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In a geologic triumph, scientists drill a window into Earth's mantle
Source: Washington Post
At an underwater mountain in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, scientists have drilled nearly a mile beneath the ocean floor and pulled up an unprecedented scientific bounty — pieces of Earth’s rocky mantle.
The record-breaking achievement has electrified geoscientists, who for decades have dreamed of punching through miles of Earth’s crust to sample the mysterious realm that makes up most of the planet. The heat-driven churn of the mantle is what fuels plate tectonics in the crust, giving rise to mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes.
The new expedition, by an ocean drilling vessel called the JOIDES Resolution, did not technically drill into the mantle, and the hole isn’t the deepest ever drilled beneath the ocean floor. Instead, researchers cruised to a special “tectonic window” in the North Atlantic where drills don’t have to tunnel as far to strike pay dirt. Here, the rocks of the mantle have been pushed close to the surface as the ocean floor slowly pulls apart at the nearby Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
On May 1, they began drilling the hole, known as U1601C. Andrew McCaig, the expedition’s co-chief scientist, expected to make a shallow “pinprick” because the record for drilling in mantle rock, set in the 1990s, was a mere tenth of a mile. The researchers hoped to recover enough samples to help elucidate how chemical reactions between mantle rocks and water could have given rise to life on our planet. But ocean drilling can be an uncertain enterprise — drills get stuck, or the long cores of rock being recovered may be only partial samples.
The record-breaking achievement has electrified geoscientists, who for decades have dreamed of punching through miles of Earth’s crust to sample the mysterious realm that makes up most of the planet. The heat-driven churn of the mantle is what fuels plate tectonics in the crust, giving rise to mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes.
The new expedition, by an ocean drilling vessel called the JOIDES Resolution, did not technically drill into the mantle, and the hole isn’t the deepest ever drilled beneath the ocean floor. Instead, researchers cruised to a special “tectonic window” in the North Atlantic where drills don’t have to tunnel as far to strike pay dirt. Here, the rocks of the mantle have been pushed close to the surface as the ocean floor slowly pulls apart at the nearby Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
On May 1, they began drilling the hole, known as U1601C. Andrew McCaig, the expedition’s co-chief scientist, expected to make a shallow “pinprick” because the record for drilling in mantle rock, set in the 1990s, was a mere tenth of a mile. The researchers hoped to recover enough samples to help elucidate how chemical reactions between mantle rocks and water could have given rise to life on our planet. But ocean drilling can be an uncertain enterprise — drills get stuck, or the long cores of rock being recovered may be only partial samples.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/06/06/drill-earth-mantle-rocks/
13 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
And they just opened the door....
