“This is my first journey to the center of the earth.”
boring science
The future of geology, and perhaps even renewable energy, is literally heating up.
Scientists in Iceland are undertaking an ambitious project to drill straight into a magma chamber. Not only would this provide the first direct look at an ocean of molten rock miles below the Earth’s surface, but it could potentially usher in a revolution in geothermal energy. This technology will be available anywhere on the planet with unprecedented efficiency.
“This is the first journey to the center of the Earth,” said Björn Sol Guðmundsson from Reykjavík’s Geothermal Research Cluster (GEORG). new scientistcharacterized the potential payoff as “boundless energy.”
swallowed by magma
As important as magma is to understanding Earth’s geology, discovering it is an incredibly rare feat, and even more so to obtain direct, hard data about it. . Until now, intentionally drilling directly into a magma chamber has never even been attempted.
“The proposal to drill into magma is really impossible,” said John Eichelberger, a volcanologist at the University of Alaska. new scientist. “People will laugh at you and say there will be an eruption. Besides, there will be no eruption found.”
But by an incredible stroke of luck, scientists made it happen. In 2009, Icelandic energy company Landsvirkjun’s geothermal drilling project unexpectedly crashed into a magma chamber near the country’s fearsome Krafla volcano. That the crew was not immediately wiped out by the volcanic eruption was reassuring evidence that drilling into magma could be safe.
In 2013, the same team that made this discovery, led by Bjarni Pálsson from Landsvirkjun, launched the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project to replicate the success. Excavation is scheduled to begin in 2026, with the primary goal of advancing our understanding of magma.
“We don’t have direct knowledge of what a magma chamber looks like, which of course is crucial to understanding volcanoes,” said Pao Papale from Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. new scientist.
power up
Kuomintang scientists plan to deploy a series of sensors inside the magma to continue measuring its temperature and other properties.
“We would like to be able to at least measure the temperature directly, but this has never been done before,” said GEORG’s Hjalti Poul Ingolfsson. new scientist.
The key themes are observing how rocks melt into magma and looking for indicators of impending volcanic eruptions, which are notoriously difficult to predict.
Perhaps most interestingly, the Kuomintang borehole could advance renewable energy. The hope is to develop a new form of geothermal power generation called near-magmatic geothermal, which harnesses the extreme heat of lava to heat water to even higher temperatures than is possible with current technology. It is something.
But this potential clean energy miracle depends on the National Party bringing new insights into how to reliably find these magma chambers. But if you found it first, you’ve probably already done the hard part.
Learn more about geothermal: Google begins experimenting with new geothermal power plant