WARNING: Scientists could spark MEGAQUAKE as they drill below Earth's crust for first time
GEOLOGISTS are about to drill three miles under the ocean in a bid to get beneath the Earth's crust and into the mantle for the first time ever.
If nobody has ever drilled past 7.6 miles, how the hell do we know what is down there beyond that? And that was Russia who did it, not the US. So they know what is there and we do not. Earth HAS NO CORE. It is an Infinite Plain, not a BALL!
Seismic readings show the layers of the Earth.
Scientists can be the most dim people of all time they do not care about the risk to the planet
Is this writer serious? Seriously uninformed, or just ignoring facts to get his byline out there. Comparing this single hole project to the multiple, substantially shallower fracking wells, into which fluid is pumped at high pressure is intentionally misleading.
The tenor of the piece reminds me of the 1950's balck & white Superman show on TV - the episode called the 'Molemen" where a hole for a well allowed Molemen to come up to the surface and make trouble. Just about as scientifically relevant.
Drill the hole in the middle of the ISIS Caliphate.
David Cameron needs a Frontal Lobotomy Start There.
There's no such thing as "manmade earthquakes"... We couldn't start an earthquake with our heaviest nuclear weapons, nevermind drilling and mud-pumping.
Why do I think this won't end well for the people living on top the earth?
Isn't this the same sort of thing Dr. Evil was attempting?
Sounds like they ought to do a little Fracking while they're down there. If it's going to cause an earth quake we might as well get something for the trouble
I think we already have this, it's called volcanoes
Meanwhile back at Express UK, the search for a proofreader continues.
11 lines/paragraphs from the bottom of the article:
"Mr Macleod said it could take several years two actually reach the mantle."
I am more concerned about what "scientists" are doing to this planet than all this global warming nonsense. Perhaps 'science' needs to be stopped somewhere.
Finally we may unearth Obama's birth certificate and college transcripts.
Alert Bruce Willis!
For Scientist -----------read chancers
"Many scientists and campaigners now believe there is a direct link between deep drilling and man-made earthquakes"
love the hear from the many scientists where all the a "man-made earthquakes have been" and how I can make one,
must of been all the conservatives in San Francisco back in 1906
There's a hole, there's a hole. There's a hole in the bottom of the sea!
Lot's of Holes in Blackburn Lancashire, apparently.
Good, bring it on.
What possible benefit does this have?
Its a pure waste of money, what other excuses do you want? you should know we are very good at that.
haven't you ever wanted to meet the silurians? we broker a planet-sharing peace deal, or spark an interspecies war!
Hundreds/thousands of years from now, the earth may be using a new supply of energy supplied by the earths core.
I bet some more immigrants come out of it.
Hope the molten layers are not under too much pressure!!
"This is because they go from the crust is made up of hard igneous rocks"...
"Mr Macleod said it could take several years two actually reach the mantle."...
"There are fears that the project would be like a massive tracking attempt,"
Well, good to know the second graders at the local elementary school did ok on 'try daddies job week'...
Seriously.. Who proofreads this stuff?
I think I missed it but where was the scientist talking about how drilling causes earthquakes? Also, if "Fraking" results in these things, wouldn't regular oil drilling do the same? What is the quake situation in the middle east where oil is pouring out of the ground under pressure? Don't hear about any of that do you? Keep listening to people whose agenda isn't about drilling but about power and you will end up with a nothing for a country.
the fracture drilling is causing quakes because it is literally breaking up the bedrock.
this shouldn't cause anything serious, but could tell us a lot about the structure of our planet.
/lives in oklahoma
//more quakes since we started fracking than in the rest of recorded history combined
///hates the whole idea of drilling for fuel.
Megaquake or proof of the hallow earth theory.
There is little doubt that this would contribute to Gloobull Warming by allowing a never-ending stream of lava to come to the surface as a result of the drill hole. Woe is us. Taxpayers going to pay for the driiling?
"...Scientists could spark MEGAQUAKE as they drill below Earth's crust for first time/"
THEN DON'T DO IT!
At the moment OKIB,it is, as the clutch said to the rear axle, " just a matter of a pinion ". We won't know for definite until someone tries.
We are all going down the plughole !!!We are Dooooooooooomed !!
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Could drilling into the mantle cause a quake like the one on Boxing Day 2004?
Scientists from Cardiff University are behind the mission, which hopes to bring the first ever samples of mantle - the rocky substance that makes up most of our planet between the crust and core - back to the surface to be studied.
But the team also wants to investigate an area at the very heart of the seismic activity which triggers earthquakes and volcanoes.
Professor Chris MacLeod, project co-leader, wants to investigate an area at the edge of the crust and mantle called the Moho boundary.
It is a place where the seismic waves of earthquakes suddenly change speed.
This is because they go from the crust is made up of hard igneous rocks like granites and basalts, into the softer mantle.
The area in question is called Atlantis Bank on the South West Indian Ridge of the Indian Ocean.
It was chosen because faults and erosion have already thinned the crust there.
The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) project could allow scientists to examine for the first time untouched peridotite from the mantle a rock, rich in olivine minerals makes up the bulk of our world inside.
However, drilling into such a seismically significant area has prompted fears the project could be a disaster and trigger a huge earthquake or volcano.
Many scientists and campaigners now believe there is a direct link between deep drilling and man-made earthquakes.
The arrow shows the location in the Indian Ocean of the planned drilling
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Scientists say that massive earthquakes would only happen in shallower water because of the pressure on top of them at deeper levels.
However, geologists were left perplexed by a magnitude-8.3 earthquake that suddenly happened on May 24, 2013, in the Sea of Okhotsk, deep within the Earth's mantle.
Thorne Lay, a seismologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and co-author of a study into it, said: "It's the biggest event we've ever seen.
"It looks so similar to shallow events, even though it's got 600 kilometres of rock on top of it.
"It's hard to understand how such an earthquake occurs at all under such huge pressure."
It happened at a crack where the Pacific Plate was pressing into the mantle, and was felt in Russia, but fortunately no one was hurt.
If an under-sea quake was big enough it could trigger huge tsunamis like those of Boxing Day 2004 which hit south-east Asia after an earthquake in the Indian Ocean.
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The tenth anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killing almost 250,000 people will be remembered on December 26.
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Fracking - the process of drilling into the ground before injection a water solution at high pressure to crack open rocks and release natural gas inside them to use as a fossil fuel - is seen as the main culprit for manmade earthquakes by some.
In The US state of Oklahoma, anti-fracking campaigners claim it has led to a huge increase in seismic activity since the industry started there.
They say that magnitude three and upwards earthquakes have gone from a few dozen in 2012 to 720 this and that many of the earthquakes occurring in swarms in areas where injection wells pump salty waste water — a byproduct of oil and gas production — deep into the earth.
There are fears that the project would be like a massive tracking attempt, as sea water would gush into the mantle, and could even trigger a mega quake.
Hoy Hawkins, a US anti-fracking campaigner, is concerned about the location for the world record drill.
He said: "Tell me I don't have to take my continental fracking concerns out to remote oceans now.
"If the ocean mantle is thinner and more brittle, and it's where most earthquakes originate, shouldn't we be worried about pressured ocean water blasting through to this seemingly vulnerable mantle and moho sub-ocean region?
"A small drill hole opening together with gravity and heavy pressure could create havoc to a confirmed non-smooth Moho - especially over time.
"There are more shallow regions to drill - the moho surfaces in NewFoundland, Canada."
Chuck DeLangis added: "Punching holes in a solid surface time and time again doesn't make it stronger."
Drilling to release geothermal heat has also been linked to increase earthquake activity.
There are campaigners against plans by the company AltaRock to drill two miles into the continental crust near the town of Anderson Springs — 90 miles north of seismic San Francisco.
A view of the drill site at the sea bed on a previous attempt
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The firm wants to release the heat from natural geothermal vents.
But residents fear it will bring more earthquakes after a geothermal project in Basel, Switzerland, that drilled nearly three miles down, triggered a 3.4 magnitude quake earthquake.
Drilling was also blamed on a large mud volcano in Java, Indonesia in 2006, which displaced more than 30,000 people after a gas exploration project went wrong.
But the team about to drill towards the mantle believe the research could actually allow us to understand more about the risk from this seismic region.
But the team insist the project has been deemed safe to proceed.,
It has chosen the site, precisely because of the thinner crust.
Continental crust can be tens of miles deep, whereas here it is just the three.
It is also only 700 metres down inn the ocean before the drilling starts.
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Mr Macleod said it could take several years two actually reach the mantle.
He said: "In total, we think it will take three expeditions.
"The science is approved and we have funding for this initial two-month investigation.
"But we will need to come back and we may not complete the task until the 2020s."
Previous attempts to drill into the mantle since the 1960s have all failed.
The team believes the only way to learn more about what lies beneath is to drill down to sample everything between the seabed and the top few hundred metres of "unadulterated mantle."
Mr Macleod said: "The Moho is pretty uniform everywhere across the ocean basins, and because of that everyone has assumed that the ocean crust is very uniform and therefore, by inference, very simple.
"But if we're right here, it changes the game completely.
"If the Moho seismic boundary is actually an alteration boundary from water penetration into the mantle, it means we know a lot less about the ocean crust than we did."
The crew is expect dot board a ship later this week.
Once underway, Expedition 360, as it is called, can be followed live on the web.
