The plan to look into the centre of the earth

[gribbon]

Hi guys....:)

 

Did you lot here anything about that proposal from one American university, where they were going toattempt to discover more about the Earth's centre, by creating "cracks" in the earth's surface with nuclear warheads and then use molten metal to expand those cracks? Has anyone heard of any other ideas? I can't imagine that that would work, but I may be wrong...

[Buffy]

Check out Crack in the World.

 

Where the heck did you hear this? It really makes no sense: Its all molten in the Mantle, so even if you pry it open, you've got extremely hot, radioactive soup to wade through 90% of the rest of the way down.

 

Unless ya got a source, this will move to strange claims pretty darn quick...

 

Where the land masses split, the oceans will be sucked in, and the colossal pressure generated by the steam will rip the Earth apart, and destroy it, :)

Buffy

[Larv]

I certainly do hope they check out Thomas Gold's "deep hot biosphere" on the way down. I've been very curious about whether or not the DHB is actually down there.

 

—Larv

[javi_geo]

Hi guys....:confused:

 

Did you lot here anything about that proposal from one American university, where they were going toattempt to discover more about the Earth's centre, by creating "cracks" in the earth's surface with nuclear warheads and then use molten metal to expand those cracks? Has anyone heard of any other ideas? I can't imagine that that would work, but I may be wrong...

 

Well, that is bullshit, fxzeu.

 

Today the only thing which we can reach the core is through seismical waves.

[Eclogite]

While the idea is highly speculative it was seriously proposed and was published in Nature in May 2003.

The concept involves opening a crustal crack with a large nuclear bomb (say 7 megatons); pouring 100,000 tons, give or take, of molten iron into the crack; dropping a probe into the iron; then sit back and wiat while the probe, falling at 5 m/sec heads for the centre of the Earth, relaying back information by seismic signals.

The scheme's originator, David Stevenson, noted he had little expectation of sucsess, but had written the paper to stimulate discussion.

 

There is a brief, but interesting write up on the BBC site.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Plumbing the Earth's depths

[TheBigDog]

While the idea is highly speculative it was seriously proposed and was published in Nature in May 2003.

The concept involves opening a crustal crack with a large nuclear bomb (say 7 megatons); pouring 100,000 tons, give or take, of molten iron into the crack; dropping a probe into the iron; then sit back and wiat while the probe, falling at 5 m/sec heads for the centre of the Earth, relaying back information by seismic signals.

The scheme's originator, David Stevenson, noted he had little expectation of sucsess, but had written the paper to stimulate discussion.

 

There is a brief, but interesting write up on the BBC site.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Plumbing the Earth's depths

How would you conduct such an experiment, Eclogite? And what would we hope to gain from it?

 

Bill

[ronthepon]

Actually, that would be a somewhat cool way, as a concept, atleast.

 

Apparently, since the iron is heavy, it'll keep desending.

 

But to detonate a nuclear warhead just to create a hole... would a volcano do?

[Eclogite]

How would you conduct such an experiment, Eclogite?

From a very substantial distance, preferably on another planet.

And what would we hope to gain from it?

I presume the probe would , somehow, measure temperature and pressure as it descends. (I am at a loss to see how it does this at the temperatures and pressures it will encounter. This seems to me way beyond our technical capacity, but lets assume we can overcome that.)

From the temperature and pressure (and their variation with depth) we can arrive at a much more detailed understanding of the structure and the composition of the mantle and core. This would have important implications for refining plate tectonic theory, clarifying the origin mechanisms for basalts, elucidating the origin of the Earth, identifying the precise character of the magnetic field, and eliminating some of the competing theories on the composition of the inner core.