In 1970, exactly to the 100th anniversary of Lenin, Soviet scientists began one of the most ambitious projects of our time. On the Kola Peninsula, ten kilometers from the village of Zapolyarny, drilling of a well began, which as a result turned out to be the deepest in the world and entered the Guinness Book of Records.
The grandiose scientific project has been going on for over twenty years. He brought a lot of interesting discoveries, went down in the history of science, and in the end was overgrown with so many legends, rumors and gossip that would be enough for more than one horror film.
THE USSR. Kola Peninsula. October 1, 1980 Advanced well drillers reaching record depth - 10,500 meters / Semyon Maisterman / TASS newsreel.
Entrance to hell
At the time of its heyday, the drilling rig on the Kola Peninsula was a cyclopean structure 20-storey high. Up to three thousand people worked here per shift. The team was headed by the country's leading geologists. The drilling rig was built in the tundra ten kilometers from the village of Zapolyarny, and in the polar night it shone with lights like a spaceship.
When all this splendor suddenly closed and the lights went out, rumors immediately spread. By all standards, the drilling was remarkably successful. No one in the world has yet managed to reach such a depth - Soviet geologists lowered the drill by more than 12 kilometers.
The sudden completion of a successful project looked as ridiculous as the fact that the Americans closed the program of flights to the moon. Aliens were blamed for the collapse of the lunar project. In the problems of the Kola superdeep - devils and demons.
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A popular legend says that drills were taken from great depths more than once reflowed. There were no physical reasons for this - the temperature underground did not exceed 200 degrees Celsius, and the drill was designed for a thousand degrees. Then the audio sensors allegedly began to pick up some groans, screams and sighs. Dispatchers who followed the readings of the instruments complained of feelings of panic and anxiety.
Legend has it that the geologists had drilled to hell. The groans of sinners, extremely high temperatures, the atmosphere of horror at the rig - all this explained why all work on the Kola Superdeep was suddenly stopped.
Many were skeptical about these rumors. However, in 1995, after the work was stopped, a powerful explosion thundered at the drilling rig. No one understood what could have exploded there, not even the head of the entire project, a prominent geologist David Guberman.
Today, excursions are led to the abandoned drilling rig and tourists are told a fascinating story about how scientists drilled a hole into the underworld of the dead. Wailing ghosts roam like an installation, and by evening demons crawl out to the surface and strive to snatch into the abyss of a gaping extremal.
Underground Moon
In fact, the whole story with the "well to hell" was invented by Finnish journalists by April 1. Their humorous article was reprinted in American newspapers, and the duck flew to the masses. Long-term drilling of the Kola Superdeep went on without any mysticism. But what happened there in reality was more interesting than any legends.
To begin with, ultra-deep drilling was, by definition, doomed to numerous accidents. Under the yoke of gigantic pressure (up to 1000 atmospheres) and high temperatures, the borax could not withstand, the well was clogged, the pipes with which the mouth were strengthened broke. Countless times, the narrow hole was bent so that new branches had to be drilled.
The worst accident happened shortly after the main triumph of geologists. In 1982, they were able to overcome the 12 km mark. These results were solemnly announced in Moscow at the International Geological Congress. Geologists from all over the world were brought to the Kola Peninsula, showed them the drilling rig and rock samples, mined at a fantastic depth, to which humanity has never reached.
After the celebration, drilling continued. However, the break in the work was fatal. In 1984, the worst accident happened on the rig. As many as five kilometers of pipes broke off and hammered in a well. It was impossible to continue drilling. The results of five years of work were lost overnight.
They had to resume drilling from the 7-kilometer mark. Only in 1990 did geologists manage to cross 12 kilometers again. 12,262 meters - this is the final depth of the Kola well.
But in parallel to the terrible accidents, incredible discoveries also took place. Deep drilling is an analogue of a time machine. On the Kola Peninsula, the most ancient rocks, which are more than 3 billion years old, approach the surface. Climbing deeper, scientists got a clear idea of what was happening on our planet during its youth.
First of all, it turned out that the traditional scheme of the geological section, drawn up by scientists, does not correspond to reality. "Up to 4 kilometers, everything went according to theory, and then the end of the world began," Guberman later said.
According to calculations, having drilled a layer of granite, it was supposed to get to even harder, basalt rocks. But no basalt was found. After the granite, there were loose layered rocks, which constantly crumbled and made it difficult to move inland.
But among the rocks that are 2.8 billion years old, fossilized microorganisms have been found. This made it possible to clarify the time of the origin of life on Earth. At even greater depths, huge deposits of methane were found. This cleared up the question of the emergence of hydrocarbons - oil and gas.
And at a depth of over 9 kilometers, scientists discovered a gold-bearing olivine layer, so vividly described by Alexei Tolstoy in the "Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin".
But the most fantastic discovery came in the late 1970s, when the Soviet lunar station brought in samples of lunar soil. Geologists were amazed to see that its composition completely coincides with the composition of the rocks they mined at a depth of 3 kilometers. How was this possible?
The fact is that one of the hypotheses of the origin of the Moon suggests that several billion years ago the Earth collided with some kind of celestial body. As a result of the collision, a piece broke off from our planet and turned into a satellite. Perhaps this piece came off in the area of the present Kola Peninsula.
The final
So why did they close the Kola Superdeep?
First, the main tasks of the scientific expedition were completed. Unique equipment for drilling at great depths has been created, tested and significantly improved in extreme conditions. The collected rock samples were examined and described in detail. The Kola well has helped to better understand the structure of the earth's crust and the history of our planet.
Secondly, time itself was not conducive to such ambitious projects. In 1992, funding was cut off for a scientific expedition. The employees quit and went home. But even today the grandiose drilling building and the mysterious well are impressive in their scale.
Sometimes it seems that the Kola Superdeep has not yet exhausted its entire supply of wonders. The leader of the famous project was also sure of this. "We have the deepest hole in the world - this is how we should use it!" - exclaimed David Guberman.
Victoria Nikiforova