After almost two months at sea, researchers return having failed at their goal to drill to the center of Earth.
Called the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Sampling (JOIDES) expedition 360, the mission set out to drill 1,300 meters deep below the Indian Ocean floor in an attempt to reach Earth’s mantle – something many have tried since the 1960s but failed to accomplish.
In a blog post, the team highlighted a feat despite falling short of their 1,300-meter (more than 4,000-feet) goal.
“[W]e did drill the deepest ever single-leg hole into hard rock (789 m), which is currently the 5th deepest ever drilled into the hard ocean crust,” the team wrote, adding that they also acquired the longest (2.85 meters or about 112 inches) and widest (18 centimeters or about 7 inches) single hard rock pieces ever retrieved by the International Ocean Discovery Program and those that came before it.
Why target drilling to this depth? This is where scientists suspect the mantle rises above the Moho border, where the crust and mantle typically meet. They seek to extract so-called gabbros, or rocks resulting when slow-cooling magma is caught under the surface of Earth and crust-mantle transition.
These rocks will hopefully offer a better understanding of the process creating mid-ocean ridge basalt, as well as to know more about magma and Earth’s mantle, crust, and melt.
A key here is Earth’s paleoclimate. The ocean drilling and the resulting samples will help researchers evaluate many historical periods relating to paleoclimate and change in Earth’s constitution, such as plate tectonics and the dinosaurs’ disappearance.
This isn’t the first attempt of the project, which involved as many as 122 individuals. Its vessel, the JOIDES Resolution, had previously tried to drill 4,265 feet deep in the Atlantis Bank gabbroic massif, a stretch of ocean floor found in Africa. The drilling was only 2,588 feet down.
This project vessel started to work for the Ocean Drilling Program in 1985, which continued until 2003 – the point when the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international mission, began.
JOIDES Resolution was named after HMS Resolution, the ship commanded over two centuries ago by Capt. James Cook and explored the Pacific and Antarctic regions.
Unlike Capt. Cook’s scientific exploration, however, JOIDES wonders what lies beneath the ocean floor. Research continues 24 hours a day, with the crew mainly made up of marine and ocean drilling professionals to successfully reach the elusive goal. See the video below for a peek into life at Expedition 360.
