20 kilometers into the Earth's crust! Unleash unlimited energy

The earth contains a huge amount of energy, and humans are only taking the energy of its skin to use.

Most of the energy used by human beings is fossil energy, which is obtained by ancient organisms through a series of changes, and is essentially the energy of the earth's crust surface.

However, more of the Earth's energy is concentrated under the crust.

Many of the natural disasters we experience, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, etc., are the release of energy from the Earth's interior.

The scary thing is, it's just a little bit of energy released by the Earth, like turning over in your sleep.

Therefore, if mankind can harness the energy of the earth's interior, then we will be completely out of the energy crisis.

In the last century, the Soviet Union pioneered a plan to reach the center of the Earth, but stopped short at about 10,000 meters.

The three largest drilling depths are at 12,345 m for Odoptu OP-11, 12,289 m for Ashosin and 12,263 m for Kola.

However, according to media reports, US company Quaise Energy is expected to break this record in the future by extending the depth to 20,000 meters, or 20km!

The wave force of drill

The reason humans get stuck at 12,000 meters is because of the drill.

Take, for example, the last 263 meters of the Kola borehole, a project of the Soviet Union, which was drilled for 10 years, from 1983 to 1993.

Because the deeper you drill, the denser the rock, the hotter the friction between the bit and the rock, causing the bit to break.

The limit to human drilling pace is the quality of the drill bit, the traditional metal drill, no matter how innovative, can only be superimposed on their original hardness.

As a result, the drilling depth breakthrough value does not open up a huge gap.

But Quaise Energy's drill bit is different. Instead of using contact drilling, it uses waves.

The head of the drill sends out a vibration wave that resonates with the rock, causing the temperature inside the rock to rise in a straight line, and eventually the rock is heated and melted away.

It works a bit like a microwave oven, which uses the vibrations of waves to heat food, except that the waves heat rocks.

The nice thing about this bit is that it doesn't wear out, it can go all the way down, and the initial plan is to drill to a depth of 20 kilometers.

Quaise Energy has received $40 million in funding and will soon begin its new geocentric project.

So what is the energy in the Earth's interior?

Structure of the earth

The earth is made up of three major parts: the crust, the mantle and the core.

The crust is the thinnest and smallest part of the Earth, accounting for only 1.55 percent of its total volume and 0.8 percent of its total mass, similar to the Earth's skin.

The average depth of the Earth's crust is 17 kilometers. Previous drilling has not broken through the Earth's crust, but Quaise Energy's 20 kilometers is the next level.

Beneath the crust is the mantle, which accounts for the largest proportion of the earth's material. Its volume occupies 82.26% of the entire Earth's volume, and its thickness reaches more than 2800 kilometers.

Because it's so thick, the mantle doesn't have the same density and state at different locations.

So it's divided into two levels. The upper mantle is nearly as dense as rock, and at its very top there is an asthenosphere about 180 kilometers thick.

The asthenosphere can be thought of as molten rock, at temperatures between 700 and 1300 ° C, where magma originates.

The wave drill is 20 kilometers away from the asthenosphere, but it's at the Moho interface, the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle, 20 to 70 kilometers below the surface, and the asthenosphere is 70 to 250 kilometers away.

The deepest energy in the Earth is the core, which is also the hottest and densest place on the planet.

The Earth's core has a maximum density of 12.5 grams per cubic centimeter, an average density of 10.3 grams per cubic centimeter, and a temperature between 4,000 and 6,800 degrees Celsius.

Since humans have never been to the Earth's core, it can only be assumed that the most abundant elements in the core are iron, cobalt and nickel, which are the main components of magnets and hence the Earth's magnetic field.

The source of energy in the Earth's core is partly thought to be nuclear fusion, because iron, cobalt and nickel are just at the limit of their ability to form atoms on their own, namely elements 26 through 28 in the periodic table.

Some scientists believe that it is nuclear fission, because the Earth's crust contains uranium, plutonium and other radioactive elements, so the earth's core should also have.

So what kind of Energy is Quaise Energy looking for when it's drilled 20 kilometers into the earth's mantle?

"Infinite" energy

Quaise Energy wants the Earth's heat, or geothermal.

If you go down from the surface, you increase the temperature by 2 degrees for every 100 meters you go down, then 20 kilometers underground, it's 400 degrees.

Converting this heat into electricity can replace the current thermal power generation.

According to the scientists' calculations, the entire Earth has more than 1 × 10^19 TJ of thermal energy, which would be enough for 62 billion years if the Earth's 2018 coal consumption is calculated at 8 billion tons.

There's only enough coal in the Earth's crust to last about 200 years.

It can be seen that the energy of the earth is, to some extent, "infinite".

Since the sun doesn't live to be more than 60 billion years old, it currently has about 5 billion years left.

In other words, the Earth's heat energy can persist until the sun "explodes", is not "infinite"?

So, the 20 kilometers of the wave drill is the key to unlocking the Moho interface, and the battle to get more heat from the Earth.

However, some scientists have pointed out that the energy of the earth is very large, but these heat is also very fast.

The core cooling

Since humans can't get into the core, or even the mantle, the true structure of the core is in the form of hypotheses. Scientists also disagree about the source of energy in the Earth's core.

Some scientists believe that the Earth's core is a huge nuclear reactor, if it is nuclear fission reaction, then radioactive elements are given time.

The Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and based on the half-lives of some elements, that should take about 2 billion years to complete.

If the inner core of the Earth is a fusion reaction, then according to the laws of the natural synthesis of elements in the universe, iron, cobalt and nickel are already the limit of fusion, only a few can continue to synthesize under harsh conditions, and most atoms will end up here.

After the completion of the reaction, the Earth's core gradually cooled, and the temperature of the core dropped sharply, and finally became an icy iron core.

Without the power of the core, the Earth would begin to cool, the core would contract, causing the Earth's surface to collapse, and the Earth would shrink.

Some say Mars could be what Earth's core looked like when it cooled.

Mars is thought to have been similar to Earth in the past, with life and oceans.

More scientists think Mars lost its water because it never had an atmosphere to protect it.

But some scientists believe that Mars used to be about the same size as Earth, but that its core cooled before Earth's, causing the planet to shrink.

The most abundant element in the Martian soil is iron, which gives it its red surface.

Why does Mars have so much iron?

Scientists believe that Mars' core reached its limit of nuclear fusion and could not fuse any further.

The energy in Mars's core is gone, and the planet's magnetic field, atmosphere, and water have collapsed and shrunk.

All that was left was a cold, dry red planet.

But even if the core cools, there's still about 2 billion years left, which is enough time for humans to reach higher dimensions.

Physicist Michio Galai once said that humans could reach level 1 civilization in 100 to 200 years.

Level 1 civilization means that humans can use all of the Earth's energy, which is the 1 × 10^19 TJ thermal energy mentioned above.

After reaching level 1 civilization, humans need another 1,000 to 2,000 years to become Level 2 civilization, which fully uses the energy of the sun.

Humans will create Dyson spheres that capture all the energy of the sun, not just the solar energy received by the Earth.

When we reach the third level of civilization, the solar system is not worth mentioning to us. The Milky Way galaxy is our home, and all the stars are our "minerals".

It takes about 150,000 years to get from level 2 to level 3.

Put that in perspective, two billion years is enough time to leave the Earth.

If wave drilling is successful, it will be the most important step towards Level 1 civilization