Drilling to the Center of the Earth

indylaw writes "Japanese scientists are attempting to explore the centre of the Earth." From the article: "Using a giant drill ship launched next month, the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet and to reach the mantle below. The team wants to retrieve samples from the mantle, six miles down, to learn more about what triggers undersea earthquakes, such as the one off Sumatra that caused the Boxing Day tsunami."

That's nice except...

[centipetalforce]

The mantle IS NOWHERE NEAR the center of the earth. More /. titling sensationalism. Still, drilling even 6 miles down is quite a feat

Re:Energy

[Vellmont]

It's not molten rock in the upper mantle. The article itself says the temperature only gets to about 100 C. Considering how long it takes to get down so far, and the remote location (middle of the pacific ocean) I doubt getting energy from a small hole would be very practical.

NEWS FLASH: English is ambiguous.

[BJH]

It's the "centre" in the same way that the "centre" of an M&M is a peanut.

Re:Hot mantle

[juhaz]

Apparently, the Earth's core is hotter than the surface of the Sun, so if ever they drilled down to the core, it would heat up the planet.

It wouldn't have time to "heat up the planet (surface)", even if it was significant, which it isn't, since volcanoes already do the same job on much larger scale. Any such drill hole that isn't actively kept open would instantly close either because pressure pushed the rock walls together, or if they go deep enough, magma would go up, cool, and form a cork.

The solid crust not only prevents such convection events, but is also a poor thermal conductor.

There's a reason the solid crust is where it is, just drilling a small hole in it doesn't cause a permanent dent in it.

Re:Energy

[1u3hr]

if we drain a substantial amount of energy from the Earths core (stop thinking shortterm, if we start it is possible that we will be leeching juice for hundreds of thousands of years into the future) we destroy all life on Earth.

Why don't you back that up with somne figures? I can't be botherd to spend the time to refute it, but my feeling is that you could "drain" all the energy we could feasibly use for millions of years with negligible effect. Much less effect than fossil fuels certainly. Actually, if we survive a century or two at most we'll have something better like fusion.