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."
I've always wondered... (Score:2, Interesting)
They won't come out in China... (Score:5, Interesting)
Any life in the mantle? (Score:5, Interesting)
Solution to Peak Oil? (Score:5, Interesting)
This may be slightly off-topic. but it seems to me that if we improve drilling technology enough to breach the Earth's Mantle, there lies an almost endless supply of heat energy. According to http://zebu.uoregon.edu/ph162/l18.html [uoregon.edu], the average thermal gradient is 30 degrees C per kilometer, so that at a depth of 20,000 feet, the temperature is 190 degrees C. The problem is that in solids the heat can only be replenished by diffusion, so that steam extraction of heat would occur faster than the heat can be replenished. However, if we could dig deep enough to where heat could be replenished by convection, then the concept of geothermal heat extraction could be feasible.
Another alternative that may currently be feasible is to detonate small H-bombs in deep cavities to replenish the heat. This, in fact, was already done in the PACER project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER [wikipedia.org]. The major problem in the Pacer project was the reliance of plutonium fission bombs to initiate the fusion reaction, which created problems with radioactive waste. If a "Fusion Fuse" other than fission could be devised, we could dispense with esoteric, far-in-the-future methods of controlling fusion above ground, and simply use deep cavities in the Earth to release heat via uncontrolled fusion reactions, and extract the heat.
Bottom Line: I am not buying into the "Peak Oil Doomsday Scenario" http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html [lifeaftertheoilcrash.net] just yet.
Better yet, they do (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Atheist Agenda (Score:2, Interesting)
Just a thought.
Re:Takes time to build nuke plants (Score:5, Interesting)
An intersting example: I recently watched a documentary on the "Little Ice Age". Between 1300 to around 1900, the climate in Northern Europe and Eastern North America became dramatically colder. Before that time, vineyards in England flourished, and English wine was considered superior to French wine. Cereal grains were the main crop. The Vikings colonized Greenland. But after the climate shift, the crops failed repeatedly, leading to widespread famine. Eventually, the potato was introduced from the Americas. The potato was much better suited to the climatic conditions of the time, but people refused to cultivate it. Priests called it "the devil's root". Eventually, the Germans were the first to adopt the potato, during the 30 years war, but only because the crop could not be burned by invading armies. The French did not adopt the potato, and famines persisted, partially contributing to the French Revolution.
So people suffered and starved for hundreds of years, simply because of their inability to adapt their culture to the changing environment.
Will we do any better?