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Kola: The World’s Deepest Hole · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
0:14
Speaker 2: here two and Jerry's here too. Because this one's so exciting.
0:17
Speaker 2: Jerry said, I wouldn't miss this one for the world,
0:20
Speaker 2: and this is stuff.
0:21
Speaker 1: You should know unless I had some minor appointment or
0:24
Speaker 1: meeting that I could easily move.
0:28
Speaker 2: It's so great that Jerry just doesn't talk on this
0:30
Speaker 2: because we can see whatever we want and we can't
0:32
Speaker 2: hear what she's saying in response.
0:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be fun as if we were doing
0:37
Speaker 1: our fun poking at Jerry sometimes and she just cut
0:41
Speaker 1: in and said, cope yourself, guys.
0:43
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, I'm sure that's what she's thinking.
0:46
Speaker 1: Maybe we can beat that out. That'd be fun.
0:48
Speaker 2: We'll see. But yes, she's excited about this one. And
0:53
Speaker 2: she even said it's not going to be boring, or
0:56
Speaker 2: is it? And we said, Jerry, pipe down boring.
1:01
Speaker 1: Wasn't that a Simpson s thing?
1:02
Speaker 2: Boring? I don't know. It sounds like Reverend Lovejoy.
1:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like Reverend love Joy did that in
1:10
Speaker 1: a sermon one time that led them into like a
1:14
Speaker 1: flashback or something very distant memory.
1:17
Speaker 2: It sounds like you're talking about the Mister Sparkle episode
1:21
Speaker 2: where Marge becomes the listen lady at church and Reverend
1:25
Speaker 2: Lovejoy's completely lost like his I guess pastoral sense. And
1:31
Speaker 2: the flashback you're talking about is when he traces it
1:34
Speaker 2: back to the first time he met ned Flanders who
1:37
Speaker 2: came to him for advice because he'd just done the
1:40
Speaker 2: bump and his rear end touched the rear end of
1:43
Speaker 2: another young man and he was up in arms about it.
1:47
Speaker 1: And maybe he was saying boring because it was a
1:48
Speaker 1: ned Flanders flashback. It's possible somebody will know this one.
1:52
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it was Lovejoy though.
1:55
Speaker 2: Okay, well it didn't, Yeah, it didn't. We should have
1:58
Speaker 2: said that in unison.
2:00
Speaker 1: Have been great.
2:01
Speaker 2: We're talking today not about the Simpsons, although we just
2:04
Speaker 2: have and that's great. We're talking today about a different
2:08
Speaker 2: kind of Cold War race between the USSR and the
2:12
Speaker 2: United States. Got a lot less press, way less press.
2:16
Speaker 2: It got a lot less money and funding and you know,
2:19
Speaker 2: attension and technology and engineers and brains thrown at it.
2:25
Speaker 2: But I also wonder, Chuck, if we downplay it because
2:28
Speaker 2: the USSR beat US so soundly at this particular race.
2:34
Speaker 1: Maybe, yeah, that's possible, because you know, of course, we're
2:37
Speaker 1: not talking about going to outer space. We're talking about
2:40
Speaker 1: boring deep into the Earth and digging a deep hole.
2:44
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about that now in the
2:47
Speaker 1: form of the Cola Borhole KOLA. And this started in
2:51
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties.
2:54
Speaker 2: Yes, well, yes, I think the idea started in the sixties,
2:57
Speaker 2: but they started drilling in the seventh nineteen. But let's
3:01
Speaker 2: not get ahead of ourselves, because the Soviets were actually
3:04
Speaker 2: following the American lead. America made the first shot over
3:10
Speaker 2: the Soviets bow by drilling into the undearth the vow first. Yeah,
3:14
Speaker 2: I think him. They undermined the Soviet morale by doing this.
3:21
Speaker 1: That's right. In nineteen fifty eight, we launched something called
3:23
Speaker 1: Project Mohole, and this is like, hey, let's dig down
3:27
Speaker 1: to the mantle. Let's get a sample off of Guadalupe Island,
3:33
Speaker 1: Like let's go through the ocean floor, because the ocean's
3:35
Speaker 1: already deep, so let's just go ahead and start down there.
3:37
Speaker 1: And the name Project Mohole is a bit of a
3:42
Speaker 1: science sciencey nerdy joke that plays on the Moho discontinuity
3:49
Speaker 1: or discontinuity. How would you say?
3:51
Speaker 2: The second one?
3:52
Speaker 1: Second one, and that is the the Moho discontinuity. Is
3:56
Speaker 1: the region worthy crust and the mantle meet up and
3:59
Speaker 1: say hello, right.
4:02
Speaker 2: And they were, I mean this is theoretical. We should say.
4:05
Speaker 2: It's named after a guy named a I think it's
4:09
Speaker 2: Mohorovicic of Croatia, who back in nineteen oh nine, nineteen
4:16
Speaker 2: oh nine, mind you, was studying seismic waves from earthquakes
4:21
Speaker 2: so closely that he realized that at some point in
4:24
Speaker 2: the Earth's crust they actually like speed up, they hit
4:28
Speaker 2: some literal inflection point, and he was like, there's some
4:32
Speaker 2: sort of boundary there, maybe even a discontinuity, as chuckle
4:35
Speaker 2: later say, and he well, it became I don't think
4:40
Speaker 2: he named it after himself, but it became called the
4:42
Speaker 2: Moho discontinuity. Like you said, it was hypothetical as theoretical,
4:46
Speaker 2: but one reason they named it that is because ultimately
4:50
Speaker 2: the goal was to drill right through the crust into
4:53
Speaker 2: the mantle. That's the money lithosphere.
4:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know what, nothing turns me
5:00
Speaker 1: on more than scientifically speaking, then early science where they
5:06
Speaker 1: someone got it right, you know what I mean? Yeah,
5:09
Speaker 1: Like it's fun to talk about blood letting and stuff
5:12
Speaker 1: like that. But I love it when somebody, like way
5:15
Speaker 1: before they know about this stuff, has an idea and
5:18
Speaker 1: it kind of bears out to be correct. I just
5:21
Speaker 1: love that stuff. So hats off to you Croatian scientist
5:25
Speaker 1: whose name I'm not going to.
5:26
Speaker 2: Try if blood lighting is wrong, I don't want to
5:30
Speaker 2: be right, Chuck.
5:31
Speaker 1: Very nice.
5:32
Speaker 2: I also want to give a shout out to the
5:34
Speaker 2: group of scientists, the informal drinking group called the American
5:39
Speaker 2: Miscellaneous Society or AMSOCK.
5:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, they seem fun, huh.
5:43
Speaker 2: They came up with this idea in the fifties, and
5:45
Speaker 2: it was one of many ideas that they had, most
5:47
Speaker 2: of which were just totally ridiculous in outlandish, like towing
5:51
Speaker 2: icebergs to California to use for irrigation. This one actually
5:55
Speaker 2: had legs, and it got funding from the National Science Association,
6:00
Speaker 2: and they got to drilling, like you said in Guadaloupe,
6:02
Speaker 2: and they it actually got funding from the National Academy
6:05
Speaker 2: of Sciences and they started drilling, and well, I guess
6:09
Speaker 2: what the Gulf of the Pacific, Oh God is Mexico
6:14
Speaker 2: and island.
6:15
Speaker 1: Your desire for specificity gets you in so much trouble.
6:18
Speaker 2: Okay, well, at any rate, just they started drilling. Yeah, wow,
6:22
Speaker 2: that felt really good. I've never tried that before. Huh.
6:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, vagary is my secret weapon.
6:27
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks for letting me in on it. I think
6:30
Speaker 2: I've just turned over a new leaf.
6:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, they got that funding. They made it down about
6:34
Speaker 1: just over six hundred feet, which is not too bad. This,
6:38
Speaker 1: to me is one of the more fun facts of
6:40
Speaker 1: the whole episode. Like this, John Steinbeck, the author went
6:44
Speaker 1: along to document it. Mm hmm, Like who should we get?
6:48
Speaker 1: I don't know. Steinbeck's pretty good.
6:51
Speaker 2: That's where he got the idea for the end of
6:54
Speaker 2: Mice and Men. There was a one of the engineers
6:58
Speaker 2: accidentally dropped a sample, a very precious sample. Yeah, and
7:03
Speaker 2: rather than let the rest of the crew kill the
7:05
Speaker 2: guy in a terrible fashion, he stuck up behind him
7:07
Speaker 2: and took his life.
7:09
Speaker 1: That's good. Wait with Steinbeck the Pearl.
7:14
Speaker 2: Is that what his nickname was, the Pearl?
7:16
Speaker 1: Or did he write the Pearl? Because that was about
7:18
Speaker 1: pearl diving, So I'm pretty sure that was Steinbeck. So
7:21
Speaker 1: he may obviously had some sort of interest in going
7:24
Speaker 1: under the sea.
7:25
Speaker 2: He did. Actually, it's funny you say that because he
7:28
Speaker 2: was a I think a trained marine biologist, or he
7:31
Speaker 2: was planning on going into marine biology and never really
7:34
Speaker 2: lost his love of it.
7:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool, so awesome project. They pulled the plug
7:41
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, or I guess rather they stuck
7:44
Speaker 1: in the plug in nineteen sixty six when the US
7:47
Speaker 1: House representative said no more, no more drilling. And then
7:51
Speaker 1: four years later the Soviets set off to do a
7:55
Speaker 1: deep drilling attempt when they drilled into the earth in Mirmansk, Russia,
8:02
Speaker 1: just near the Norwegian border, near the Barren See. And
8:06
Speaker 1: this is it. This is the Cola Super Deep Borehole
8:08
Speaker 1: aka the deepest hole ever dug by human beings.
8:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, still to this day. Yeah. And it's named Cola
8:19
Speaker 2: because it's on the Cola Peninsula. Kola, did you spell it?
8:22
Speaker 1: Yeah?
8:23
Speaker 2: I love it. It's worth spelling again and another time, Kola.
8:28
Speaker 1: It's like a Cola nut exactly.
8:31
Speaker 2: The thing is, Chuck is for as stupendous an achievement
8:34
Speaker 2: as this is. And if you're a geologist, if you're
8:37
Speaker 2: an earth scientist basically of any sort, this is a
8:41
Speaker 2: stupendous achievement that they carried out in Soviet Russia in
8:45
Speaker 2: the seventies and eighties. It's just been completely like left
8:50
Speaker 2: to rod. Did you see those pictures of it now?
8:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you walk right past the thing and
8:56
Speaker 1: not even though it's there.
8:58
Speaker 2: Right, And the the reason why you could walk right
9:01
Speaker 2: past is because it's the whole The hole I was
9:04
Speaker 2: going to say, the whole hole, which makes sense, is
9:07
Speaker 2: only like nine inches in diameter. I think that's twenty
9:10
Speaker 2: three centimeters, yeah, twenty three centimeters right.
9:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's like I went caving that time, and instead
9:15
Speaker 1: of walking into a big rocky cave, I like crawled
9:18
Speaker 1: into a small hole in the ground. I know, but
9:22
Speaker 1: that's the same deal. Like nine inches is very small.
9:25
Speaker 1: It has got a plate secured over it with some
9:28
Speaker 1: old rusty bolts, and I think you found out they
9:31
Speaker 1: even etched on top of what it was, but they
9:34
Speaker 1: got the number wrong, right.
9:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. As we'll see, the Coola super deep borehole got
9:40
Speaker 2: all the way down to twelve thou two hundred and
9:42
Speaker 2: sixty two meters into the Earth's crust, and we'll tell
9:46
Speaker 2: you about just how deep that it will put in
9:49
Speaker 2: perspective in a second. But when they put the when
9:52
Speaker 2: they wrote down how deep it was, they transposed the
9:55
Speaker 2: last two numbers, so they shorted it by thirty four
10:00
Speaker 2: thirty eight meters maybe something around that.
10:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you might be disappointed to know if you
10:07
Speaker 1: like took some took a ranch out there, and you're like,
10:10
Speaker 1: I got to drop a rock in that thing just
10:12
Speaker 1: to see if I can hear anything, and took that
10:14
Speaker 1: plate off. Let's say you were able to, you wouldn't
10:18
Speaker 1: be able to drop anything in it, just because of
10:20
Speaker 1: the Earth's movement over time. It is no longer like,
10:23
Speaker 1: at least at that point, like a continuous hole. It's
10:26
Speaker 1: kind of shifted and fulled and kind of caved in
10:29
Speaker 1: in places, and it is full of gunk.
10:32
Speaker 2: It is. And legend has it that if you had
10:35
Speaker 2: recorded the movements of the Earth over that time span
10:38
Speaker 2: and played it back at fast speed, you would hear
10:41
Speaker 2: the Earth going as it subsided the deepest hole in
10:48
Speaker 2: the planet.
10:48
Speaker 1: The status of Trombones exactly, all right, So you promised
10:52
Speaker 1: talk about how deep this thing was, and in true
10:55
Speaker 1: stuff you should know fashion. We're gonna have several examples,
10:59
Speaker 1: none of which Big Max surprisingly no.
11:01
Speaker 2: But there is a Domino's pizza reference in there.
11:04
Speaker 1: I was hoping not to not mention that.
11:07
Speaker 2: No, it's that specificity thing I have running through. I'm
11:10
Speaker 2: just gonna say it. The diameter the hole is about
11:12
Speaker 2: as big around as a small pizza from Dominoes there.
11:15
Speaker 1: That's right. I think people are suspicious of all of
11:17
Speaker 1: our brand mentioned, so I was trying to avoid those.
11:19
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, come on people, Hey, you know that's
11:23
Speaker 1: the thing. So this thing is deep, deep, deep. It
11:27
Speaker 1: is about seven point six miles deep, about twelve thousand,
11:31
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty two meters or two hundred and
11:34
Speaker 1: thirty feet deep. Like we said, the deepest hole ever.
11:38
Speaker 1: It is lower than it's deeper than the lowest point
11:42
Speaker 1: of the Mariana Trench. That's a pretty fun one. Sure
11:46
Speaker 1: got a height perspective.
11:48
Speaker 2: Height wise, it's it's deeper than the highest point on
11:51
Speaker 2: Earth is tall, Mount Everest. In fact, it's so much
11:54
Speaker 2: deeper than Mountain eversus is tall you could put Mount
11:57
Speaker 2: Fuji on top of Mount ever and the Cola Borhole
12:02
Speaker 2: would still be deeper than those two sacked on top
12:05
Speaker 2: of one another.
12:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's it. That's a deep thing. Everybody.
12:08
Speaker 2: Well, wait a minute, Wait a minute, there's one more
12:10
Speaker 2: that knocks my socks off. Can I say it?
12:12
Speaker 1: It's probably the one I scribbled through. So yes, let's
12:14
Speaker 1: hear it.
12:15
Speaker 2: It is deeper than the height of the average cruising
12:19
Speaker 2: altitude of a commercial airliner, specifically Delta Airlines.
12:24
Speaker 1: Yep, I scratched right through that thing. I was like,
12:28
Speaker 1: we don't need that many examples. I love to take
12:30
Speaker 1: that one, all right. So this went down into the
12:34
Speaker 1: outermost layer of the Earth, which is continental crust, that
12:37
Speaker 1: is like what we're standing on right now. They wanted
12:39
Speaker 1: to reach the mantle with their technology. They thought they
12:42
Speaker 1: could get down to nine point three miles, but only
12:44
Speaker 1: made it seven point six.
12:46
Speaker 2: That's right, yes, and nine point three mile sounds like
12:50
Speaker 2: a really weird goal. But it turns out that they
12:53
Speaker 2: were going for fifteen kilometers.
12:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they thought that was I guess out of
12:57
Speaker 1: reach if they figured nine point three was reasonable.
13:00
Speaker 2: So yeah, and we will. There was an article I
13:05
Speaker 2: found it was It's called Going Deep Excavation, Collaboration and
13:09
Speaker 2: Imagination at the Cola Super Deep Borehole. It was written
13:13
Speaker 2: by Charlotte Wriggley and published an Environment and Planning d
13:16
Speaker 2: the Journal in twenty twenty three, and Charlotte Wrigglely points
13:20
Speaker 2: out that the Cola Super Deep Borehole raised more questions
13:24
Speaker 2: than answered them because one of the things they thought
13:28
Speaker 2: is that this stuff was going to confirm all of
13:30
Speaker 2: the predictions that Earth scientists had made over time, and
13:33
Speaker 2: the fact that they thought they were going to get
13:35
Speaker 2: down fifteen kilometers and the reasons that they didn't get
13:38
Speaker 2: down that far. Basically, it's like a great example of
13:43
Speaker 2: what the Cola Super Deep Borehole did, which was take
13:46
Speaker 2: science and churn it up like a huge swath of
13:49
Speaker 2: the Earth during an earthquake.
13:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Uh, that's maybe a good time for a break.
13:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do that, all right.
13:56
Speaker 1: We'll be right back everybody with more on this deep
13:59
Speaker 1: deep hole.
14:24
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, we should probably just do a quick primer
14:27
Speaker 2: of eighth grader science, maybe of the layers of the Earth,
14:31
Speaker 2: if you'll bear with me.
14:32
Speaker 1: Sure.
14:34
Speaker 2: So you've got the outermost layer, the crust made up
14:37
Speaker 2: of the continental crust, which is what we stand on,
14:39
Speaker 2: and the oceanic crust, which is at the bottom of
14:41
Speaker 2: the sea. Beneath that, you got the mantle and by
14:44
Speaker 2: the way, the crust averages about twenty five miles or
14:48
Speaker 2: forty kilometers thick. After that you got the mantle way thicker,
14:52
Speaker 2: eighteen hundred miles thick. Then you hit the outer core.
14:56
Speaker 1: You hit the.
14:56
Speaker 2: Inner core, which has a diameter of about twelve hundred
14:59
Speaker 2: and thirty miles or nineteen hundred and eighty kilometers, which
15:03
Speaker 2: happens to be about the distance from Topeka, Kansas to
15:06
Speaker 2: Klondike Buff's Bluff's Utah.
15:08
Speaker 1: Okay, you said that's the radius.
15:10
Speaker 2: That is No, that's the diameter, the full diameter of
15:13
Speaker 2: the inner core. And then possibly there's also a super
15:17
Speaker 2: liquid inner inner core that represents the centermost point of Earth.
15:23
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's where Ronnie James Dio resides. Yeah,
15:28
Speaker 1: I think.
15:28
Speaker 2: So I've got to give an obligatory shout out to
15:32
Speaker 2: the greatest tattoo ever. Oh okay, remember that one of
15:36
Speaker 2: Dio on somebody's forearm.
15:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
15:39
Speaker 2: So for those of you who don't know what I'm
15:41
Speaker 2: talking about, there's a tattoo out there of Ronnie Dio
15:45
Speaker 2: making like the devil horns, but the perspective is done
15:48
Speaker 2: in a way that it looks like Dio's arm turns
15:51
Speaker 2: into the person with the tattoos, arm and fingers, so
15:55
Speaker 2: they make the devil horns and it looks like Ronnie
15:57
Speaker 2: Dio is. The perspective is just that amazing.
16:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only problem is it involves your armpit, right,
16:04
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it's really kind of the worst part
16:07
Speaker 1: of the body to me. The arm pit not a
16:10
Speaker 1: fan to me.
16:11
Speaker 2: There's other parts that are grosser.
16:14
Speaker 1: Like the butthole.
16:15
Speaker 2: Sure, unless it's been recently.
16:19
Speaker 1: Bleached between the dose. Oh my god, coming from the
16:24
Speaker 1: guy who just said butthole, now I'm offended.
16:27
Speaker 2: I got that from Bruno. Remember the Sasha Baron Cohen movie. Bruno, Yeah,
16:33
Speaker 2: you got what aintal bleaching?
16:36
Speaker 1: Oh? Is that first time you heard of that?
16:38
Speaker 2: Yeah? I hadn't heard of it before.
16:40
Speaker 1: Okay, man, this is great episode. I mean we are
16:44
Speaker 1: talking about super deepoles. So what we're trying to say is,
16:47
Speaker 1: while it is impressive to go down seven point six miles,
16:51
Speaker 1: that is like about a third of the Earth's crust alone.
16:56
Speaker 1: So they were trying to get to the mantle and
16:57
Speaker 1: that's just I mean, that doesn't seem like it's possible
17:01
Speaker 1: that that could ever happen. R And it took years
17:04
Speaker 1: and years to do. They started this project on May
17:06
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, nineteen seventy and by nineteen seventy nine that
17:11
Speaker 1: had broken all digging records. By nineteen eighty nine they
17:16
Speaker 1: had reached that depth of forty two hundred and thirty feet,
17:20
Speaker 1: which was kind of it. The project was opened for
17:23
Speaker 1: a little while longer after that, but for reasons we
17:26
Speaker 1: will go over soon you'll learn why. That was basically
17:29
Speaker 1: about as deep as they could go. In nineteen eighty nine,
17:31
Speaker 1: they were like, we can't get Kney deeper.
17:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. The one that it's like the reverse perspective that
17:36
Speaker 2: gets me is that they dug point two percent of
17:39
Speaker 2: the entire distance to the center point of the Earth. So,
17:43
Speaker 2: like you said, it's impressive in some terms. In other terms,
17:45
Speaker 2: it's just kind of a stupid hole, you know.
17:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know there's if you're wondering, like why
17:51
Speaker 1: would they even do this? What's down there? There's a
17:54
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. There are a lot of deep holes
17:56
Speaker 1: all over the world. Most of those are for like,
17:59
Speaker 1: you know, mineral extraction or fossil fuel extraction or metals,
18:03
Speaker 1: you know, ors things like that. There's the one hundred
18:06
Speaker 1: year old Bingham Canyon Copper Mine and Salt Lake City. Yeah,
18:10
Speaker 1: pretty great. Three quarters of a mile deep, but two
18:15
Speaker 1: and a half miles across, So that is a snow
18:18
Speaker 1: small pizza.
18:19
Speaker 2: Now there's another one called the Big Hole. It's in
18:21
Speaker 2: South Africa, belongs to the Kimberly Diamond Mine. It's one
18:26
Speaker 2: of the largest holes in the world, with the caveat
18:29
Speaker 2: of holes that were dug by human hands in no machinery,
18:33
Speaker 2: which sounds pretty impressive unless you realize that you can
18:36
Speaker 2: threaten to cut off those people's hands if they don't
18:39
Speaker 2: use them to dig, then you can get it done.
18:41
Speaker 2: And I'm quite sure that's what happened.
18:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did not even look into that, and I
18:46
Speaker 1: just had great certainty that that was a completely exploitive experience.
18:50
Speaker 2: Well, even if it's not true, we should be forgiven
18:53
Speaker 2: because we're talking about South Africa diamond mines and giant
18:57
Speaker 2: holes dug by hand. You can it's a pretty pretty
19:02
Speaker 2: reasonable surmization.
19:05
Speaker 1: Yeah sermization, I don't know. I love it all right.
19:09
Speaker 1: So that's one reason why you can dig down is
19:12
Speaker 1: you know, for minerals and fossil heels and stuff like that.
19:14
Speaker 1: But you can also just learn a lot about science,
19:17
Speaker 1: and we did learn a lot about science through or
19:19
Speaker 1: you know, the Soviets did, and we did through our
19:21
Speaker 1: deep poles. But you know, like you mentioned earthquakes, obviously geohazards,
19:25
Speaker 1: they ended up learning a lot about that stuff, and
19:27
Speaker 1: we'll detail that a little bit. Geothermal heat and energy
19:31
Speaker 1: is another big one. Oh, I don't know, maybe about
19:34
Speaker 1: climate change and what's happened in the past that you
19:36
Speaker 1: could find from digging deep, or maybe just like, hey,
19:40
Speaker 1: we know a lot more about outer space than we
19:42
Speaker 1: do about what's under our feet, so let's get down
19:44
Speaker 1: there and see what we can learn.
19:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, the place that they were digging so like we
19:49
Speaker 2: usually dig ice cores to kind of get an idea
19:52
Speaker 2: of climate change. Yeah, that's actually in the fairly recent past.
19:56
Speaker 2: We're talking on the order of tens of hundreds of
19:58
Speaker 2: thousands of years.
19:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:00
Speaker 2: The crust that they were digging into is pre Cambrian,
20:04
Speaker 2: meaning that it came together and was formed from anywhere
20:09
Speaker 2: between the origin of Earth to five hundred and thirty
20:12
Speaker 2: eight million years ago, So it is super old. There's
20:15
Speaker 2: a lot of secrets that could be unlocked just by
20:19
Speaker 2: boring into it and looking at what comes up. Right,
20:22
Speaker 2: So that's that's a good reason. Also, fossil fuels you
20:28
Speaker 2: really can't look past. This is the seventies and eighties,
20:31
Speaker 2: so they're One of the stated goals of the KSB
20:36
Speaker 2: was to basically figure out new techniques for drilling super
20:39
Speaker 2: deep oil wells, essentially because they said that it would
20:44
Speaker 2: be a great benefit to mankind if we can learn
20:47
Speaker 2: how to dig out fossil fuels that are deeper that
20:50
Speaker 2: we can't currently reach.
20:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, you know, I mentioned promise of earthquake talk.
20:56
Speaker 1: They did just come up a lot lately again, but
20:59
Speaker 1: they did learn about that stuff like if you go
21:01
Speaker 1: really deep into the spot lines, you can detect, you know,
21:04
Speaker 1: these tiny minute quakes that you don't even feel up
21:07
Speaker 1: topside where we are. And you know, all of that
21:11
Speaker 1: is usually about just learning how to get more accurate
21:13
Speaker 1: predictions in the future. You know, they do like computer
21:17
Speaker 1: simulations and stuff, but they need data input to do
21:21
Speaker 1: those simulations right, and these holes give you great data
21:24
Speaker 1: for that kind of thing.
21:26
Speaker 2: They also have figured out how to use all of
21:29
Speaker 2: that seismographic data to basically turn the resonance or the
21:34
Speaker 2: way they resonate through Earth into images of inner Earth.
21:37
Speaker 2: Itself fun and that really kind of I mean, you
21:41
Speaker 2: can get if you're looking at mega colossal geology. There's
21:45
Speaker 2: no reason I would say to dig anymore. Like if
21:48
Speaker 2: we can do that kind of thing, I mean dig
21:50
Speaker 2: to put you know, deeper and deeper seismographs, but not
21:54
Speaker 2: to necessarily find out what inner Earth is like, because
21:56
Speaker 2: we can image it like that in the same way
21:59
Speaker 2: that if you have a watch one of those cool
22:01
Speaker 2: archaeological shows on BBC, sometimes they'll have what looks like
22:04
Speaker 2: a like a tamper, like a walk behind tamper, but
22:10
Speaker 2: it has a shotgun shell that you put into it
22:12
Speaker 2: and you show a shotgun shell. Yeah, it's like a
22:14
Speaker 2: seismographic imager and it shows you what's you know, buried
22:18
Speaker 2: beneath the ground in that field or whatever. This is
22:21
Speaker 2: the same thing, except they're taking the data not from
22:24
Speaker 2: the resonance from a shotgun shell, but from the resonance
22:28
Speaker 2: of earthquakes in Earth and turning those into images.
22:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's super cool. Yeah, and you know we also
22:34
Speaker 1: want to just like pull stuff out of there and
22:36
Speaker 1: see what it looks like, what's going on down there,
22:38
Speaker 1: like what our deep deep crust looks like. When you
22:42
Speaker 1: know they bring stuff out, it's generally pretty crumbly by
22:45
Speaker 1: that point and kind of falls apart because of atmospheric
22:49
Speaker 1: pressure changes and stuff like that. So you know, getting
22:52
Speaker 1: those pictures of what things look like in their sort
22:55
Speaker 1: of undisturbed state is beneficial, right.
22:58
Speaker 2: And if you're like all these seems kind of flimsy,
23:01
Speaker 2: holes are they're super deep. Holes are the greatest example
23:06
Speaker 2: of humans curiosity just for the sake of knowing something new. Yeah,
23:11
Speaker 2: then you'll find just about anywhere.
23:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't stifle that.
23:15
Speaker 2: People no get it the program.
23:18
Speaker 1: So another question you might have is why did it
23:22
Speaker 1: take so long? And why is it so hard to do?
23:25
Speaker 1: And why aren't we able to just go deeper and
23:27
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper? Like why they have to stop? Kind
23:29
Speaker 1: of all those big questions, and it's you know, they
23:32
Speaker 1: didn't realize until they got started. I don't think they
23:34
Speaker 1: thought it was gonna be a cakewalk, but they didn't
23:36
Speaker 1: realize until they really started digging down there that it's
23:40
Speaker 1: not the easiest thing in the world to do and
23:41
Speaker 1: there's a lot of complications that can arise. They didn't
23:44
Speaker 1: at first. You found this YouTube site called half as
23:48
Speaker 1: Interesting that we're talking about the drill bits, like they
23:51
Speaker 1: did a great job through granted they have you know,
23:53
Speaker 1: it's like a boring drill bit. It's like a you know,
23:55
Speaker 1: like a windy cone with like teeth on the outside
23:59
Speaker 1: of it, you know, to bore a hole. This kind
24:02
Speaker 1: of stuff They used to like board subway tunnels and
24:05
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of tunnels through mountain, but in
24:07
Speaker 1: this case they were going straight down. Those can only
24:10
Speaker 1: work for about four hours until you need to replace
24:13
Speaker 1: that bit, like the bit wears off and that's only
24:15
Speaker 1: about thirty feet or so, depending on where you're digging
24:18
Speaker 1: and how hard that rock is, and then you can't
24:21
Speaker 1: just pop it off like a drill you get from
24:23
Speaker 1: the hardware store and pop on another one. Those bits
24:26
Speaker 1: took you know, sometimes eight hours or more to change over.
24:30
Speaker 1: Then you start drilling, drilling again. And then once they
24:33
Speaker 1: hit about four point three miles, it was pretty smooth
24:36
Speaker 1: sailing up into that point. Then it got much more
24:38
Speaker 1: dense and then things got just really really tough at
24:41
Speaker 1: that point.
24:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, the density of the rock really presented like a
24:47
Speaker 2: big problem for them. Like up to that point, like
24:49
Speaker 2: you said, it was pretty easy. It was just monotonous.
24:52
Speaker 2: Now it was really hard. They were on a front
24:56
Speaker 2: tier of vertical underground hole digging, and the reason why
25:01
Speaker 2: the density of the rock proved to be problematic is
25:04
Speaker 2: the denser rock would just push the the drill bit
25:09
Speaker 2: over into less dense rock. So it made it really
25:13
Speaker 2: hard to keep going straight down because the drill bit
25:16
Speaker 2: it needs to get purchased, but it's way easier to
25:18
Speaker 2: get purchase in less dense rock than the dense rockets
25:21
Speaker 2: trying to go directly vertically through that created also lesser
25:26
Speaker 2: known thing about the Cola Super deep borehole, and that
25:29
Speaker 2: is it is not a single straight vertical shaft.
25:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nice to think of it that way, Like
25:35
Speaker 1: they just drilled straight down, but when they encounter that
25:38
Speaker 1: really really tough rock, the drill bit will like get
25:40
Speaker 1: kicked to the side. Yeah, starts going a different way.
25:45
Speaker 1: You know, they tried to you know, that presents problems
25:47
Speaker 1: in and of itself, Like they try to use steal
25:49
Speaker 1: pipes to reinforce the sides as they went a lot
25:53
Speaker 1: Charlie Bunsen in the Great Escape. But the deeper they went,
25:57
Speaker 1: those pipes, you know, we're having trouble with standing the pressure,
26:00
Speaker 1: so they might break or they might kick out of line,
26:04
Speaker 1: and then they have to fill that hole up to
26:06
Speaker 1: where they were, go back above it and then drill
26:09
Speaker 1: down around it. And so the uh, you know, it
26:13
Speaker 1: looks more like a Christmas tree when you're going down
26:16
Speaker 1: and you know, if they had too much, like a
26:19
Speaker 1: drill bit broke off completely, or maybe the sides that
26:23
Speaker 1: piping caved in too much and they couldn't get around it,
26:26
Speaker 1: they would have to go in like a fishing expedition
26:28
Speaker 1: to try and get that stuff out, and that would
26:30
Speaker 1: that would knock them offline for you know, days at
26:33
Speaker 1: a time.
26:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. The article by Charlotte Wrigley says that one of
26:37
Speaker 2: their fishing trips took five years. Five years, and so
26:42
Speaker 2: to get around the rock and also to keep from
26:45
Speaker 2: just standing around for five years, they would start another hole.
26:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:49
Speaker 2: But the reason why everybody calls it the super deep
26:52
Speaker 2: bore hole, not bore holes, is because there was there
26:56
Speaker 2: is one central shaft and then the other holes branch
26:59
Speaker 2: off of that.
27:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right.
27:02
Speaker 2: So they the depth that they got to twelve two
27:06
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty two meters, that's the depth. The actual
27:09
Speaker 2: length that they drilled all over the place is I'm
27:12
Speaker 2: not I didn't see the actual length, but it seems
27:16
Speaker 2: like it's a lot more than.
27:18
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, for sure.
27:20
Speaker 2: So they they still they kind of figured out a
27:23
Speaker 2: workaround for the rock density problem, and then I think
27:28
Speaker 2: at about twelve ten thousand feet less than or just
27:33
Speaker 2: over three thousand meters, they encountered an issue that they
27:37
Speaker 2: couldn't They found they eventually couldn't overcome.
27:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was temperature. They kind of had guestimated
27:44
Speaker 1: correctly up into that point what the temperature was about
27:47
Speaker 1: going to you know what it was. They thought it
27:48
Speaker 1: was going to be at least and they were like this,
27:50
Speaker 1: that'll be fine. But once they reached that point, there
27:54
Speaker 1: was a big jump. It went from what was the
27:57
Speaker 1: initial number, like two fourteen or so degrees all the
28:01
Speaker 1: way up to three hundred and fifty six degrees fahrenheit
28:04
Speaker 1: or one hundred and eighty degrees celsius. And that was
28:07
Speaker 1: about twelve clicks down about seven and a half miles.
28:11
Speaker 1: And as you heard at the beginning, it only went
28:13
Speaker 1: down seven point six miles. So it was that it
28:17
Speaker 1: was the heat that got them.
28:19
Speaker 2: The heat, my god, the heat.
28:21
Speaker 1: Not even the humidity.
28:22
Speaker 2: The heat, right, although we will find it's possible that
28:26
Speaker 2: it's humid down there.
28:27
Speaker 1: Ooh, what it's ease.
28:29
Speaker 2: That's a really great example of how the super deep borehole,
28:33
Speaker 2: like rewrote science is. They mapped it all out there
28:37
Speaker 2: like we're going to get to fifteen kilometers because we'll
28:40
Speaker 2: be able to withstand the temperatures until then. And then
28:42
Speaker 2: all of a sudden it got way hotter, way faster,
28:45
Speaker 2: so much so that the basically what happened with the
28:49
Speaker 2: pressure and the temperature together turned the rock in that
28:54
Speaker 2: area essentially plastic key and not even like a hard
28:58
Speaker 2: plastic like a chlorox bleach bottle. It was like like
29:04
Speaker 2: a squishy plastic. Yeah. And it was basically like nailing
29:09
Speaker 2: jellobran gelatin to the wall. That was what they were
29:13
Speaker 2: trying to do at that point.
29:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean at that point it was yet
29:16
Speaker 1: it was over. They realized that they had gone as
29:19
Speaker 1: far as they could go. That was nineteen eighty nine,
29:22
Speaker 1: Like I said at the beginning, they kept trying for
29:24
Speaker 1: another few years, I think until nineteen ninety two. Yeah,
29:28
Speaker 1: and then they're like, yeah, this is really over. And
29:31
Speaker 1: I think the whole project was officially sealed in two
29:36
Speaker 1: thousand and five. But I mean they had a lot
29:38
Speaker 1: of employees and stuff you know, that were on the books.
29:41
Speaker 1: I think they weren't even paying them for a while,
29:42
Speaker 1: right right.
29:44
Speaker 2: I think at its peak there were like seven hundred
29:46
Speaker 2: people who were employed there. If you look at pictures
29:48
Speaker 2: of the place when it was in full swing, it
29:50
Speaker 2: looks like a huge factory with one single giant smokestack
29:54
Speaker 2: and that's actually where the derek for the drill bit went.
29:58
Speaker 2: But it's like a little mini town almost. But as
30:02
Speaker 2: it got shut down further and further and they finally
30:04
Speaker 2: fully mothballed in two thousand and eight, those last few employees, yeah,
30:08
Speaker 2: they hadn't been paid in six months. But the reason
30:11
Speaker 2: why it really stopped in nineteen ninety two is because
30:14
Speaker 2: they had bigger fish to fry, which was their country
30:17
Speaker 2: had dissolved, and now they had to figure out where
30:19
Speaker 2: to get funding from. And it turned out that no one,
30:22
Speaker 2: none of the oligarchs were in any particular mood to
30:25
Speaker 2: keep funding the super deep borehole, especially because it hadn't
30:28
Speaker 2: gotten anywhere in three or four years.
30:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a you know, any stagnant project like
30:36
Speaker 1: that is not sexy anymore and very easy to shut her.
30:39
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, unfortunately, So all.
30:42
Speaker 1: Right, maybe we should take a break and we'll talk
30:44
Speaker 1: about what we learned from this super deep borehole. All right,
31:13
Speaker 1: So we actually discovered a lot scientifically speaking by going
31:16
Speaker 1: down that low. The first thing they did was like, well,
31:20
Speaker 1: I guess let's do the obvious thing and change our
31:23
Speaker 1: temperature maps, because now we know at what point it
31:28
Speaker 1: gets like super super hot. So who's got an eraser, Ivan,
31:33
Speaker 1: you have an eraser, you have the only eraser in
31:35
Speaker 1: the room. Step forward and change those numbers. And they
31:38
Speaker 1: were like, that's a great start, and let's move on
31:40
Speaker 1: from here.
31:41
Speaker 2: Right, So that was one thing. They also disproved something
31:47
Speaker 2: that had been around since the thirties. So we talked
31:49
Speaker 2: about the Moho discontinuity, which is between the mantle and
31:53
Speaker 2: the crust, way further down than they went, but they
31:56
Speaker 2: had expected to go through another discontinuity that was in
32:00
Speaker 2: the upper crust. It was upper crust, the Conrad discontinuity,
32:05
Speaker 2: which was also based on the same thing. This guy
32:08
Speaker 2: Conrad paying attention to seismographic waves suddenly accelerating or speeding
32:12
Speaker 2: up when it hit this one point in the crust.
32:16
Speaker 2: It's like there's a discontinuity there. I predict that it's
32:19
Speaker 2: a difference between granite and basalt. That we've got the
32:23
Speaker 2: granite up top and then it transitions into basalt and
32:26
Speaker 2: where they where they, where they meet, that's that discontinuity.
32:31
Speaker 2: And it turned out that that was not correct, and
32:34
Speaker 2: they were kind of mean about it. They called Conrad's
32:37
Speaker 2: descendants and told them and mocked them over the phone.
32:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I thought it was Conrad Baine and that
32:43
Speaker 1: they called Todd Bridges his air Victor Conrad. You know
32:49
Speaker 1: what just occurred to me. I believe when I said discontinuity,
32:53
Speaker 1: I bet you that's how the brit say it.
32:55
Speaker 2: I'll bet you're right. I'd love to hear from our
32:57
Speaker 2: brit friends about that.
32:58
Speaker 1: I would love to hear that too, as Kyle. Yeah,
33:02
Speaker 1: but then we'd have to send a voice message. And
33:04
Speaker 1: I wonder what Kyle sounds like. Actually, I wonder what
33:06
Speaker 1: all of our writers sound like. We know what Dave
33:08
Speaker 1: sounds like because we met him.
33:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. Just blew my top.
33:13
Speaker 1: What if, like, we love Livia so much, what if
33:16
Speaker 1: we got in touch with Livia and she was like
33:17
Speaker 1: gentle blood. She was like a Julia child or something
33:21
Speaker 1: that would be so fun.
33:22
Speaker 2: It would be quite surprising.
33:24
Speaker 1: All right, So you teased liquid very cheekily earlier, and
33:30
Speaker 1: they discovered that there was liquid water down there, like
33:34
Speaker 1: much much deeper than they thought water could exist. They
33:37
Speaker 1: found these cracks that had saline filled water, and they
33:40
Speaker 1: were like this, this shouldn't be here. This is crazy,
33:42
Speaker 1: like liquid is actually flowing down here. The Soviets like
33:46
Speaker 1: released that information and most of the world at person
33:49
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, right, like we're gonna buy that coming
33:51
Speaker 1: from you.
33:52
Speaker 2: Right, So yeah. The first fourteen years from nineteen seventy
33:55
Speaker 2: to nineteen eighty four, the USSR, which was very famous
34:00
Speaker 2: for keeping its scientific progress and finding secret, it didn't
34:05
Speaker 2: share anything about this. I'm not even sure the outside
34:07
Speaker 2: world knew that they were digging a hole. And then
34:10
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four, at a geological conference, like a
34:14
Speaker 2: world geological conference that they actually held in Moscow, they
34:19
Speaker 2: announced that they had dug the world's deepest hole and
34:22
Speaker 2: blew everyone away. And it seems like the reason that
34:26
Speaker 2: they held this conference in nineteen eighty four was that
34:28
Speaker 2: they just had dug the world's deepest hole, and they
34:31
Speaker 2: wanted to tell everybody.
34:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's kind of funny that they didn't believe
34:35
Speaker 1: certain parts of it because it was coming from the
34:37
Speaker 1: former Soviet Union, you.
34:38
Speaker 2: Know, right, well this is full on Soviet Union too.
34:41
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty four. Oh yeah, yeah, but yeah, they
34:44
Speaker 2: were like, how how would this even happen? Like, explain
34:47
Speaker 2: to us how there's water. Yeah.
34:49
Speaker 1: So what they found out was that, well, at first
34:52
Speaker 1: they thought that it was squeezed out of crystals. Perhaps
34:55
Speaker 1: it's pretty good, guests, but they found out the opposite
34:59
Speaker 1: was true because of the study in twenty twenty three,
35:01
Speaker 1: they found out that when these continental plates subduct, which
35:04
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about lately, like go under one
35:07
Speaker 1: another and into the mantle in this case, they take
35:11
Speaker 1: water with them along the way, and that can make
35:13
Speaker 1: it all the way to that outer core. It interacts
35:16
Speaker 1: with that molten iron, I think, and creates this like
35:20
Speaker 1: kind of kind of filmy gook between the core, and
35:22
Speaker 1: then that presses into crystals.
35:26
Speaker 2: Right. Did you know that you could press water into crystals?
35:30
Speaker 1: I didn't know any of this stuff. No.
35:32
Speaker 2: I also didn't know you could get water from crystals.
35:34
Speaker 2: But think about like the mind boggling pressure that suggests
35:38
Speaker 2: are going on at this point in the Earth.
35:41
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, for sure.
35:42
Speaker 2: It's so cool. Probably the biggest thing that everybody's socks
35:47
Speaker 2: were knocked off by was that they were like, oh yeah,
35:50
Speaker 2: by the way, seven kilometers down, almost four and a
35:53
Speaker 2: half miles under the Earth's surface, we found marine organism
35:59
Speaker 2: fossils dating back like two billion years top that comrades
36:04
Speaker 2: pretty fun.
36:05
Speaker 1: And I bet they were spooky looking, like a like
36:10
Speaker 1: a you know, I saw garfish the other day when
36:12
Speaker 1: I was paddle boarding in a lake and I almost
36:16
Speaker 1: fell off because I looked down and it was right
36:19
Speaker 1: at the surface on my left and you know, a garfish.
36:21
Speaker 1: This was like two and a half feet long.
36:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:24
Speaker 1: I reacted with such a start. I went, oh my
36:27
Speaker 1: god that I lost my balance and almost fell off
36:29
Speaker 1: the paddle board.
36:30
Speaker 2: Meh.
36:31
Speaker 1: But and then I had a fear of like, you know,
36:33
Speaker 1: this thing was some prehistoric creature that was going to
36:35
Speaker 1: attack me once I was in the water, which is
36:37
Speaker 1: of course not true. That thing was out of there
36:39
Speaker 1: second it saw me, right, But I just imagine these
36:42
Speaker 1: fossils down there. I mean, these things had to have
36:45
Speaker 1: like teeth, they had to be creepy.
36:46
Speaker 2: Right, I don't know. I didn't see any pictures of
36:50
Speaker 2: them two billion years ago. I'm not sure.
36:53
Speaker 1: I've got a picture in my mind. It looks like
36:55
Speaker 1: an alligator gar.
36:56
Speaker 2: Okay, that's great, let's go with that, all right. But
36:58
Speaker 2: the thing is is that's it doesn't suggest as a
37:01
Speaker 2: lot of sites who sensationalize this super deep borehole as
37:05
Speaker 2: we'll see, this doesn't mean that these things were ever
37:08
Speaker 2: dwelling like four and a half miles beneath the Earth's surface,
37:13
Speaker 2: right right, right. These were embedded two billion years ago
37:16
Speaker 2: and then carried down through the cross toward the mantle
37:21
Speaker 2: as part of that amazing plate tectonic process that keeps
37:25
Speaker 2: the Earth going.
37:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean what I wonder is if I mean
37:29
Speaker 1: this was started in nineteen seventy discontinued in nineteen eighty nine.
37:34
Speaker 1: That was a long time ago, and I wonder if
37:36
Speaker 1: it's possible with today's technology to reach the mantle, and
37:40
Speaker 1: if anyone is interested in that anymore.
37:43
Speaker 2: I wondered if it was if I think I'm sure
37:46
Speaker 2: that they are geologists and scientists who are still quite
37:49
Speaker 2: interested in doing that.
37:50
Speaker 1: They want to, right, they want to. The funding dollars exactly.
37:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I don't know that there's much much to
38:00
Speaker 2: be gained from, you know, reaching the mantle if you're
38:03
Speaker 2: a fossil fuel company, and that's if you're not getting
38:06
Speaker 2: money from governments for digging deep holes, you're getting it
38:09
Speaker 2: from fossil fuel companies. They probably, I would estimate, fund
38:13
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the holes that are being dug around
38:16
Speaker 2: the world right now.
38:17
Speaker 1: They're like, is there a giant bag of money down there?
38:20
Speaker 2: Exactly? Yeah, they're like, no, no, but not exactly.
38:24
Speaker 1: Well you've lost my ear.
38:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, get rid of this guy. So yes, though,
38:30
Speaker 2: it's possible that some scientists will make it to the mantle.
38:34
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because they will be drilling
38:37
Speaker 2: not through you know, super thick parts of the crust,
38:40
Speaker 2: but thin, thin parts of the oceanic.
38:43
Speaker 1: Crust, right, and that counts.
38:46
Speaker 2: It definitely counts because you're still reaching the mantle.
38:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
38:50
Speaker 2: No, there's some places where the crust is so thin.
38:53
Speaker 2: How thin is it? It's so thin, it's only five
38:55
Speaker 2: and a half kilometers thick, and that is Yeah, that's
39:00
Speaker 2: you know, almost a third of the depth of the
39:05
Speaker 2: cola super deep bore.
39:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nineteen sixties level digging exactly.
39:09
Speaker 2: So there was actually a group that I guess was
39:13
Speaker 2: attempting that they dug in a site off the coast
39:16
Speaker 2: of Costa Rica. They dug hole twelve fifty six D.
39:21
Speaker 2: They need to step up their name and convention.
39:23
Speaker 1: I think maybe that stands for Dominoes.
39:26
Speaker 2: It probably doesn't sponsored it. The NOID was on board. Yeah,
39:31
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands they started digging, and I
39:34
Speaker 2: guess the NOID got bored and stopped giving them money.
39:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, how far did they get? Stopped at one
39:42
Speaker 1: point two five kilometers.
39:44
Speaker 2: Which is so deep, so shallow. We're not even gonna
39:46
Speaker 2: bother of translating that into.
39:48
Speaker 1: Miles exactly, but kind of. One of the fun things
39:50
Speaker 1: is they they removed an intact piece of crust. I
39:55
Speaker 1: guess stepped it in some marin era. I couldn't resist
39:59
Speaker 1: this one, so off the rails with the Dominoes theme
40:02
Speaker 1: that I've really tried to avoid and then embraced.
40:04
Speaker 2: If you like their marinara, you should try their garlic
40:07
Speaker 2: butter dipping sauce.
40:08
Speaker 1: Man, why don't they sponsor us?
40:10
Speaker 2: I don't know.
40:10
Speaker 1: They really wish these were ads.
40:12
Speaker 2: Everybody I would probably do Dominoes ads for free pizza.
40:18
Speaker 1: I am a shamed, Well not a shame. I'm proud
40:20
Speaker 1: to say. Maybe I haven't had a Domino's pizza since
40:22
Speaker 1: probably college.
40:23
Speaker 2: That's that's our go to pizza. If we get giant
40:26
Speaker 2: chain pizza. Really, yeah, I still love Dominoes.
40:30
Speaker 1: I guess I don't get any giant chain pizza. Not
40:32
Speaker 1: as a stand. We just have so many good pizzaias
40:34
Speaker 1: in Atlanta all over the place.
40:35
Speaker 2: Yes, that is true. There are not as many in Florida. Okay,
40:41
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but there's not. But yes, Atlanta
40:43
Speaker 2: is filthy, rich with really good pizza places.
40:46
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say that, like you,
40:48
Speaker 1: me and MoMA wouldn't stand for anything that doesn't get
40:50
Speaker 1: there in thirty minutes.
40:52
Speaker 2: Where it's free.
40:53
Speaker 1: I'm hungry now, Josh, you know that.
40:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, there's just not that many around here.
40:59
Speaker 1: All right, Well, well maybe we can take a meeting
41:02
Speaker 1: with sales and turn this into liquid gold.
41:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, can I have your free Dominoes if that's how
41:07
Speaker 2: they say?
41:08
Speaker 1: Okay, sweet, we should mention this last little addendum. It
41:11
Speaker 1: was kind of fun the Germans. Of course, they tried
41:14
Speaker 1: to dig a deeper hole in the nineties and they
41:18
Speaker 1: actually got to some higher temperatures their bits, the German
41:23
Speaker 1: bits were able to withstand five hundred degrees fahrenheit or
41:26
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty degrees celsius, so that was a
41:29
Speaker 1: big breakthrough. But they stopped at about five and a
41:32
Speaker 1: half or five point six miles down or nine kilometers.
41:37
Speaker 1: But the cool part about this is they got a
41:41
Speaker 1: Dutch artist named Lota Geeven I'm not sure if that's
41:45
Speaker 1: pronounced right. She lowered her microphone down in there, obviously
41:49
Speaker 1: protected by heat shields and stuff like that, dropped it
41:53
Speaker 1: down that German borehole and picked up a very rumbling
41:56
Speaker 1: sound that science still cannot explain, and she said it
42:00
Speaker 1: made her feel very small. First time in my life,
42:03
Speaker 1: this big ball that we live on came to life,
42:06
Speaker 1: and it sounded haunting, and she said some people thought
42:10
Speaker 1: it sounded like hell, or like the planet was breathing.
42:13
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, that came from an old
42:16
Speaker 1: Russian sort of suspicion that they were digging into hell.
42:20
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, there was an urban legend that started about
42:24
Speaker 2: the time they stopped digging at the borehole that said
42:27
Speaker 2: that the reason that they stopped digging was because they
42:29
Speaker 2: had punctured through the roof of Hell and that somebody
42:35
Speaker 2: had lowered a microphone down and they captured the sounds
42:39
Speaker 2: of tormented souls in Hell screaming. And there are actual
42:44
Speaker 2: YouTube videos that present this seriously, and you can go
42:48
Speaker 2: hear it, and it's the most ridiculous thing you'll hear today.
42:53
Speaker 2: But I also want to point out that what is it?
42:57
Speaker 2: Lottie Gervin even, Yeah, yeah, like you said that, scientists
43:03
Speaker 2: can't explain the sound that she actually did record. That's
43:06
Speaker 2: not to say like this's a supernatural sound. They're just like,
43:09
Speaker 2: there's so many processes going on down there, and we
43:11
Speaker 2: so little understand that part of the earth. We can't
43:15
Speaker 2: say what what makes that sound, But we think it's
43:18
Speaker 2: a pretty cool sound and maybe someday we will be
43:20
Speaker 2: able to explain it. What they are quite sure about
43:23
Speaker 2: is that is not the sounds of Hell.
43:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's not a real place.
43:27
Speaker 2: I yeah, you should go listen to our episode on
43:30
Speaker 2: Hell people. It was a pretty good one.
43:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I imagine that there's just sounds like
43:35
Speaker 1: a groan or you know, something moving around probably makes
43:39
Speaker 1: a sound.
43:39
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, it sounds really really industrial, but there's no
43:44
Speaker 2: pattern to it, so like a patterned industrial sound is
43:49
Speaker 2: what it sounds like. It's still it's pretty faint.
43:51
Speaker 1: I bet some German musician turned that into a beat
43:55
Speaker 1: or something.
43:55
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, let's see. I think that's about it. Yeah,
44:01
Speaker 2: that's about it.
44:02
Speaker 1: Great.
44:03
Speaker 2: Okay, Well that was the Cola Super Deep Borehole. Everybody.
44:07
Speaker 2: Hope you enjoyed it. Sorry for the anal bleaching references,
44:10
Speaker 2: and I guess since I mentioned anal bleaching again, it's
44:14
Speaker 2: time for listener mail.
44:18
Speaker 1: In fairness, you can't talk about the Cola Super Deeporehole
44:20
Speaker 1: without talking about that, agreed. You know, all right, I'm
44:24
Speaker 1: gonna call this feedback from the Mash episode. Hey, guys,
44:29
Speaker 1: thank you for the episode on MASH. I was seven
44:31
Speaker 1: years old in nineteen seventy two, and I really loved
44:33
Speaker 1: the show so much that I learned to play the
44:35
Speaker 1: theme song on the piano. My parents were too happy
44:37
Speaker 1: to find out that the song discussed suicide, but I
44:40
Speaker 1: don't even think I knew what that was at the time. Also,
44:43
Speaker 1: there was at least one episode, because you guys talk
44:45
Speaker 1: about the camp moving where there was a bug out
44:47
Speaker 1: where the camp move closer or farther from the front lines.
44:52
Speaker 1: And we got someone else that wrote in that said
44:54
Speaker 1: the same thing, and like sort of the joke on
44:56
Speaker 1: the show was that it was like kind of exactly
44:58
Speaker 1: the same. Okay, they clearly didn't move this at And
45:02
Speaker 1: then Dana Carson from Cleveland also says this. It never
45:05
Speaker 1: occurred to me actually that BJ and Hawkeye were alcoholics.
45:08
Speaker 1: I just assume they drank to pass the time. Yeah, sure,
45:12
Speaker 1: just like alcoholics, right, Yeah, I mean I threw that
45:17
Speaker 1: word around. You know, it was just sort of supposed
45:21
Speaker 1: to be funny. Maybe they were just enjoyed drinking in
45:24
Speaker 1: the hellish board they were in to pass the time.
45:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it was a device to just show like, yeah,
45:29
Speaker 2: you had to self medicator else you'd go crazy from
45:32
Speaker 2: the whole thing.
45:34
Speaker 1: And that is Dana Carson from Cleveland who says in
45:36
Speaker 1: a PS, I've been to Toledo and Tony Pakos many times.
45:39
Speaker 2: Awesome way to go, Dana, right, Dana, Great, thanks a lot, Dana.
45:45
Speaker 2: There's actually a Dana Corporation in around Toledo, if I'm
45:49
Speaker 2: not mistaken. Maybe it's named after you, Dana. You should
45:51
Speaker 2: go find out.
45:52
Speaker 1: Cool.
45:53
Speaker 2: If you have a name like a corporation around Toledo,
45:56
Speaker 2: say like Libby or Owens or Jeep. We want to
46:01
Speaker 2: hear from you. You can email us at stuff podcast
46:05
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
46:10
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
46:13
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46:17
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.