Re: Ocean floor boring ship may aid quake prediction

Very interesting. Should provide useful data to those engaged in earthquake
studies. I wonder if I can get them to send me a specimen of the mantle.
When Apollo went to the moon, moon rocks showed up in auctions for sale.
Now we have E-Bay, will we see Genuine Mantle Rock For Sale on EBay?

I just hope they dont hit oil, that would scrap the project, because they
would stick in a pumping station offshore and forget about the mantle.


"George" <george@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mltof.408192$084.13221@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8470
>
> a.. 17:19 15 December 2005
> a.. NewScientist.com news service
> a.. Will Knight and AFP
>
> A colossal vessel that will drill 7000 metres below the surface of the
> Earth - in an attempt to collect the first ever samples of the Earth's
> mantle - has completed its first training mission at sea.
> The 57,500-tonne deep-sea drilling ship Chikyu made a port call in
> Yokohama on Thursday after collecting sub-surface samples, from relatively
> shallow depths, during its maiden voyage.
>
> The ship will try to take samples from unprecedented depths beneath the
> seabed and will bore through a "subduction zone" - the point where one
> tectonic plate descends underneath another. This should provide new data
> on the seismic activity that produces earthquakes on the surface. But the
> researchers also hope to detect primitive subsurface organisms known as
> extremophiles and to find clues to prehistoric climate change.
>
> Chikyu - which means "Earth" in Japanese - is equipped with a 121-metre
> drill tower capable of boring 7000 metres below the seabed. But it could
> take more than a year to drill so far down, so the ship will maintain its
> position above the drill hole using satellite and ocean bed navigation
> systems and six propellers located beneath its hull.
>
> The deepest hole drilled through the seabed so far reaches 2111 metres.
> Chikyu will set off in September 2007 to collect the first samples from
> 7000 metres, at a point some 600 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, Japan.
>
> The project, called the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), is led
> by Japan and the United States with the participation of China and the
> European Union.
>
> Apollo project
> The mantle lies around 30 kilometres below the continental crust, but is
> much closer to the surface beneath the oceans. Chikyu will insert a
> "conductor pipe" and a "casing pipe" hundreds of metres into the Earth's
> crust, to support a thinner drill that will bore thousands of metres down.
>
> "This is like an Apollo project under the Earth," says staff scientist Kan
> Aoike. "This is a serious attempt to complete another key exploration for
> mankind."
>
> Asahiko Taira, director-general of the project, said he hoped the project
> would help scientists predict deadly earthquakes. "For Japan the most
> important thing is to drill through areas where plates are overlapping so
> that we can monitor an earthquake directly," he said.
>
> Taira said the seabed off Sumatra in Indonesia, which produced the massive
> earthquake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, could
> be another potential drilling spot in the future.
>
>


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