hope to study information crustal structure According to China’s Xinhua news agency, President Xi Jinping has set the goal of deep underground as one of four strategic frontiers that should be explored scientifically. therefore created this excavation Led by China National Petroleum Corp.
The project has been launched over the past month in the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China. It aims to dig to a depth of 11 km, which is the height of 33 Eiffel Towers. However, China has not released details of the well.
But Chinese scientists hope that such wells will greatly improve our understanding of geothermal geology. and examining what we think we know about the Southern Crust. As experts understand from other deeper and similar drilling project data.
related articles crustal fault geologic change and tectonic plates
They found that large amounts of water and hydrogen existed at greater depths than previously thought. It was previously believed that water would not seep into the rock that deep. Not only that, they also found plankton fossils at about 6,000 meters below the surface.
Scientists think it is home to a layer of rock that used to form the crust of the oceans. and metamorphic granite layers were also found became the supporting evidence for the plate tectonics theory And the Chinese project is expected to drill into Cretaceous rock formations that date back 145 million years ago.
“Difficulties in the construction of drilling projects It is comparable to driving a large truck on two thin steel cables,” said Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Drilling equipment must withstand high temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius and atmospheric pressure 1,300 times higher than that of the surface. Chinese authorities expect it to take 425 to 450 days to drill.
While the depth figure is impressive, it’s less than half the thickness of the continental plate, which averages about 30 kilometers thick, so it doesn’t reach the crust. And this project is not the deepest hole that man has ever drilled.
The deepest borehole belongs to Russia’s Kola Superdeep Borehole, 12,262 meters deep, formed in 1989 but is now abandoned after more than 20 years of excavation.
Searched and edited by Vitit Borompichaichatkul
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
source
