Journey Towards The Center of the Earth 185
linumax wrote to mention an article detailing an ambitious Japanese-led voyage towards the center of the earth. From the article: "The deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu made a port call Thursday in Yokohama after ending its first training mission at sea since being built in July at a cost of 500 million dollars. The 57,500-ton Chikyu, which means the Earth in Japanese, is scheduled to embark in September 2007 on a voyage to collect the first samples of the Earth's mantle in human history. The project, led by Japan and the United States with the participation of China and the European Union, seeks clues on primitive organisms that were the forerunners of life and on the tectonic plates that shake the planet's foundations" They also hope to use the information to detect earthquakes more accurately. A 4 page PDF presentation about the Chikyu deep-sea drilling vessel is also available."
Center of the Earth? (Score:2, Informative)
Mantle != Core
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:4, Informative)
A major problem they will encounter is the plasticity of rocks as the approach the mantle -- the heat and pressure allows rocks to flow, much like silly putty will ooze. That plasticity make it difficult to maintain an open well for the bit to drill through.
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:5, Informative)
Mantle rock consists of olivines, different pyroxenes and other mafic minerals. Typified by peridotite, dunite, and eclogite, mantle rocks also possesses a higher portion of iron and magnesium and a smaller portion of silicon and aluminium than the crust. In the mantle, temperatures range between 100C at the upper boundary to over 3,500C at the boundary with the core. Although these temperatures far exceed the melting points of the mantle rocks at the surface, particularly in deeper ranges, they are almost exclusively solid. The enormous lithostatic pressure exerted on the mantle prevents them from melting.
Re:Journey to the center of the earth? (Score:1, Informative)
Maybe that's why the submission is cleverly titled "Journey towards the center of the earth"?
Re:thin crust, extra cheese (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Detecting quakes? What about causing them? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Atheist Agenda (Score:5, Informative)
It was the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you insensitive clod!
Those pesky kanji... (Score:2, Informative)
(if that didn't work, try this one: http://www5.big.or.jp/~otake/hey/kanji/gifmoji/f5/ chikyuu.gif [big.or.jp])
where the first one is read "chi", meaning earth (in the dirt sense). The second is read "kyuu" and means "ball".
So. Welcome to my planet, dirtball.
Re:That drill bit better ... (Score:3, Informative)
Dupe...of course (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Center of the Earth? (Score:1, Informative)
No, it's mostly solid rock, mantle rock consists of olivines, mantle rocks also possesses a higher portion of iron and magnesium and a smaller portion of silicon and aluminium than the crust. In the mantle, temperatures range between 100C at the upper boundary to over 3,500C at the boundary with the core. Although these temperatures far exceed the melting points of the mantle rocks at the surface, particularly in deeper ranges, they are almost exclusively solid. The enormous pressure exerted on the mantle prevents them from melting.