We have never , ever drilled into the mantle that lies just beneath Earth ’s cheekiness . This calendar month , however , scientists are desire to set the steering wheel in motion to change all that .
Right now a drilling ship called theJOIDES Resolution(Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling ) is on its manner to theAtlantis Bankon the South West Indian Ridge of the Indian Ocean . Here , the ship will attempt to drill 1.5 kilometers ( 0.9 miles ) into Earth ’s crust in a safari known as the Slow diffuse Ridge Moho project , or SloMo .
The mission , co - led by Professor Chris Macleod from Cardiff University and Henry Dick from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts , is just the precursor to a much more grandiose job , though . In the 2020s , the team plans to utilise another oil production ship – theChikyu – to become the first to ever founder into Earth ’s mantle .
" We know on this Earth and we ought to know something about what happen beneath us , " Walter Munk , an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla , California , toldNature News . Munk led a previous run out pleasure trip to drill into the curtain know as Project Mohole in 1961 , while Dick was also part of an inauspicious - fated attempt in 1997 , but there are gamey hopes for this newfangled cause .
The SloMo project is being run by the International Ocean Discovery Program ( IODP ) as part ofExpedition 360(#exp360 ) , and is heading to this particular region because the mantle is believed to have swelled up beneath the freshness , make water it more accessible . ordinarily the mantle is below the Moho , a feature at the gall - chimneypiece boundary , but here it is above , at reachable depths of up to 2.5 kilometer ( 1.6 nautical mile ) – while the Moho may be lower , although still accessible , at about 5 to 5.5 kilometre ( 3.1 to 3.4 miles ) compared to tens of klick below land .
In this initial jaunt , also known as theIndian Ridge Moho Expedition , the drill from the specialized ship will go only into the Earth’s crust of Earth and seek to return a sample . Subsequent expeditions in the coming year , as too soon as 2018 but with no fast dates yet put , will then attempt to go deeper .
One of the key goals of this expedition will also be to study the levels ofserpentinizationat these astuteness , rock created by an fighting source of heat such as magma from deeper within Earth , which is unite to an teemingness of germ . " If there ’s far more serpentinite down there , goodness knows how much of it has microbes in it , " Professor MacLeod toldBBC News .
Image in textbook above : The SloMo project , courtesy ofNature News
SloMo will run until January 30 , and if this initial phase angle is successful , it could be a crucial step towards the decades - long dream of returning a sample distribution from Earth ’s mysterious cape .
Edit : TheKola Superdeep Boreholewent 7.5 miles ( 12 kilometers ) into the solid ground , but as it was over land it did not cave in into the mantle . The SloMo project , if successful , will be the first to ruin into Earth ’s mantel .
