Technology
Scientists drill ‘world’s deepest ocean hole’ five MILES deep near site of Japan’s Fukushima disaster
THE DEEPEST manmade ocean hole in the world has just been drilled off the coast of Japan.
Scientists created the hole in the hope of understanding the reasons for past earthquakes better.
The hole was dug using a long thin drill[/caption]
The new hole is 26,322 feet (5 miles) deep and was created on May 14.
It’s in the Pacific Ocean along with the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth.
The Mariana Trench formed naturally and is 36,201 feet deep.
The deepest manmade whole in the world is the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which was drilled into the Earth on the border between Russia and Norway.
Sediment from the new hole could teach us about past earthquakes[/caption]
The Kola Borehole is 40,230 feet.
The new ocean hole is located near the epicentre of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake that resulted in the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.
The hole has revealed samples of debris from older earthquakes.
Nobuhisa Eguchi, the director of the operations department at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, told Vice World News: “The deeper you go into the ocean, the older the samples get.
“During earthquakes, bits of the earth fall into the ocean and settle on flat seabed.
“And that continues to collect, which is why we aimed to go to those depths.”
The hole was created with a 40-foot-long piston corer, which is essentially a long heavy tube that can drill into the Earth and extract samples.
The drill is controlled from a Japanese ship called the Kaimei.
The scientists also broke the record for the deepest sub-sea level sample ever taken.
That sample is 124-foot-long and could teach us about earthquakes that happened before humans were around.
Previously, the world’s deepest water drill record was set in 1978 who collected sediment from the Mariana Trench at 23,077 feet deep.
What was the Fukushima nuclear disaster?
The nuclear accident happened on March 11, 2011 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi site in northern Japan.
It is second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power generation.
A tsunami that was triggered by an earthquake damaged the backup generators at the plant.
All three of reactors that were operating were successfully shutdown, but the loss of power caused the cooling systems to fail with in the first few days afterwards.
The government was forced to declare an 20-km evacation zone and nearly 230,000 residents had to flee.
Most read in Science
In other news, Japan has said radioactive water waste collected at the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will have to be dumped in the ocean.
SpaceX is about to rocket 128 glow-in-the-dark baby squid into space for Nasa.
And, an electric Moon buggy that will take astronauts around the lunar south pole is being created by Lockheed Martin and General Motors.
What are your thoughts on the ‘world’s deepest ocean hole’? Let us know in the comments…
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk
