There's also one under Yerevan, Arnenia. Funnily, the altitude differences in the city are so large that the bottom of the mine is still higher above sea level than the city center.
[...] and below this lies some 7 km (4.3 mi) of sediment, placing the rift floor some 8–11 km (5.0–6.8 mi) below the surface, the deepest continental rift on Earth.
> However, in May 2008, a new record for borehole length was established by the extended-reach drilling (ERD) well BD-04A, in the Al Shaheen oil field. It was drilled to 12,289 m (40,318 ft), with a record horizontal reach of 10,902 m (35,768 ft) in only 36 days.
Lake Peigneur was swallowed by a whirlpool like in an anime, in a sad drilling that took away entire boats. The salt geologic bubble under the lake can absorb gigantic volumes of water, and a drilling for the exploitation of petrol initiated the hole.
Nothing of great interest. That's a tiny scratch in the surface of the planet, less than 1% of the radius.
On the other hand although we lack the technology you'd need to destroy the damp rock where we live, we only live on some dry-ish outside surface parts of the rock, and we could trash that part and drive ourselves extinct. "Oops"
They were asking why the two deepest holes, despite being nowhere near each other, dug decades apart, are 99.3% of 12km and 99.5% of 12km respectively. Was BP symbolically honoring the russian scientists? Does the earth have an extremely uniform material property that happens to be at a very round number of km? Just a complete coincidence all around?
(I asked AI, and it says coincidence, since BP stopped drilling once they hit oil, and the russians stopped drilling once they hit some melty rock.)
Also in both cases economic reasons. BP drilled to reach oil which makes economic sense, but AIUI the Russians wanted to keep drilling but eventually central government wouldn't give them any more money.
But yes, largely a coincidence. I think humans would see the same "pattern" if it were slightly more than 12km. We like patterns, we're the superstitious pigeon experiment but at a ludicrous scale. I would like to think the patterns I've seen point at some underlying more important truth - but the pigeon thought so too.
Anyone who wants the large image can click/tap the image, but the revere is harder to do.
In the other direction, Mt. Everest is 8,848.86 meters above sea level. I guess we don't include Lake Tahoe and/or Crater Lake because even though they're deep(ish), their bottoms are above way sea level?
Also, I knew Baikal lake was deep, but not how deep its sediment layer is! That looks like something out of a Lovecraft story...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal#Geography_and_hydr...
[...] and below this lies some 7 km (4.3 mi) of sediment, placing the rift floor some 8–11 km (5.0–6.8 mi) below the surface, the deepest continental rift on Earth.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3266:_Holes
The Wikipedia page on borehole doesn’t mention Deep Water Horizon at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Shaheen_Oil_Field
> However, in May 2008, a new record for borehole length was established by the extended-reach drilling (ERD) well BD-04A, in the Al Shaheen oil field. It was drilled to 12,289 m (40,318 ft), with a record horizontal reach of 10,902 m (35,768 ft) in only 36 days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Ma0SVjMHA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur
Kola Superdeep Borehole is not massive. It's a small cylindrical hole in the ground: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole#/media...
Mponeng is a massive continuously commercially operating mine with 5k workers
https://www.crazygames.com/game/motherload
Edit: thanks, that's an(other) hour of my life I'll never get back :-)
On the other hand although we lack the technology you'd need to destroy the damp rock where we live, we only live on some dry-ish outside surface parts of the rock, and we could trash that part and drive ourselves extinct. "Oops"
(I asked AI, and it says coincidence, since BP stopped drilling once they hit oil, and the russians stopped drilling once they hit some melty rock.)
But yes, largely a coincidence. I think humans would see the same "pattern" if it were slightly more than 12km. We like patterns, we're the superstitious pigeon experiment but at a ludicrous scale. I would like to think the patterns I've seen point at some underlying more important truth - but the pigeon thought so too.
https://m.xkcd.com/3266/
Helps to see the alt-text if you're on a phone.
Anyone who wants the large image can click/tap the image, but the revere is harder to do.
In the other direction, Mt. Everest is 8,848.86 meters above sea level. I guess we don't include Lake Tahoe and/or Crater Lake because even though they're deep(ish), their bottoms are above way sea level?