The Deepest Man Made Hole Ever Created Was Sealed Up And Abandoned – Due To An Astonishing Event

the deepest man-made hole ever created was sealed up and abandoned due to an astonishing event but before we start please make sure to subscribe to m r tv and hit the bell so you never miss any upload from us also leave a like right now on a remote peninsula in northwest russia scientists have spent decades drilling down towards the center of the earth at over 40 000 feet their borehole is the deepest that man has ever gone then however something unexpected happens and the researchers are forced to seal up their experiment for good unsurprisingly humans are fascinated with what lies deep below the surface of the earth but ever since the first artificial satellite was sent into space in 1957 humans have also been infatuated with looking high up to discover the secrets of the stars and now with the help of global space agencies and private companies we know more about the universe than ever before but as we continue to stare skywards and wonder are we overlooking another equally mysterious world back on earth shockingly some believe that our knowledge of space is now greater than our understanding of what exists beneath the earth's surface and while many people know about the space race that grip the united states and the ussr during the cold war few remember the equally fascinating battle to conquer our subterranean world beginning in the late 1950s competing teams of american and soviet scientists began organizing elaborate experiments designed to penetrate earth's crust thought to stretch as far as 30 miles toward the center of our planet this dense shell eventually gives way to the mantle the mysterious inner layer that makes up a staggering 40 percent of our planet's mass then in 1958 the u.s took the lead with the launch of project moho located near guadalupe in mexico the operation saw a team of engineers drill through the bed of the pacific ocean to a depth of over 600 feet however eight years later their funding was cut and project mohol was abandoned the americans never got to the mantle next it was the soviet's turn on may 24 1970 a team of researchers began drilling down into the earth below the pochenski district a sparsely populated region on russia's kola peninsula their goal was simple to penetrate as far as possible into the planet's crust what's more the soviets aimed to reach a depth of some 49 000 feet under earth's surface and using special equipment researchers began to dig a series of boreholes forking off from a single principal cavity but while they slowly made their way down prospectors in america had made some progress of their own in 1974 the lone star producing company was drilling for oil in washida county in western oklahoma in the process the firm created the bertha rogers hole a man-made marvel that reached over 31 000 feet or nearly six miles below the surface of the earth although lone star did not find what it was looking for its efforts remain the deepest hole on the planet for another five years then on june 6th 1979 one of the cola boreholes dubbed sg3 smashed the record and by 1983 the hole a mere nine inches wide had traveled a staggering 39 000 feet into the earth's crust with this milestone achieved researchers on the cola peninsula temporarily down tools for 12 months they paused work on the borehole so that various people could visit the fascinating site however when the experiment was restarted the following year a technical problem forced drilling to grind to a halt not to be defeated the researchers abandoned the previous borehole and began again from a depth of 23 000 feet and by 1989 the drilling had reached a record 40 230 feet an incredible seven and a half miles encouraged those involved in the project were optimistic about the future believing that the hole would pass forty four thousand feet by late nineteen ninety even more impressively it was predicted that the borehole would reach its target of forty nine thousand feet by as early as nineteen ninety three but something unexpected was lurking beneath the remote russian tundra and bizarrely as the drill inched closer and closer to earth's center a completely unexpected change occurred for the first 10 000 feet temperatures inside the borehole had more or less adhered to what the researchers had expected to find however after that depth the level of heat shot up much faster and by the time that the drilling had begun to near its target the hole had heated up to a whopping 180 degrees celsius 356 degrees fahrenheit a full 80 degrees celsius hotter than expected that wasn't all though additionally the researchers discovered the rock at these depths was far less dense than they had imagined as a result it reacted with the higher temperatures in strange and unpredictable ways so knowing that their equipment would not last under these conditions the team at cola abandoned the project by then it was 1992 22 years after drilling had first begun however researchers were able to learn some fascinating things before sealing up what has been dubbed the cola super deep borehole for example at some four miles deep they discovered tiny fossils of marine plants these relics were remarkably intact given how long they had spent encased below several miles of rock that itself was thought to be over 2 billion years old an even more exciting discovery was made at the farthest reaches of the kola super deep borehole though by measuring seismic waves experts had previously predicted that the rock under our feet shifts from granite to basalt at around two to four miles beneath the surface however they soon found out that this was not the case at least not on the cola peninsula instead researchers found only granite even at the deepest point of the borehole eventually they were able to conclude that the change in seismic waves was a result of metamorphic differences in the rock rather than a shift to basalt but that wasn't it either amazingly they also discovered flowing water several miles beneath the earth at depths where nobody predicted it might exist but while some enthusiastic commenters have jumped on this discovery of subterranean water as proof of biblical floods this phenomenon is believed instead to be the result of strong pressure forcing oxygen and hydrogen atoms out of the rock afterwards impermeable rocks cause the newly formed water to become trapped beneath the earth's surface the timing of the cola super deep boreholes closure coincided with the fall of the soviet union and by 1995 the project was permanently shut down today then the site is flagged as an environmental hazard although visitors can still see some relics from the experiment in the nearby town of zappoliarni some six miles away and impressively researchers have yet to beat its record meaning the borehole remains the planet's deepest man-made point however the race to the center of the earth isn't quite over yet out on the world's oceans drilling platforms from the international ocean discovery program continue to delve deep beneath the sea floor battling failing equipment and extreme temperatures to find out what secrets are waiting to be revealed not every trip under the waves is a bid to reach the center of the earth though for instance in a literal plunge into the unknown a two-man submersible was dropped into the cold waters of the antarctic on a mission of discovery the crew members aim to go deeper under the waves near the south pole than any other expedition in human history has done so previously and what they discovered down there is an incredible glimpse into a world that no one has ever set eyes on before this wasn't a spur of the moment plan however in fact two years of careful research went into finding the perfect time and place to make the monumental dive and there's a very good reason for that you see we know more about other planets in our solar system than we do about the earth's ocean floor indeed we've managed to map the surfaces of mars in greater detail than the floors of the seas that surround us to put that into some perspective the average distance between mars and earth is 140 million miles in contrast the average depth of the ocean is just over twelve thousand feet which is around two miles but if you think that makes it sound like the dive under the antarctic was simple then you're very wrong for starters scientists had to work out the best place to make their descent eventually though they picked a location called iceberg alley and the area hasn't been given that name without good cause the alley in question forms a channel near to the one of the antarctic peninsula's northernmost points it's a stretch of sea surrounded by chunks of shifting ice some of these pieces are roughly the size of a motor vehicle while others cover half a square mile so just getting the boat to carry the submersible into the right place was a huge challenge the crew's quest to set sail into the unknown has also been recorded in a documentary and according to executive producer james honeybourne there are some snags along the way as he told the bbc that making it through the iceberg alley was akin to a giant game of space invaders but it wasn't just getting to the correct position that posed the team problems there were other factors at play that made this mission difficult as well for one thing the team weren't certain how the submarines that they intended to use were going to perform under the strain of the deep water but those concerns may have faded away as they began their 3 000 foot descent why well beneath the waves they discovered an amazing ecosystem of strange creatures including one that they named after a key component of the star wars movie series and while life above the arctic waves is harsh and unforgiving beneath them lies a huge abundance of bizarre almost otherworldly sea creatures within a square yard there is more life in the deep of the antarctic than there is in the reefs of the barrier reef of australia one member of the team mark taylor told lad bible but there are a number of incredible reasons for that for instance the marine snow that the researchers saw beneath the antarctic was according to the university of southampton's dr john copely thicker than he's seen it anywhere else in the world's oceans but what is marine snow and why is it so important to life on the seafloor essentially marine snow is organic material that flows from the upper part of the ocean down to the floor it's a hugely important source of food for creatures that live in the deep as it transfers nutrients and energy from the parts of the sea that receive sunlight to the other areas of the ocean that don't however there's yet another crucial food source in the waters deep under the antarctic krill pooh krill are tiny crustaceans that live throughout our planet's oceans and play an important role there in particular their excrements turn the sea floor into a muddy habitat perfect for life and as it happens the life that thrives in that area is some of the strangest that you've ever likely to see one of the most bizarre creatures that the team discovered is known as the antarctic sun star although the researchers gave it a far more sinister name they labeled the creature a death star and with good reason the animal whose latin name is lava diastere annulatus is a relative of the common starfish it's an altogether stranger beast than its counterpart however for one thing the death star can have as many as 50 arms and can become bigger than a hubcap the skin on its arms is also covered with small pincers and if anything touches them they snap shut more often than not the unlucky victim is a passing krill and there's something else that's strange about this sun star while fish are the dominant predators in the world's other oceans the death star is a prime example of just how different things are in the antarctica because the water at the south pole is so cold few fish can survive there this means that invertebrates such as the antarctic sun star are at the top of the food chain furthermore diving into the antarctic is essentially like peering into a window that shows you what life in the seas was like well before humankind ever walked on earth it's the animals without backbones that dominate and that dominate as predators said dr copley and that's how the oceans were more than 250 million years ago another strange creature living in the antarctic ocean is the ice dragonfish or cryodraco antarcticus which has adapted in an extraordinary manner to survive in the incredibly cold conditions for one thing its blood contains proteins that act like antifreeze in order to prevent it from icing up and that blood is clear too since it doesn't need the hemoglobin that we humans do to carry oxygen around its body however the mission undertaken by dr copley and his colleagues wasn't just about seeing strange creatures in their natural habitat for the first time a better understanding of how life in the antarctic ocean survives might also play a key role in ongoing conservation efforts in and around the south pole on these dives we watch the everyday lives of antarctic deep sea animals helping us to understand them better than studying specimens collected by nets or trawls from ships dr copley explained to the bbc and it's helping us to investigate how our own lives are connected to this remote yet fragile environment even the most accessible parts of the ocean remain something of a mystery although dr copley hopes that this expedition can go some way to changing that sending people a kilometer deep into the ocean around antarctica for the first time shows that there is no longer any part of our blue planet that is inaccessible to us if we can find the will to go there he added and beyond the scope for scientific revelations and a better understanding of our own world there's perhaps something even more profound about going to a place that's so hard to reach what we're doing now is exploration in its purest sense dr coakley stated if we all share in the exploration of our planet then we'll all feel involved in its stewardship for the future [Music] you