Kola: The World’s Deepest Hole

During the Cold War all eyes were on the Space Race between the US and USSR. But there was another, overlooked race too and it went in the opposite direction. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:43Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:52Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's here too, and Jerry's here too, because this one's so exciting. Jerry said, "I wouldn't miss this one for the world." And this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Unless I had some minor appointment or meeting that I could easily move.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  It's so great that Jerry just doesn't talk on this because we can say whatever we want and we can't hear what she's saying in response.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would be fun as if we were doing our fun poking at Jerry sometimes and she just cut in and said, "Go [bleep] yourself, guys."

• 2:25Josh Clark?

  Right. I mean, I'm sure that's what she's thinking.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Maybe we can beep that out. That'd be fun.

• 2:30Josh Clark?

  We'll see. But yes, she's excited about this one and she even said, "It's not going to be boring, or is it?" And we said, "Jerry, pipe down."

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Boring. Wasn't that a Simpsons song? Boring?

• 2:47Josh Clark?

  I don't know. It sounds like Reverend Lovejoy.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like Reverend Lovejoy did that in a sermon one time that led them into like a flashback or something. It's a very distant memory.

• 2:59Josh Clark?

  It sounds like you're talking about the Mr. Sparkle episode where Marge becomes the listen lady at church and Reverend Lovejoy's completely lost like his, I guess, pastoral sense. And the flashback you're talking about is when he traces it back to the first time he met Ned Flanders, who came to him for advice because he'd just done the bump and his rear end touched the rear end of another young man and he was up in arms about it.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  And maybe he was saying boring because it was a Ned Flanders flashback.

• 3:31Josh Clark?

  It's possible.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Somebody will know this one. I'm pretty sure it was Lovejoy, though.

• 3:36Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  At any rate.

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, at any. We should have said that in unison.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Oh, that would have been great.

• 3:43Josh Clark?

  We're talking today not about the Simpsons, although we just have, and that's great. We're talking today about a different kind of Cold War race between the USSR and the United States.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Got a lot less press.

• 3:57Josh Clark?

  Way less press. It got a lot less money and funding and, you know, attention and technology and engineers and brains thrown at it. But I also wonder, Chuck, if we downplay it because the USSR beat us so soundly at this particular race.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Hmm, maybe. Yeah, that's possible because, you know, of course, we're not talking about going to outer space. We're talking about boring, deep into the earth and digging a deep hole. And we're going to talk about that now in the form of the Kola Boar Hole, K-O-L-A.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  And this started in the 1960s, yes?

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  Well, yes, I think the idea started in the 60s, but they started drilling in the 7, in 1970. But let's not get ahead of ourselves because the Soviets were actually following the American lead. America made the first shot over the Soviets' bow by drilling into the earth first. Yeah, there you go. They undermined the Soviet morale by doing this.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  That's right. In 1958, we launched something called Project Moho. And this was like, hey, let's dig down to the mantle. Let's get a sample off of Guadalupe Island. Like, let's go through the ocean floor because the ocean's already deep. So let's just go ahead and start down there. And the, the name Project Moho is a bit of a sciency nerdy joke that plays on the Moho discontinuity or discontinuity. How would you say?

• 5:33Josh Clark?

  The second one.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Second one. And that is the, the Moho discontinuity is the region where the crust and the mantle meet up and say hello.

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  Right. And they were, I mean, this is theoretical. We should say it's named after a guy named A. I think it's Mohorovicic of Croatia.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  Who, back in 1909, 1909, mind you, was studying seismic waves from earthquakes so closely that he realized that at some point in the earth's crust, they actually like speed up. They hit some literal inflection point. And he was like, there's some sort of boundary there, maybe even a discontinuity, as Chuckle later say. And he, he, well, it became, I don't think he named it after himself, but it became called the Moho discontinuity. Like you said, it was hypothetical, it was theoretical, but one reason they named it that is because ultimately the goal was to drill right through the crust into the mantle. That's, that's the money lithosphere.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And you know what? Nothing turns me on more than scientifically speaking than early science where they, someone got it right.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 6:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Like, it's fun to talk about bloodletting and stuff like that. But I love it when somebody, like, way before they know about this stuff, has an idea and it kind of bores bears out. To be correct, I just love that stuff. So hats off to you, Croatian scientist, whose name I'm not gonna try.

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  If, if bloodletting is wrong, I don't want to be right, Chuck.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Very nice.

• 7:14Josh Clark?

  I also want to give a shout out to the group of scientists, the informal drinking group called the American Miscellaneous Society, or AMSOC.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they seem fun.

• 7:24Josh Clark?

  Uh huh. They came up with this idea in the 50s, and it was one of many ideas that they had, most of which were just totally ridiculous and outlandish, like towing icebergs to California to use for irrigation. This one actually had legs and it got funding from the National Science Association. And they got to drilling, like you said, in Guadalupe. And it got, they, it actually got funding from the National Academy of Sciences and they started drilling in, in, well, I guess what, the Gulf or the Pacific? Oh, God. Is Mexico an island?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Your desire for specificity gets you in so much trouble.

• 8:00Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, at any rate, they started drilling. Yeah. Wow, that felt really good. I've never tried that before. Huh.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, vagary is, is my secret weapon.

• 8:09Josh Clark?

  Okay. Thanks for letting me in on it. I, I think I've just turned over a new leaf.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, they got that funding. They made it down about just over 600 feet, which is not too bad. This, to me, is one of the more fun facts of the whole episode.

• 8:22Josh Clark?

  I thought you'd like this.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  John Steinbeck, the author, went along to, to document it.

• 8:28Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Like, who should we get? I don't know, Steinbeck's pretty good.

• 8:32Josh Clark?

  That's where he got the idea for the end of, of Mice and Men. There was a, one of the engineers accidentally dropped a, a sample, a very precious sample.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:44Josh Clark?

  And rather than let the rest of the crew kill the guy in a terrible fashion, he snuck up behind him and, and took his life.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  That's good. Wait, was Steinbeck the pearl?

• 8:55Josh Clark?

  Is that what his nickname was? The Pearl of America?

• 8:58Speaker 02

  No, did he write the pearl? Because that was about pearl diving. So I'm pretty sure that was Steinbeck. So he may, obviously had some sort of interest in going under the sea.

• 9:07Josh Clark?

  He did, actually. It's funny you say that because he was a, I think, a trained marine biologist? Or he was planning on going into marine biology and never really lost his love of it.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty cool.

• 9:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, nice call Chuck.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Awesome project. They pulled the plug in 1966, or I guess rather they stuck in the plug in 1966, when the US House of Representatives said, no more, no more drilling. And then four years later, the Soviets set off to do a deep drilling attempt when they drilled into the earth in Murmansk, Russia, this near the Norwegian border, near the Berenj Sea. And this is it. This is the Kola Super Deep Bore Hole, AKA the deepest hole ever dug by human beings.

• 9:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Still.

• 9:57Josh Clark?

  To this day, yeah. And it's named Kola because it's on the Kola Peninsula. K O L A, did you spell it?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:05Josh Clark?

  I love it. It's worth spelling again. And another time, K O L A.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  It's like a colonet.

• 10:11Josh Clark?

  Exactly. The thing is Chuck, is for as stupendous an achievement as this is, and if you're a geologist, if you're an earth scientist, basically of any sort, this is a stupendous achievement that they carried out in Soviet Russia in the 70s and 80s.

• 10:30Josh Clark?

  It's just been completely like left to rot. Did you see those pictures of it now?

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you'd walk right past the thing and not even know it's there.

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  Right. And the, the reason why you could walk right past is because it's, the hole, the hole, I was gonna say the whole hole, which makes sense, is only like nine inches in diameter. I think that's 23 centimeters. Yeah, 23 centimeters, right?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very, it's like I went caving that time and instead of walking into a big rocky cave, I like crawled into a small hole in the ground. I know. But that's the same deal, like nine inches is very small. It has got a plate secured over it with some old rusty bolts. And I think you found out they even etched on top what it was, but they got the number wrong, right?

• 11:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, as we'll see, the Cola super deep bore hole got all the way down to 12,262 meters into the earth's crust. And we'll tell you about just how deep that it will put in perspective in a second. But when they put the, when they wrote down how deep it was, they transposed the last two numbers. So they shorted it by 34, 36, 38 meters, maybe something around that.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you might be disappointed to know if you like took some, took a wrench out there. And you're like, I gotta drop a rock in that thing just to see if I can hear anything and took that plate off. Let's say you were able to, you wouldn't be able to drop anything in it because, just because of the earth's movement over time. It is no longer like, at least at that point, like a continuous hole. It's kind of shifted and yeah, filled up and kind of caved in in places and is full of gunk.

• 12:13Josh Clark?

  It is, and legend has it that if you had recorded the movements of the earth over that time span and played it back at fast speed, you would hear the earth going

• 12:26Josh Clark?

  as it subsided the deepest hole in the planet.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  The saddest of trombones.

• 12:32Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  All right, so you promised to talk about how deep this thing was.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  And in true Stuff You Should Know fashion, we're gonna have several examples. None of which are Big Macs, surprisingly.

• 12:43Josh Clark?

  No, but there is a Domino's pizza reference in there.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  I was hoping not to not mention that.

• 12:48Josh Clark?

  No, it's that specificity thing I have running through it. I'm just gonna say it, the diameter of the hole is about as big around as a small pizza from Domino's there.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  That's right. I think people are suspicious of all of our brand mentions, so I was trying to avoid those.

• 13:01Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:03Josh Clark?

  Come on, people.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Hey, you know, it's a thing. So this thing is deep, deep, deep. It is about 7.6 miles deep, about 12. 1,262 meters or 40,230 feet deep. Like we said, the deepest hole ever. It is lower than it's deeper than the lowest point of the Mariana Trench. That's a pretty fun one.

• 13:26Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  You got a height, height perspective?

• 13:30Josh Clark?

  Height wise, it's, it's deeper than the highest point on earth is tall. Mount Everest. In fact, it's so much deeper than Mount Everest is tall. You could put Mount Fuji on top of Mount Everest and the Cola bore hole would still be deeper than those two stacked on top of one another.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's it. That's a deep thing, everybody.

• 13:49Josh Clark?

  Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's one more that knocks my socks off. Can I say it?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  It's probably the one I scribbled through. So yes, let's hear it.

• 13:57Josh Clark?

  It is deeper than the height of the average cruising altitude of a commercial airliner, specifically Delta Airlines.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yep. I scratched right through that thing. I was like, we don't need that many examples.

• 14:11Josh Clark?

  I like that one.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  All right. So this went down into the outermost layer of the earth, which is continental crust. That is like what we're standing on right now. They wanted to reach the mantle. With their technology, they thought they could get down to 9.3 miles, but only made it 7.6.

• 14:27Josh Clark?

  That's right. Yes. And 9.3 miles sounds like a really weird goal, but it turns out that they were going for 15 kilometers.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. But they thought that was, I guess, out of reach if they figured 9.3 was reasonable.

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  So, yeah. And we, well, there was a, a article I found. It was, it's called Going Deep: Excavation, Collaboration, and Imagination at the Cola Super Deep Borehole. It was written by Charlotte Wrigley and published in Environment and Planning D, the journal, in 2023. And Charlotte Wrigley points out that the Cola Super Deep Borehole raised more questions than answered them. Because one of the things they thought is that this stuff is going to confirm all of the predictions that earth scientists had made over over time. And the fact that they thought they were going to get down 15 kilometers. And the reasons that they didn't get down that far.

• 15:22Josh Clark?

  Basically, it's like a great example of what the Cola super deep borehole did, which was take science and churn it up like a huge swath of the earth during an earthquake.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Uh, that's maybe a good time for a break.

• 15:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's do that.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back, everybody with more on this deep, deep hole.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how we're going to do all this.

• 15:55Josh Clark?

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• 16:58Josh Clark?

  Sure.

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  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.

• 17:09Josh Clark?

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• 18:56Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, we should probably just do a quick primer of eighth grade or science, maybe, of the layers of the earth, if you'll bear with me.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:06Josh Clark?

  So you've got the outermost layer, the crust, made up of the continental crust, which is what we stand on, and the oceanic crust, which is at the bottom of the sea. Beneath that, you've got the mantle. And by the way, the crust averages about 25 miles or 40 kilometers thick. After that, you've got the mantle, way thicker, 1,800 miles thick. Then you hit the outer core. You hit the inner core, which has a diameter of about 1,230 miles or 1,980 kilometers, which happens to be about the distance from Topeka, Kansas to Klondike Bluffs, Utah.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Okay, you said that's the radius?

• 19:42Josh Clark?

  That is, no, that's the diameter, the full diameter of the inner core.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 19:47Josh Clark?

  And then possibly, there's also a super liquid inner core that represents the centermost point of Earth.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  That's right. And that's where Ronnie James Dio resides.

• 20:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah?

• 20:00Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 20:02Josh Clark?

  I've got to give an obligatory shout out to the greatest tattoo ever.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 20:07Josh Clark?

  Remember that one of Dio on somebody's forearm?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 20:11Josh Clark?

  So for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, there's a tattoo out there of Ronnie Dio making like the devil horns, but the perspective is done in a way that it looks like Dio's arm turns into the person with the tattoo's arm and finger. So they make the devil horns and it looks like Ronnie Dio is, the perspective is just that amazing.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, the only problem is it involves the armpit.

• 20:36Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  You know?

• 20:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  It's really kind of the worst part of the body, to me.

• 20:41Josh Clark?

  The armpit?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Not a fan.

• 20:43Josh Clark?

  To me, there's other parts that are grosser.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Like the butthole?

• 20:48Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 20:50Josh Clark?

  Unless it's been recently bleached.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Between the toes? Oh, my God.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Coming from the guy who just said butthole, now I'm offended.

• 21:00Josh Clark?

  I got that from Bruno. Remember the Sacha Baron Cohen movie, Bruno?

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, you got what?

• 21:07Josh Clark?

  Anal bleaching.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Oh, is that the first time you've heard of that?

• 21:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I hadn't heard of it before.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Man, this is a great episode. I mean, we are talking about super deep holes. So what we're trying to say is while it is impressive to go down 7.6 miles, that is like about a third of the earth's crust alone. So they were trying to get to the mantle and that's just, I mean, that doesn't seem like it's possible that that could ever happen.

• 21:35Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  And it took years and years to do it. They started this project on May 24th, 1970. And by 1979, they had broken all digging records. By 1989, they had reached that depth of 40,230 feet, which was kind of it. The project was open for a little while longer after that. But for reasons we will go over soon, you'll learn why that was basically about as deep as they could go in 1989. They were like, we can't get any deeper.

• 22:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the one that it's like the reverse perspective that gets me is that they dug 0.2% of the entire distance to the center point of the earth. So like you said, it's impressive in some terms and other terms, it's just kind of a stupid hole, you know?

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, there's, if you're wondering like, why would they even do this? What's down there? There's a lot of reasons. There are a lot of deep holes all over the world. Most of those are for like, you know, mineral extraction or fossil fuel extraction or metals, you know, ores, things like that. There's the 100 year old Bingham Canyon Copper Mine in Salt Lake City.

• 22:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Pretty great, three quarters of a mile deep, but two and a half miles across. So that is a, it's no small pizza.

• 22:52Josh Clark?

  Now, there's another one called the Big Hole. It's in South Africa. It belongs to the Kimberley Diamond Mine. It's one of the largest holes in the world with the caveat of holes that were dug by human hands and no machinery. Which sounds pretty impressive unless you realize that you can threaten to cut off those people's hands if they don't use them to dig, then you can get it done. And I'm quite sure that's what happened.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did not even look into that. And I just had great certainty that that was a completely exploitive experience.

• 23:23Josh Clark?

  Well, even if it's not true, we should be forgiven because we're talking about South Africa diamond mines and giant holes dug by hand.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 23:33Josh Clark?

  It's a pretty, pretty reasonable surmization.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, surmization?

• 23:39Josh Clark?

  I don't know.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  I love it. All right. So that's one reason why you can dig down is, you know, for minerals and fossil fuels and stuff like that. But you can also just learn a lot about science. And we did learn a lot about science through, you know, the Soviets did and we did through our deep holes. But, you know, like you mentioned earthquakes, obviously geo hazards, they ended up learning a lot about that stuff. And we'll detail that a little bit. Geothermal heat and energy is another big one. Oh, I don't know, maybe about climate change and what's happened in the past that you could find from digging deep. Or maybe just like, hey, we know a lot more about outer space than we do about what's under our feet. So let's get down there and see what we can learn.

• 24:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the place that they were digging. So like, we usually dig ice cores to kind of get an idea of climate change.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:27Josh Clark?

  That's actually in the fairly recent past. We're talking on the order of tens to hundreds of thousands of years.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:32Josh Clark?

  The crust that they were digging into is pre Cambrian, meaning that it came together and was formed from anywhere between the origin of Earth to 538 million years ago. So it is super old. There's a lot of secrets that could be unlocked just by boring into it and looking at what comes up, right? So that's, that's a good reason. Also fossil fuels. You really can't look past, this is the 70s and 80s. So they're one of the stated goals of the KSB.

• 25:08Josh Clark?

  Was to basically figure out new techniques for drilling super deep oil wells essentially. Cause they said that it would be a great benefit to mankind. If we can learn how to dig out fossil fuels that are deeper that we can't currently reach.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. You know, I mentioned promise of earthquake talk. They did just come up a lot lately again. But they did learn a lot about that stuff. Like if you go really deep into these fault lines, you can detect, you know, these tiny minute quakes that you don't even feel up topside where we are. And, you know, all of that is usually about just learning how to get more accurate predictions in the future. You know, they do like computer simulations and stuff, but they need data input to do those simulations.

• 25:54Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  And these holes give you a great data for that kind of thing.

• 25:58Josh Clark?

  They also have figured out how to use all of that seismographic data to basically turn the resonance or the way they resonate through earth into images of inner earth itself.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Fun.

• 26:12Josh Clark?

  And that really kind of, I mean, you can get, if you're looking at mega colossal geology, there's no reason I would say to dig anymore. Like if we can do that kind of thing, I mean, dig to put, you know, deeper and deeper seismographs, but not to necessarily find out what inner earth is like, because we can image it like that in the same way that if you ever watch one of those cool archaeological shows on BBC, sometimes they'll have what looks like a, like a tamper, like a walk behind tamper. But it has a shotgun shell that you put into it and you shoot the shotgun shell. Yeah. It's like a seismographic imager and it shows you what's, you know, buried beneath the ground in that field or whatever.

• 26:53Josh Clark?

  This is the same thing, except they're taking the data, not from the resonance from a shotgun shell, but from the resonance of earthquakes in earth and turning those into images.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's super cool.

• 27:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  And, you know, we also want to just like pull stuff out of there and see what, what it looks like, what's going on down there, like what our deep, deep crust looks like. When, you know, they bring stuff out, it's generally pretty crumbly by that point and kind of falls apart because of atmospheric pressure changes and stuff like that.

• 27:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  So, you know, getting those pictures of what things look like in their sort of undisturbed state is beneficial.

• 27:30Josh Clark?

  Right. And if you're like, all these seem kind of flimsy, holes are, they're super deep holes are the greatest example of humans curiosity, just for the sake of knowing something new.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:43Josh Clark?

  Then you'll find just about anywhere.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Don't stifle that, people.

• 27:48Josh Clark?

  No. Give it the program.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  So another question you might have is, why, why did it take so long? And why is it so hard to do? And why aren't we able to just go deeper and deeper and deeper? Like, why'd they have to stop? Kind of all those big questions.

• 28:03Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  And it's, you know, they didn't realize until they got started, I don't think they thought it was gonna be a cakewalk, but they didn't realize until they really started digging down there that it's, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. And there's a lot of complications that can arise. They didn't at first. You found this YouTube site called Half is Interesting.

• 28:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  That were talking about the drill bits, like, they, they did a great job through granite. They have, you know, it's like a boring drill bit. It's like a, you know, like a windy cone with like teeth on the outside of it to, you know, to bore a hole. It's the kind of stuff they, they used to like bore subway tunnels and, you know, all kinds of tunnels through mountain. But in this case, they were going straight down. Those can only work for about four hours until you need to replace that bit, like the bit wears off. And that's only about 30 feet or so, depending on where you're digging and how hard that rock is.

• 28:52Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  And then you can't just pop it off like a drill you get from the hardware store.

• 28:56Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And pop on another one. Those bits took, you know, sometimes eight hours or more to change over. Then you start drilling, drilling again. And then, once they hit about 4.3 miles, it was pretty smooth sailing up into that point. Then it got much more dense. And then things got just really, really tough at that point.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah. The, the density of the rock really presented like a big problem for them. Like, up to that point, like you said, it was pretty easy. It was just monotonous. Now it was really hard. They were, they were on a frontier of vertical underground hole digging. And the reason why the density of the rock proved to be problematic is the, the denser rock would just push the, the.

• 29:41Josh Clark?

  Drill bit over into less dense rock. So it made it really hard to keep going straight down because the drill bit, it needs to get purchased, but it's way easier to get purchased in less dense rock than the dense rock it's trying to go directly vertically through. That created also lesser known thing about the Cola super deep bore hole. And that is, it is not a single straight vertical shaft.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's nice to think of it that way. Like they just drilled straight down. Uh, but when they encounter that really, really tough rock, the drill bit will like get kicked to the side.

• 30:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Starts going a different way. Um, you know, they tried to, you know, that presents problems in and of itself. Like they tried to use steel pipes to reinforce the sides as they went.

• 30:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Uh, ala Charlie Brunson in The Great Escape. Uh, but the deeper they went, um, those pipes, you know, were having trouble with standing the pressure. So they might break or they might kick out of line. And then they have to fill that hole, uh, up to where they were, go back above it and then drill down around it. And so the, uh, you know, it looks more like a Christmas tree when you're going down. Uh, and you know, if they had too much, uh, like a drill bit broke off completely, or, um, maybe the sides, uh, that piping caved in too much. Uh, and they couldn't get around it, they would have to go on like a fishing expedition to try and get that stuff out. And that would, that would knock them offline for, you know, days at a time.

• 31:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the, um, article by Charlotte Wrigley says that one of their fishing trips took five years. Five years. And so to get around the rock and also to keep from just standing around for five years, they would start another hole.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:22Josh Clark?

  But the reason why everybody calls it the super deep bore hole, not bore holes, is because there was, there is one central shaft and then the other holes branch off of that.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:34Josh Clark?

  Right? So, um, they, the depth that they got to 12,262 meters, that's the depth, the actual length that they drilled all over the place is, I'm not, I didn't see the actual, um, length, but it seems like it's a lot more than that.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 31:53Josh Clark?

  So they, they still, they kind of figured out a workaround for the rock density problem. And then I think at about 10,000 feet, less than, or just over 3,000 meters, they encountered an issue that they, they couldn't, they found they eventually couldn't overcome.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that was temperature. They, they kind of had guesstimated correctly up into that point, what the temperature was about gonna, you know, what it was, they thought it was gonna be at least. And they were like, this, that'll be fine. But once they reached that point, there was a big jump. It went from, what was the initial number, like 214 or so? Degrees all the way up to 356 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius. And that was about 12 clicks down, about seven and a half miles. And as you heard at the beginning, it only went down 7.6 miles. So it was that, it was the heat that got them.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  The heat, my God, the heat.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Not even the humidity, the heat.

• 32:55Josh Clark?

  Right. Although we will find it's possible that it's humid down there.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Oh, what a tease.

• 33:01Josh Clark?

  That's a really great example of how the super deep borehole like rewrote science is they were, they, they mapped it all out. They're like, we're gonna get to 15 kilometers because we'll be able to withstand the temperatures until then. And then all of a sudden it got way hotter, way faster. So much so that, that, that basically what happened with the pressure and the temperature together turned the rock in that area essentially plasticky. And not even like a hard plastic, like a Clorox bleach bottle. It was like, like a squishy plastic.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:39Josh Clark?

  And it was basically like nailing Jell-O brand gelatin to the, to the wall. That was what they were trying to do at that point.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, at that point, it was, yeah, it was over. They realized that they had gone as far as they could go. That was 1989, like I said at the beginning, they, they kept trying for another few years, I think until 1992.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  And then they're like, yeah, this is really over. And I think the whole project was officially sealed in 2005. And, but I mean, they had a lot of employees and stuff, you know, that were on the books. I think they weren't even paying them for a while, right?

• 34:16Josh Clark?

  Right. I think at its peak, there were like 700 people who were employed there. If you look at pictures of the place when it was in full swing, it looks like a huge factory with one single giant smokestack. And that's actually where the derrick for the drill bit went. But it's like a little mini town almost. But as it, as it got shut down further and further, and they finally fully mothballed it in 2008, those last few employees, yeah, they hadn't been paid in six months. But they, the reason why it really stopped in 1992 is because they had bigger fish to fry, which was their country had dissolved. And now they had to figure out where to get funding from. And it turned out that no one, none of the oligarchs were in any particular mood to keep funding the super deep bore hole,

• 34:59Josh Clark?

  especially because it hadn't gotten anywhere in four, three or four years.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a, you know, any stagnant project like, like that is not sexy anymore and very easy to shutter, I think.

• 35:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, unfortunately so.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  All right, maybe we should take a break and we'll talk about what we learned from this super deep bore hole.

• 35:34Josh Clark?

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• 37:40Speaker 02

  All right, so we actually discovered a lot, scientifically speaking, by going down that low. The first thing they did was like, well, I guess let's do the obvious thing and change our temperature maps. Because now we know at what point it gets like super, super hot. So who's got an eraser?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Ivan, you have an eraser. You have the only eraser in the room. Step forward and change those numbers. And they were like, that's a great start. And let's move on from here.

• 38:09Josh Clark?

  Right. So that was one thing. They also disproved something that had been around since the 30s. So we talked about the Moho discontinuity, which is between the mantle and the crust, way further down than they went. But they had expected to go through another discontinuity that was in the upper crust. It was upper crust. The Conrad discontinuity, which was also based on the same thing. This guy Conrad paying attention to seismographic waves suddenly accelerating or speeding up. When it hit this one point in the crust, it's like, there's a discontinuity there. I predict that it's a difference between granite and basalt, that we've got the granite up top,

• 38:51Josh Clark?

  and then it transitions into basalt. And where they, where they, where they meet, that's that discontinuity. And it turned out that, that that was not correct. And they were kind of mean about it. They called Conrad's descendants and told them and mocked them over the phone.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I thought it was Conrad Bain, and that they called Todd Bridges.

• 39:11Josh Clark?

  His heir?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Victor Conrad. You know what just occurred to me? I believe when I said discontinuity, I bet you that's how the Brits say it.

• 39:22Josh Clark?

  I'll bet you're right. I'd love to hear from our Brit friends about that.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  I would love to hear that, too.

• 39:27Josh Clark?

  We ought to ask Kyle.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. But then we'd have to send a voice message. And I wonder what Kyle sounds like, actually. I wonder what all of our writers sound like. We know what Dave sounds like because we met him.

• 39:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. That's, that's a great question. You just blew my top.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  What if, like, we love Livia so much, what if we got in touch with Livia and she was like, "Gentlemen!" She was like a Julia Child or something. That would be so fun.

• 39:49Josh Clark?

  It would be quite surprising.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  All right. So you teased liquid, very cheekily earlier. And they discovered that there was liquid water down there, like, much, much deeper than they thought water could exist. They found these cracks that had saline-filled water. And they were like, "This, this shouldn't be here. This is crazy." Like, liquid is actually flowing down here. The Soviets, like, released that information. And most of the world at first was like, "Yeah, right." Like, "We're gonna buy that coming from you."

• 40:19Josh Clark?

  Right. So, yeah, the first 14 years, from 1970 to 1984. The USSR, which was very famous for keeping its scientific progress and findings secret, it didn't share anything about this. I'm not even sure the outside world knew that they were digging a hole. And then in 1984, at a geological conference, like a world geological conference, that they actually held in Moscow, they announced that they had dug the world's deepest hole and blew everyone away. And it seems like the reason that they held this conference in 1984 was that they just had dug the world's deepest hole and they wanted to tell everybody.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's kind of funny that they didn't believe certain parts of it because it was coming from the former Soviet Union, you know?

• 41:06Josh Clark?

  Right. Well, this was full on Soviet Union too in 1984.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But, but yeah, they were like, how? How would this even happen? Like, explain to us how there's water.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what they found out was that, well, at first they thought that it was squeezed out of crystals, perhaps. It's a pretty good guess. But they found out the opposite was true. Because a study in 2023, they found out that when these continental plates subduct, which we've talked a lot about lately, like go under one another, and into the mantle in this case, they take water with them along the way. And that can make it all the way to that outer core. It interacts with that molten iron, I think, and creates this like, kind of, kind of filmy gook between the core. And then that presses into crystals.

• 41:52Josh Clark?

  Right. Did you know that you could press water into crystals?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  I didn't know any of this stuff.

• 41:59Josh Clark?

  No, I also didn't know you could get water from crystals. But think about like the mind boggling pressure that suggests are going on at this point in the earth, you know?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 42:10Josh Clark?

  It's so cool. Probably the biggest thing that everybody's socks were knocked off by was that they were like, oh yeah, by the way, seven kilometers down, almost four and a half miles, under the earth's surface, we found marine organism fossils dating back like two billion years. Top that, comrades.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Pretty fun. And I bet they were spooky looking, like a...

• 42:37Speaker 02

  You know, I saw a garfish the other day when I was paddle boarding in a lake. And I almost fell off because I looked down and it was right at the surface on my left. And you know, a garfish, this is like two and a half feet long.

• 42:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  I reacted with such a start, I went, oh my God, that I lost my balance and almost fell off the paddleboard.

• 42:57Josh Clark?

  Me.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  And then I had a fear of like, you know, this thing was some prehistoric creature that was going to attack me once I was in the water, which is of course not true. That thing was out of there the second it saw me.

• 43:07Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  But I just imagine these fossils down there, I mean, these things had to have like teeth. They had to be creepy, right?

• 43:14Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I didn't see any pictures of them. Two billion years ago, I'm not sure.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  I've got a picture in my mind. It looks like an alligator gar.

• 43:23Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's great. Let's go with that.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  All right.

• 43:26Josh Clark?

  But the thing is, is this doesn't suggest as a lot of sites who sensationalize this super deep borehole, as we'll see. This doesn't mean that these things were ever dwelling like four and a half miles beneath the earth's surface.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 43:41Josh Clark?

  These were embedded two billion years ago and then carried down through the cross toward the mantle as part of that amazing plate tectonic process that keeps the earth going.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, what I wonder is if, I mean, this was started in 1970, discontinued in 1989. That was a long time ago. And I wonder if it's possible with today's technology to reach the mantle? And if anyone is interested in that anymore?

• 44:10Josh Clark?

  I wondered if it was, if I think I'm sure that there are geologists and scientists who are still quite interested in doing that.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  They want to.

• 44:18Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  They want to. The funding dollars.

• 44:21Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah. Because I don't know that there's much, um, much to be gained from, you know, reaching the mantle if you're a fossil fuel company. And that's if you're not getting money from governments for digging deep holes, you're getting it from fossil fuel companies. They probably, I would estimate fund 90% of the holes that are being dug around the world right now.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  They're like, is there a giant bag of money down there?

• 44:47Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah. They're like, no, no, but.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Not exactly. Well, you've lost my ear.

• 44:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. They're like, get rid of this guy. So, um, yes, though, it's possible that some scientists will make it to the mantle. And the reason why is because they will be drilling not through, you know, super thick parts of the crust, but thin, thin parts of the oceanic crust.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Right. And that counts.

• 45:13Josh Clark?

  It definitely counts because you're still reaching the mantle.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:17Josh Clark?

  No, there's some places where the crust is so thin. How thin is it? It's so thin, it's only five and a half kilometers thick. And that is, yeah, that's, um, you know, almost a third of the depth of, of the Cola Super Deep.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's 1960s level digging.

• 45:35Josh Clark?

  Exactly. So, um, there was actually a group that, that I guess was attempting that. They dug in a site off the coast of Costa Rica, uh, they dug hole 1256D. They need to step up their naming convention, I think.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Maybe that stands for Domino's.

• 45:53Josh Clark?

  It probably doesn't say sponsored. The Noid was on board.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:58Josh Clark?

  In the early 2000s, they, uh, they started digging and I guess the Noid got bored and stopped giving them money.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, how far did they get? Uh, stopped at 1.25 kilometers.

• 46:11Josh Clark?

  Which is so deep, so shallow, we're not even going to bother translating that into miles.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Exactly. But kind of one of the fun things is they, they removed an intact piece of crust. And I guess dipped it in some marinara.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  I couldn't resist. This went so off the rails with the, with the Domino's theme that I really tried to avoid and then embraced.

• 46:32Josh Clark?

  If you like their marinara, you should try their garlic butter dipping sauce.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Man, why don't they sponsor us?

• 46:37Josh Clark?

  I don't know. They really should.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  These were ads, everybody.

• 46:40Josh Clark?

  I, uh, I would probably do Domino's ads for free pizza.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  I am ashamed. Well, not ashamed. I'm proud to say maybe I haven't had a Domino's pizza since probably college.

• 46:50Josh Clark?

  That's, uh, that's our go-to pizza if we get giant chain pizza.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Really?

• 46:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I still love Domino's.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  I guess I don't get any giant chain pizza, not as a stand. We just have so many good pizzerias in Atlanta, all over the place.

• 47:03Josh Clark?

  Yes, that is true. There are not as many in Florida.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 47:08Josh Clark?

  I don't know why, but there's not. But yes, Atlanta is filthy rich with really good pizza places.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say that like, you, me, and Moma wouldn't stand for anything that's doesn't get there in 30 minutes.

• 47:20Josh Clark?

  Or it's free.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  I'm hungry now, Josh. You know that.

• 47:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, there's just not that many around here.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  All right, well, maybe we can take a meeting with sales and turn this into liquid gold.

• 47:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, can I have your free Domino's if that's how they pay us? Okay, sweet.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  We should mention this last little addendum. It was kind of fun. The Germans, of course, they tried to dig a deeper hole in the 90s, and they actually got to some higher temperatures. They, their bits, the German bits, were able to withstand 500 degrees Fahrenheit or 260 degrees Celsius. So that was a big breakthrough. But they stopped at about 5 and 1/2, or 5.6 miles down, or 9 kilometers.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  But the cool part about this is, they got a Dutch artist named Lotta Geven. I'm not sure if that's pronounced right. She lowered her microphone down in there, obviously protected by, you know, heat shields and stuff like that.

• 48:19Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Dropped it down that German borehole and picked up a very rumbling sound that science still cannot explain. And she said it made her feel very small. First time in my life, this big ball that we live on came to life and it sounded haunting. And she said some people thought it sounded like hell, or like the planet was breathing. So it's like, you know, that came from an old Russian sort of suspicion that they were digging into hell, right?

• 48:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was an urban legend that started about the time they stopped digging at the borehole that said that the reason that they stopped digging was because they had punctured through the roof of hell, and that this, that somebody had lowered a microphone down, and they captured the sounds of tormented souls in hell screaming.

• 49:10Josh Clark?

  And there are actual YouTube videos that present this seriously. And you can go hear it and it's the most ridiculous thing you'll hear today. But also want to point out that, um, what is it? Lottie Gervin? Givin?

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Heard, like you said, that scientists can't explain the sound that she actually did record. That's not to say like that's a supernatural sound. There's just like, there's so many processes going on down there. And we so little understand that part of the earth, we can't say what, what makes that sound. But we think it's a pretty cool sound and maybe someday we will be able to explain it. What they are quite sure about is that is not the sounds of hell.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, because that's not a real place.

• 49:55Josh Clark?

  I, yeah, you should go listen to our episode on hell, people. It was a pretty good one.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, you know, imagine that there's just sounds like a, a groan or a, you know, something moving around probably makes a sound, right?

• 50:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It, it sounds really, really industrial, but there's no pattern to it. So like a, a dis patterned industrial sound is what it sounds like. And it's still, it's pretty faint.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  I bet some German musician turned that into a beat or something.

• 50:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:24Josh Clark?

  Uh, let's see. I think that's about it. Yeah, that's about it.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Great.

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, that was the Cola Super Deep Orhole, everybody. Hope you enjoyed it. Sorry for the anal bleaching references. And, um, I guess since I mentioned anal bleaching again, it's time for listener mail.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  In fairness, you can't talk about the Cola Super Deep Orhole without talking about that.

• 50:49Josh Clark?

  Agreed.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  You know? Uh, all right. I'm gonna call this, uh, feedback from the Mash episode. Hey, guys. Uh, thank you for the episode on Mash. I was seven years old in 1972 and I really loved the show so much that I learned to play the theme song on the piano. Uh, my parents were too happy to find out that the song discussed suicide, but I don't even think I knew what that was at the time. Uh, also there was at least one episode, because you guys talked about the camp moving, where there was a bug out where the camp moved closer.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Or farther from the front lines. And we got someone else that wrote in that said the same thing. And that's sort of the joke on the show was that it was like, kind of exactly the same.

• 51:26Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Cause they clearly didn't move the set. And then Dana Carson from Cleveland also says this, "It never occurred to me actually that BJ and Hawkeye were alcoholics. I just assumed they drank to pass the time." Yeah, sure. Just like alcoholics.

• 51:42Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I threw that word around, you know, it was just sort of supposed to be funny. Maybe they were just enjoyed drinking in the hellish war they were in to pass the time.

• 51:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think it was a device to just show like you had to self medicate or else you'd go crazy from the horror of the whole thing.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  And that is Dana Carson from Cleveland, who says in a PS, I've been to Toledo and Tony Paco's many times.

• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Awesome. Way to go, Dana. Right?

• 52:10Speaker 02

  Dana.

• 52:10Josh Clark?

  Great. Thanks a lot, Dana. There's actually Dana Corporation in around Toledo, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe it's named after you, Dana. You should go find out.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 52:20Josh Clark?

  If you have a name like a corporation around Toledo, say like Libby or Owens or Jeep, we want to hear from you. You can email us at [email protected].

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 52:52Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  Welcome to the haunted library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From Gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find the haunted library wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:54Speaker 06

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.