[...] 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.
Hover text is "If you're thinking 'Wait, a giant crystal cave in Mexico? What's that?' then I'm SO excited for the image search you're about to do."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Crystals
I"m excited for them too!
Haha I definitely googled that, and I was not disappointed
The story of the hand-dug well: https://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/places/utilities/woodin...
You cannot convince me that something ridiculous wasn't covered up wrt Deepwater Horizon.
Lake Baikal sediment layer almost as deep as the Mariana Trench:
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.
Oh right. Basically China has its own tectonic plate, with Baikal on the rift, top left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amur_plate I did not know that.
Explain xkcd has links to the Wikipedia articles for each hole.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3266:_Holes
Site down?
The Wikipedia page on borehole doesn’t mention Deep Water Horizon at all.
And Wikipedia says this one is over 12,000m deep,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Shaheen_Oil_Field
The >12km number is length, not depth:
> 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.
Y'all done hugged it to death
It was erroring out 12h ago.
I forget how cool Lake Baikal is until it shows up randomly and I'm reminded to go look it up again.
What are all those oops for?
collapses and floods it looks like. Here's the oops for the Pantai Remis mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Ma0SVjMHA
Wow, that's pretty "oops" if I ever saw it!
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur
What's at 12,000 meters deep? What are they afraid of?
There's a documentary about that, in the form of the game 'Motherload'
https://www.crazygames.com/game/motherload
I played that game way back when - I highly recommend it.
conveniently there is a xkcd for that too https://xkcd.com/1330/
I had never heard of Mponeng Gold Mine. Terrifying.
Did you not scroll over to see the even more massive Kola Superdeep Borehole?
Yes, but there aren't any people in that one.
> even more massive Kola Superdeep Borehole?
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