - from 1990 to 1994 in Germany. Despite its relatively small depth (compared to the wells described below) - 9,101 meters, this project has become widely known worldwide due to open access to the obtained geological and drilling data.

United States of America – Baden Unit

The well, 9,159 meters deep, was drilled by the American company Lone Star in the vicinity of the town of Anadarko (USA). Development began in 1970 and continued for 545 days. The cost of its construction was six million dollars, and in terms of materials, 150 diamond bits and 1,700 tons of cement were used.

USA – Bertha Rogers

This mine was also created in the state of Oklahoma in the area of ​​the Anadarko oil and gas province in Oklahoma. Work began in 1974 and lasted 502 days. The drilling was also carried out by the same company as in the previous example. Having passed 9,583 meters, the miners came across a deposit of molten sulfur and were forced to stop work.

This well in the Guinness Book of Records is called “the deepest intrusion into the Earth’s crust made by man.” In May 1970, in the vicinity of the lake with the hair-raising name Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi, the construction of this grandiose mine began. Initially we wanted to walk 15 kilometers, but due to too high temperatures we stopped at 12,262 meters. Currently, the Kola Superdeep Pipeline is mothballed.

Qatar – BD-04A

Drilled in an oil field called Al-Shaheen for the purpose of geological exploration.

The total depth was 12,289 meters, and the 12-kilometer mark was passed in just 36 days! It was seven years ago.

Russian Federation – OP-11

Since 2003, a whole series of ultra-deep drilling works began as part of the Sakhalin-1 project.

In 2011, Exxon Neftegas drilled the deepest oil well in the world - 12,245 meters - in just 60 days.

It happened at a field called Odoptu.

However, the records didn't end there.

O-14 is a production well in the world that has no analogues in terms of the total length of the trunk - 13,500 meters, as well as the longest horizontal well - 12,033 meters.

Its development was carried out by the Russian company NK Rosneft, part of the consortium of the Sakhalin-1 project. This well was developed in a field called Chayvo. The state-of-the-art Orlan drilling platform was used to drill it.

We also note the depth along the shaft of the well constructed in 2013 as part of the same project under number Z-43, the value of which reached 12,450 meters. In the same year, this record was broken at the Chayvinskoye field - the length of the Z-42 shaft reached 12,700 meters, and the length of the horizontal section - 11,739 meters.

In 2014, the excavation of the Z-40 well (offshore Chayvo field) was completed, which until O-14 was the longest well in the world - 13,000 meters, and also had the longest horizontal section - 12,130 m.

In other words, to date, 8 of the 10 longest wells in the world are located in the fields of the Sakhalin-1 project.

Kola superdeep well

The field, called Chayvo, is one of three being developed by the consortium on Sakhalin. It is located in the northeast of the coast of Sakhalin Island. The depth of the seabed in this area varies from 14 to 30 m. The field was put into operation back in 2005.

In general, the international shelf project Sakhalin-1 unites the interests of several large global corporations. It includes three fields located on the offshore shelf Odoptu, Chayvo and Arkutun-Dagi. According to experts, the total available hydrocarbon reserves here are about 236 million tons of oil and almost 487 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The Chayvo field was put into operation (as we said above) in 2005, the Odoptu field in 2010, and at the very beginning of 2015 the development of the Arkutun-Dagi field began.

"Dr. Huberman, what the hell did you dig up down there?" - a remark from the audience interrupted the report of a Russian scientist at a UNESCO meeting in Australia. A couple of weeks earlier, in April 1995, a wave of reports about a mysterious accident at the Kola superdeep well swept across the world.

Allegedly, on approaching the 13th kilometer, the instruments recorded a strange noise coming from the bowels of the planet - the yellow newspapers unanimously assured that only the cries of sinners from the underworld could sound like that. A few seconds after the terrible sound appeared, an explosion occurred...

Space under your feet

In the late 70s - early 80s, getting a job at the Kola Superdeep Well, as residents of the village of Zapolyarny in the Murmansk Region affectionately call the well, was more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Out of hundreds of applicants, one or two were chosen. Along with the employment order, the lucky ones received a separate apartment and a salary equal to double or triple the salary of Moscow professors. There were 16 research laboratories operating at the well simultaneously, each the size of an average factory. Only the Germans dug the earth with such tenacity, but, as the Guinness Book of Records testifies, the deepest German well is almost half as long as ours.

Distant galaxies have been studied by humanity much better than what is located under the earth’s crust a few kilometers away from us. The Kola Superdeep is a kind of telescope into the mysterious inner world of the planet.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that the Earth consists of a crust, mantle and core. At the same time, no one could really say where one layer ends and the next begins. Scientists did not even know what these layers actually consist of. Some 40 years ago they were sure that the granite layer begins at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to 3 kilometers, and then there are basalts. The mantle was expected to be encountered at a depth of 15–18 kilometers. In reality, everything turned out completely different. And although school textbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists from the Kola Superdeep Site have proven that this is not so.

Baltic shield

Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 60s in several countries at once. They tried to drill wells in places where the crust should have been thinner - the goal was to reach the mantle. For example, the Americans drilled in the area of ​​the island of Maui, Hawaii, where, according to seismic studies, ancient rocks emerge under the ocean floor and the mantle is located at a depth of approximately 5 kilometers under a four-kilometer layer of water. Alas, not a single ocean drilling site has penetrated deeper than 3 kilometers.

In general, almost all projects of ultra-deep wells mysteriously ended at a depth of three kilometers. It was at this moment that something strange began to happen to the drills: either they found themselves in unexpected super-hot areas, or as if they were being bitten off by some unprecedented monster. Only 5 wells broke through deeper than 3 kilometers, 4 of which were Soviet. And only the Kola Superdeep was destined to overcome the 7-kilometer mark.

Initial domestic projects also involved underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Lake Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology that it was necessary to create a well on the continent. Although it would take much longer to drill, he believed, the well would be much more valuable from a scientific point of view, because it was in the thickness of the continental plates that the most significant movements of earth rocks took place in prehistoric times. The drilling point was not chosen on the Kola Peninsula by chance. The peninsula is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which is composed of the most ancient rocks known to mankind.

A multi-kilometer section of the layers of the Baltic Shield is a visual history of the planet over the past 3 billion years.

Conqueror of the Depths

The appearance of the Kola drilling rig can disappoint the average person. The well is not like the mine that our imagination pictures. There are no descents underground, only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters goes into the thickness. The imaginary section of the Kola superdeep well looks like a tiny needle piercing the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors, located at the end of a needle, is raised and lowered over several days. You can’t go faster: the strongest composite cable can break under its own weight.

What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upward with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the underground can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below really look like screams and howls. To this we can add a long list of accidents that plagued the Kola Superdeep when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers. Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures at which it can melt are comparable to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. One day, it was as if the cable had been pulled from below and was torn off. Subsequently, when they drilled in the same place, no remains of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents still remains a mystery. However, they were not the reason for stopping drilling in the Baltic Shield.

12,226 meters of discoveries and a little devilry

“We have the deepest hole in the world - so we must use it!” - David Guberman, the permanent director of the Kola Superdeep Research and Production Center, exclaims bitterly. In the first 30 years of the Kola Superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,226 meters. But since 1995, drilling has been stopped: there was no one to finance the project. What is allocated within the framework of UNESCO's scientific programs is only enough to maintain the drilling station in working condition and study previously extracted rock samples.

Huberman recalls with regret how many scientific discoveries took place at the Kola Superdeep. Literally every meter was a revelation. The well showed that almost all of our previous knowledge about the structure of the earth's crust is incorrect. It turned out that the Earth is not at all like a layer cake. “Up to 4 kilometers everything went according to theory, and then the end of the world began,” says Huberman. Theorists promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield would remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers.

Accordingly, it will be possible to dig a well up to almost 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle. But already at 5 kilometers the ambient temperature exceeded 70 ºC, at seven - over 120 ºC, and at a depth of 12 it was hotter than 220 ºC - 100 ºC higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters.

At school we were taught: there are young rocks, granites, basalts, mantle and core. But the granites turned out to be 3 kilometers lower than expected. Next there should have been basalts. They weren't found at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer. This is a very important discovery, because all our ideas about the origin and distribution of minerals are connected with the theory of the layered structure of the Earth.

Another surprise: life on planet Earth turns out to have arisen 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there are no longer sediments, methane appeared in huge concentrations. This completely and completely destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas

Demons

There were almost fantastic sensations. When, in the late 70s, the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, researchers at the Kola Science Center found that it was like two peas in a pod to samples from a depth of 3 kilometers. And a hypothesis arose: the Moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula. Now they are looking for where exactly.

The history of the Kola Superdeep is not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not, it was in 1995 that a powerful explosion of unknown origin was heard in the depths of the mine. Journalists from a Finnish newspaper broke through to the residents of Zapolyarny - and the world was shocked by the story of a demon flying out of the bowels of the planet.

“When UNESCO began to ask me about this mysterious story, I did not know what to answer. On the one hand, it's bullshit. On the other hand, I, as an honest scientist, could not say that I know what exactly happened to us. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion... A few days later, nothing like that was found at the same depth,” recalls academician David Guberman.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, Alexei Tolstoy’s predictions from the novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, a real treasure trove of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, was discovered. A real olivine belt, brilliantly predicted by the writer. It contains 78 grams of gold per ton. By the way, industrial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per ton. Perhaps in the near future humanity will be able to take advantage of this wealth.

Name Mohole compound. “Hole” means a well or simply a hole, and the first syllable “Mo” is taken from the surname of the outstanding Croatian geophysicist Andrej Mohorovicic. Thanks to him, the concept of Mohorovicic surface came into scientific use. This is the name of the mysterious underground region, presumably the lower boundary of the earth’s crust, on which there is an abrupt increase in the speeds of longitudinal seismic waves from 6.7-7.6 to 7.9-8.2 km/s and transverse ones from 3.6-4. 2 to 4.4-4.7 km/s. The density of the substance also increases abruptly, presumably from 2.9-3 to 3.1-3.5 t/m³. The goal of the Mohol project was precisely to reach this surface and for the first time get a visual, and not just a speculative, idea of ​​it.

Drilling platform CUSS I, Project Mohole

It was believed that this would be easier to achieve by starting drilling on the ocean floor, where the crust is much thinner. A location was chosen near Guadalupe Island with an ocean depth of about 3.5 km. However, it was possible to drill only 5 test wells with a depth of up to 180 meters into the bottom. After this, the project, alas, had to be closed due to cost overruns.

In 1973-1974 The Bertha Rogers well was drilled in Oklahoma. Its purpose was more prosaic - oil production, but the project also had a research load. Bertha Rogers reached a depth of 9583 m and for the time being it remained the deepest well in the world.

Meanwhile, the USSR launched a project to create about 30 ultra-deep (more than 5 km) wells in various regions of the country. Mostly they were oil producers, but not all. In 1974, the deepest of them had a depth of 7263. This was the Kola superdeep well, which occupied a special place in the Soviet deep drilling program. It was not intended for oil production, but exclusively for scientific research.

The Kola superdeep mine was laid in 1970 in the northeastern part of the Baltic shield, in a place where the oldest igneous rocks come to the surface, little studied during mining, which is often carried out in sedimentary strata. In addition, the Mohorovicic border runs shallow here (relatively speaking, of course).

We aimed for 15 km. The tasks assigned to the project participants included confirming or disproving a number of theories in practice, identifying the features of ore formation processes, determining the nature of the boundaries separating layers in the continental crust, and collecting data on the material composition and physical state of rocks.

Drilling began on May 24. The inlet diameter was 92 cm. At first, the work was carried out with a serial installation, which is usually used in oil and gas production. Then it was replaced by equipment specially developed by Uralmash from light but durable alloys. Otherwise, when rising from the depths, it would not have withstood its own weight.

The drill methodically pierced ancient granites, whose age exceeded 3 billion years. There was no shortage of surprises. The permanent director of the well, David Mironovich Guberman, said in an interview with Murmansky Vestnik in 2011:

We drilled and did not know what awaited us. At a depth of 1700 meters, deposits rich in nickel were found. Here are the job prospects for our plants! We dug further. And at three kilometers we reached the Moon! Pure Moon! - says David Mironovich and laughs: - We already had lunar soil then. We compared it with the one we lifted from three kilometers, in all physical and mechanical properties - one to one. My comrades and I joked then that the Moon had broken away from the Kola Peninsula! All that remains is to find the place where it came from...

Later, miracles began to occur, refuting many generally accepted theories. It was believed that at a depth of five kilometers granite would be replaced by basalts. At this depth, as at the Mohorovicic boundary, the instruments recorded a sharp increase in the speed of seismic waves. This phenomenon, known as the Conrad surface, was explained by the fact that here the upper granite layer of the earth's crust is replaced by a lower basalt layer. However, drilling did not confirm this. The 5 km mark was left behind, and the installation was still extracting granite cores (cylindrical rock columns intended for scientific analysis) to the surface. True, this granite was more and more unusual, compressed under high pressure, changing its physical and acoustic properties. But truly significant metamorphoses began only at the eighth kilometer, and not at all what geologists predicted. Now drilling went not through granites, but also not through basalts, but through gneisses - layered rock with a very low density for such a depth. The wellbore began to crumble, and then the drill string became jammed with rock, and the head broke off when trying to lift it. This did not discourage the researchers. The lost part of the drill string was cemented, and drilling continued with the deviation of the drilling tool.

publishing house "Nedra", 1984

Vladimir Basovich, deputy director for scientific work of the Kola superdeep well, recalls:

We had our own design bureau, we had our own programmers, we had our own workshop, we had our own forge, thermal incinerator, whatever you want. Today a need arose, an idea - tomorrow it turned into drawings. Two days later we made it ourselves. Four days later we launched it into unknown depths, into unprecedentedly critical operating conditions.

Photo: “Kola Superdeep” Ministry of Geology of the USSR,
publishing house "Nedra", 1984

The surprise from what he saw grew and grew. The rock turned out to be porous and fissured, and the voids were filled with water, which was not expected to be found in such quantities at such a depth. Along the way, we measured the temperature throughout the entire wellbore, natural radioactivity - gamma radiation, induced radioactivity after pulsed neutron irradiation, electrical and magnetic properties of rocks, the speed of propagation of elastic waves, and studied the composition of gases in the well fluid. There were surprises here too. The temperature rose much faster than predicted, and the radioactivity did not want to behave as expected.

On June 6, 1979, Soviet drillers broke Bertha Rogers' record and moved on. By 1984, the depth of the well exceeded 12 km. At the thirteenth kilometer, accidents began to follow one after another. After all, a damn dozen. At this stage, a funny urban legend arose, later replicated in all seriousness first by the Western and then by the post-Soviet press: Soviet drillers broke through the roof of hell, and recording equipment lowered into the well recorded the screams of sinners suffering there. Allegedly, this was the reason for stopping work and closing the well. But drilling had to be stopped for a completely materialistic reason: technical difficulties exceeded all conceivable limits. Lifting rocks and a drill head from such a depth is in itself incredibly difficult. Add to this high temperatures and pressure. And the inevitable differences in these indicators when rising to the surface. Actually, long before reaching the “devil’s dozen”, drilling turned into a desperately extreme activity. 50 km of pipes were used to drill the last 5 km of the well. Such was the degree of their wear.

In September 1984, the drill string broke off once again, and so unsuccessfully that the five kilometers of pipes that came off became stuck in the well, firmly blocking it. Drilling began almost anew from a depth of 7,000 m - and by 1990, a new branch reached a depth of 12,262 m, but then the column broke off again. This time, resumption of work was considered impossible. It’s a pity, but the Kola Superdeep has become a unique scientific and technical achievement, not only to surpass, but even to repeat, which no one has been able to replicate so far. But almost half a century has passed since the start! Today, there are a couple of oil production wells that are longer than the Kola, but they run at an angle to the surface and do not penetrate nearly as deeply into the bowels of the earth.

The drilling was completed, but this should not have meant the end of the scientific project. The unique twelve-kilometer core, divided into separate columns and numbered, was laid out in nine hundred boxes. They are stored in Yaroslavl. A thorough study of this invaluable material continues, and most likely will continue for a long time. The situation is worse with the well itself. Even during the work, it served as a deep observatory, where instruments were installed at different levels that recorded the characteristics of the propagation of seismic waves and a bunch of other indicators. Moreover, all this was part of a single system of deep observatories operating in three dozen other ultra-deep wells located thousands of kilometers from each other. The information collected in this way made it possible to make significant progress in the difficult task of predicting earthquakes. The observatories also recorded the characteristics of the propagation of waves from underground nuclear explosions over enormous distances and depths. Among other things, this made it possible to draw up deep maps of possible mineral deposits, which were then transferred to practicing geologists.

We got very interesting sections. From these sections we could seriously judge the structure of the earth's crust. Even up to one hundred and fifty kilometers. This opened up new opportunities for global exploration of the territory of the Soviet Union, - testifies the former Minister of Geology of the USSR Evgeny Kozlovsky.

The Kola Superdeep Observatory could still serve as a unique deep observatory. It could, but it doesn't work. They stopped funding it, closed it, and the ground complex with unique equipment was cut up for scrap metal. In an interview with Murmansky Vestnik, which turned out to be the last, David Mironovich Guberman said:

Eh, in order to maintain it and not destroy it, pennies were needed - three million, not dollars, our “wooden” rubles. They didn't give it, they saved it! And they got what they wanted... Everyone says that it’s expensive. Knowledge is expensive. Absolutely right. Why doesn’t anyone say how much ignorance costs?! Much more. Look what happened in Japan when accidents happened at nuclear power plants... I don’t understand! We didn't cost a penny! Drilling was cheap, all the equipment was domestic, not a single imported nail. No, they mothballed it, closed it, fired people! You see, all this is nonsense, that there is no money for science! Nonsense, we didn't ask for much. But what a return... And now you can install scientific equipment there, lower sensors to depth and take measurements. Invaluable information. According to the forecast of the same earthquakes...

Nowadays there is an ironic interpretation of the abbreviation RF - Resource Federation - circulating among the people. Those who repeat this bad joke seem to imagine that the resources of this very Federation are simply lying in an open field. Go out, pick it up with your bare hands and put it in containers. But all these notorious resources became available only thanks to the colossal work done by scientists and engineers. What power was poured into geological exploration, what intellect! And with what thoughtless extravagance it was then allowed to go down the drain! I really want to believe that the heirs have finally wised up and will not squander it; what is left is completely worthless. There is an opinion that the Kola superdeep can still be restored, at least as an institute for training specialists in offshore drilling. And maybe not only that. They say that the well bore is at least 8 km deep and is now quite “alive” and suitable for geophysical research. Restoring what was destroyed will, of course, not be cheap, but it is possible.

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