Experts from all over the world believe that humans know more about the Moon,
Mars, and even other galaxies than they do about the place they live in.
From the seas to the ground beneath our feet, there is still much to learn about the planet.
It took NASA's Voyager 1 space probe over 26 years to exit the solar system
and relay measurements from over 16.5 billion kilometers away.
In contrast, it took the Soviet Union the same number of years to penetrate 12 kilometers of
the Earth's surface with a tiny drill to uncover some of the secrets that lay beneath the ground.
But after carrying out the scientific drilling project known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole,
many people involved with the operations believe the matter should have been left alone...
The Earth's Core
In 1909, Croatian seismologist Andrija Mohorovičić identified a drastic change
in density at the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle.
It was eventually named the Mohorovičić Discontinuity, or simply “The Moho.”
During the following decades, scientists from all over the world worked to find out how low
they could drill to reach the Earth's mantle, which comprises over 40 percent of the planet,
has a radius of 4,000 miles, and is over 1,800 miles thick. The mantle sits above the Earth's
core and below the crust, a small fraction of the planet between three to 25 miles thick.
As Benjamin Andrews, a research geologist and curator for the National Rock and Ore Collection
at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History told journalist Alicia Adult: (QUOTE) “If
we have a better knowledge of what the mantle is and how the mantle behaves, we have better
knowledge of volcanoes and earthquakes, and better knowledge of how the planet as a whole works.”
The Drill Race
After World War 2, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in an arms
race for global supremacy, leading to a massive leap in technological and scientific research.
As part of the ongoing nuclear competition,
the West and the East also embarked on a race to learn about outer space and conquer the Moon.
As such, both nations developed ambitious plans that pushed the boundaries of human knowledge.
After the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I and launched the first man into space,
the US retaliated with a less-publicized race to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust.
Following the triumphs of the Soviet Union, the US launched Project Mohole,
a program whose objective was to drill through the Earth's crust and into the mantle.
The US scientists believed they could take a shortcut to the mantle if they
drilled through the oceanic crust, and in 1961, they successfully drilled five holes
off the coast of Mexico's Guadalupe Island, one of which was 183 meters deep below the
sea floor in 3,600 meters of water, with the lowest 13 meters consisting of basalt.
Despite the success, the project was defunded in 1966 due to a lack of funding.
Knowing there was no way they could catch up with the Americans following the Moon landing in 1969,
the Soviet Union decided to beat them by drilling deeper into the Earth's crust.
Soviet Heavy Drilling
The Soviet authorities chose the Pechengsky District on the Kola
peninsula in Northwest Russia as the location of their own Project Mohole.
The target depth was set at 15,000 meters, almost double Mount Everest's height.
The Soviets believed they could go deeper if they drilled multiple holes connected to the main one.
The trajectory had to be as vertical as possible to limit the torque on the drill string.
Drilling began on May 24, 1970, employing the Uralmash-4E, a rig used for drilling
oil wells that was modified to reach 7,000 meters. As the work advanced,
the machinery was replaced by the more capable Uralmash-15000 rig.
The first hole reached 11,662 meters in October of 1982,
and its borehole was just 23 centimeters in diameter. However, it was a major breakthrough.
Work on the second hole began in January of 1983 starting at a depth of 9,300 meters.
The drilling operation penetrated over 12,000 additional meters from the first hole.
Even so, the work was slowed down due to celebrations and
scientific visits and was not resumed until 1984.
Then, on September 27, a section of the drill string twisted off, halting operations. By then,
the feat had earned considerable recognition and was known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole.
Soviet Union postal stamps from the late 1980s
celebrated the breakthrough by showcasing the superstructure where the hole was dug.
Work resumed two years later, with a third hole that reached 12,622 meters. Then,
in 1990, another breakdown occurred, leading to a fourth hole that began
at 9,653 meters from the third one, reaching a depth of 11,882 meters.
The fifth and last hole started in April of 1994 from a depth of 8,278 meters,
reaching a maximum depth of 8,578 meters in August.
The operation was canceled a year later due to a lack of funds. The Soviet Union had crumbled,
and the new Russian state was adapting to new political and economic tides.
Moreover, the drilling team faced higher temperatures than expected,
and at 180 degrees Celsius, the rock started to
behave like plastic. Consequently, the drilling operations became unfeasible.
Scientific Research
Once the astonishing mark of 12 kilometers was reached,
Russia made the achievement public to the world.
Consequently, thousands of journalists and scientists flooded Kola to witness
the drilling operations and conduct additional research,
leaving behind countless photographs of the layered hole and the superstructure used.
Extensive geophysical examinations were conducted that provided more
data about the deep structure of the Baltic Shield Continental crust,
the thermal regime in the Earth's crust, and seismic discontinuities, among others.
Throughout the process, Russian scientists noticed that helium,
nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen gas bubbled up from the holes,
with some of these rocks dating back to the Precambrian Era, over 2.7 billion years ago.
Furthermore, the scientists discovered intact microfossils of 24 species over two billion
years old and found that the fractured rocks were filled with hot mineralized water at such depths.
Today, the borehole is welded shut, and pictures show how, despite being left alone for over
30 years, the place is completely sealed and there have been no attempts to open it again.
The rest of the drilling site infrastructure was also left to
the elements and has significantly decayed throughout the years.
The Sounds of Hell
Besides the strictly scientific data reported by the press and relevant universities, there
were also strange and paranormal stories shared by people who visited the area.
In 1990, several journalists and scientists from Finland allegedly stumbled upon some strange
and unnatural findings in the area. They were reportedly allowed to lower a thermal protection
microphone to the deepest point of the Kola well to record sounds from below the surface.
What the microphone picked up appeared to come directly from the underworld, as their
microphone supposedly recorded a unique wailing rumble, as if people were calling for help.
A similar story appeared in 1993 from a group of Italian journalists who interviewed three
workers who participated in the drilling. One of them told the
journalists that he often heard noises and screams, which drove some of the men crazy.
Another worker recounted that six of his coworkers, all in excellent health,
returned from a shift in a dire mental and physical state on one occasion.
One of them described it as hearing voices from hell.
Some of the paranormal stories were published in a small-circulation Finnish Christian
Pentecostal newspaper and later broadcast by the American Christian TV company TBN.
During one of the broadcasts, one of the listeners provided the station with the original recordings
of the hellish sounds picked up by the Finnish reporters. According to the anonymous listener,
such sounds had been given to him by Russian personnel who worked at the drilling site.
From then on, David Guberman, head of work at the Kola Superdeep well,
had to constantly deny all the questions related to the paranormal noises,
as he found them foolish. Guberman passed away in 2011,
and all the secrets about the drilling site went to the grave with him.
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