The deepest hole in the world is now covered only by a rusty metal cap.
Do you know how deep the deepest man-made hole in the ground is? The deepest Mariana Trench in the world has a maximum depth of 10,971km. The deepest man-made hole on land, located on the Kola peninsula of Russia, is more than 12km deep.
The project of digging holes called “Kola Super Deep Borehole ” was started in 1970 to understand the composition of the Earth’s crust. The initial goal of the project was to drill to a depth of 15 km underground.
Compare the depth of the Kola crater with many famous places such as the Mariana Trench, Mount Everest or the world’s tallest building Burj Khalifa. (Photo: Bored Therapy).
When bringing the drill to the ground, Russian engineers divided it into 3 drills to different depths. The deepest, named SG-3, reached a depth of 12.26 km in 1989. Their plan was to continue drilling to a depth of 13.5 km by the end of 1990, and reach a target of 15 km by the end of the year. 1993.
However, by 1992 the scientists were unable to continue. The reason is that the temperature at a depth of 12km has reached 180 degrees Celsius. If you continue to dig to the 15km target, the temperature there can reach nearly 300 degrees Celsius, which will definitely destroy all drilling equipment.
Although they could not reach the intended depth, scientists still discovered many interesting things about the Earth’s crust. They found that there is still water at a depth of 12 km underground, which was previously thought impossible. Gases such as helium, hydrogen, nitro and even CO 2 were also detected during the drilling process.
They also discovered 24 new species of single-celled organisms, excavating rocks that date back 2.7 billion years. The discovery of creatures at a depth of 7km underground opens the hypothesis that living organisms can withstand pressure as well as hot temperatures to adapt underground.
The deepest hole in the world is now covered with a sealed metal lid. (Photo: Rakot13).
Although drilling stopped in 1992, the Kola project was maintained until 2005. In 2008, the facilities were dismantled, leaving only dilapidated buildings.
Above today’s Kola borehole is a rusted and sealed 23cm diameter metal cap. According to ABC, if it is possible to fall into this hole, it will take people 3-4 minutes to reach the bottom. Locals say the hole is so deep that it has been named “hell’s well”.
Although it failed to achieve its original goal, the Kola wormhole has shown what limits humans can reach in the journey of scientific research.
Kola crater is still the deepest hole on land , but this depth has been surpassed at sea. In 2008, Qatar dug a hole 12,289km deep into the Al Shaheen oil field. In 2011, the Sakhalin-I project dug a hole 12,376 km deep into the waters off the Russian island of Sakhalin.