Show D p l L Ar Pits Go Down Toward T o lard the Center C More JI n a aMile aMite Mite Mile But the Natural Chasms Ch In rr Beds Are Five Times That Depth D Back in the days when ben people really thought it bl to a note hote through tINt the earth t to China there used sed i to be much over would become e oC ot a man who to happened to fall Into the hole would he stop down after awhile and begin to fall up to the other of the earth I or 01 would gravity keep Mm oscillating back and forth like a pendulum coming to rest Now nonsensical as this may seem we are actually ap apr r a condition when a 8 somewhat some n what hat similar question must be asked Several holes have been dug deep into iato the earth to encounter unter phy physical teal conditions coat very from those tho e usually found on the surface by the water and its pressure ure it yet bears bean a certain relation to th the condi condition tion of deep holes in tile the when the general genera effect e t parth crust Is scon considered tie theory Of the earths earth 11 r tet looked at ly it Seem m that these deep deen sea e pits should be bevery very hot and full of boiling water since they are nearer to the center of the earth than aay y other ot r Jut ut in inthis this matter ef t there is much to be said Mid tM th tl eon on dw tins of the L e rock in which te holes are minx Also it must be noted at what depth sea level each hole starts r of Temperatures Tomp As th these e wells all aU geth hotter and hot 6 II TOft fj t s sj sj si j j i S Lz I I DEEP SEA ROLES HOLES THE BLACK SHOW LOCATION OF DEEPEST HOLES Some SonIe of these e holes hole are in the form of welte which are a II mile deep in the old older er r rock Others extend even farther down into salt beds and furnish this most widely used flavoring commodity Still others other are mines m Ines which men work at a level as 88 deep as that of the wells II And in this ocean beet bed there are holes so 80 deep that if the highest mountains I in the world were to be dropped into them there would sun still be plenty of room for ships to tv sail 11 safely s fely over their summits Near Pittsburgh burg Pa a well has been dug Aug feet deep that is 22 feet more than a mile mUe Near Wheeling W Va they are sinking a Ii well which is now within a few hundred feet of a mile deep At last report they had reached the level At Sperenberg near Berlin Germany they are driving a a hole in gypsum beds which is already feet deep and tl d it is getting gettin deeper every day At near Leip Leipzig Leipzig zig they are taking salt from a well which hi even deeper than the Pitts Pittsburg burg well ell This hole is feet deep The Red Re 1 Jacket shaft of the Calumet Hecla mine in the Lake Superior cop copper copper per district is a mile mUe deep dee and men work In the shaft the Tam Tamarack Tamarack arack mine has a shaft nearly as deep as the Red Jacket But at itz Hz near in eastern Silesia there Is a well which is now feet deep or exactly exact hundred feet more than a mile and a 8 quarter They are still boring and it is the intention to togo too go o down feet or one ne and two thirds miles when some interesting scientific experiments wi l be made Un Unquestionably Unquestionably questionably this is now the deepest artificial hole in the world But in this race far into the earths core there are other competitors other well holes which are not quite as deep as th big ones but which are press pressing pressing ing them hard They axe are mostly in inGerman Germany German At Leith near Altona AUona there is a hole feet deep At Eu near they have gone ne down don feet ff et At in Mecklenburg they are still digging at SH feet At i near Halle feet has been reached ached I At Posen drills are working kt 8 24 feet while at ne near Aschersleben they have haye punched a hole in the earth feet deep At St Louis Mo we have hae a wen well which will stand compari comparison son with these German wells It is over oer half a mile deep deel and several of them have Ave pae ed the Ule mark Conditions Encountered In Depths Many of these t deep dee holes have been I ado the subject of scientific tel ter as they are driven deeper and deep deeper er the outcome let is that as asso soon so n as a sufficient depth is reached natural steam will be encountered or if the well be dry water can CRi be pum ed in inand and returned in the form of marketable E table vapor There Theft is nothing chimerical in inthis this idea since many buildings in sev several eral parts of the orld are heated with naturally warm well vater The Th hos hospital ho hopital pital at Crenelle l and large factories in are notable examples Also the geyser eyser shows how heat cat rom the earths interior may manifest gt itself it elf forcibly on the surface Hence e temper temperature measurements are made in all of the wells as they hey are drilled In this country the heat increases s on the average about one degree for every sixty feet of depth deth It was so in jn the Pittsburg Pitts burg well the temperature of which was measured by r ViI Wil William liam lam Hallock of Columbia college This was originally merely an ordinary oil well put own by the Tore fr jot t Oil on company Several thousand housand feet tad had been drilled before the oil sani tegan to yield sufficient t commercial commer ial returns r i and then the they had gone so far and the tube showed such a decil d use I e in temperature it was decided to dedicate the well eU to science So the drilling was continued and Professor Hallock was asked to make a test Meanwhile as a member of the States geological survey suney he had been b n conducting some measurements in the well near Wheel Wheeling Wheeling ing He was thus able to compare one with the other The method of the tempera temperature ture was simple ther thermometers thermometers were ere placed in iron buckets three feet long and three inches in diameter A bucket holding thermometers eters was hung on the end of a steel wire and let down into the hole feet when another bucket was tied on and the lowering was continued Measure Measurements Measurements ments were ere thus made at various depths It wits tedious work and when the lower depths were reached it required nearly an hour to get the buckets back to the surface once the theme measurement me had been made On the way down in the Pittsburg well nat natural natural ural gas was encountered tapped and used for a time to drive the machinery that worked the drills In this instance the well furnished power to dig itself out Comparative Temperature Obtained Meantime Professor Hallock sent to Germany for the measurements which were being taken in the and the Sperenberg wells under the direction of Mr E Dunker of Halle DIAGRAM SHOWING RELATIVE aBLATIVE DEPTHS OP OF SHAFTS S gatton and as u they are widely separ separated sep r ted individual i characteristics have bt n encountered In each eab Yet there is a very general in all aU which stands standI as evidence not only of the reent internal condition o or th earth but bet atoo al of its It age e These holes show In fA tact fact that in some places the earth at a mile or so below the surface is at hoi as the bollin point of alcohol at other places men work a 8 mile under the surface in a temperature of 70 76 de degrees degrees grees Fahrenheit a heat beat not greater than that of t an average New York June day daJ When the Savage mine in hi inthe hithe the Lode was connected at atthe atthe the half alt mile level Jevel with the Gould Curry Brine tl e temperature of he be connecting et sHery m led from de degree gree at one end to degrees de t the theother other At the bottom of that fivemile pit Ct in ia inthe the ocean which whick yawns between bet the and the Friendly islands the temperature stays always near the freezing ix int of water T re are many of these the deep ocean holes in h the temperature is x r ry lo low And whilo the lack of or heat it i induced J t 4 and m the end he be was able ble to furnish a table of measurements of or the four wens wells All AU of these the e wells have now been sunk lower therefore according to the average rate of increase the Sper n berg ought to measure approximately degrees the Pittsburg 18 degrees and according to the German Grman average the well which has bas not yet been reported would show a tem temperature temperature at the bottom somewhere be between between tween degrees and degrees Fah Fahrenheit Fahrenheit It would not take t ke very vary much more digging before the heat of these wells could be utilized AH An things be bein beIng in Ing equal the well at af feet should develops a temperature greater than that of boiling bailing water especially e as the heat he t increases more rapidly as the hole gets deeper But these wells wore all aU bOred bared in I what might be called d the normal norma crust of the arth where the strata lie in ini i aitu H Had they bean bi Up dug in Wyoming I I m In the Geyser Basin for tor Instance it is isi i probable that stem or very hot water I would have hae been encountered not many man feet below the f surface C r for af er all aU the geyser is one of natures deepest t holes since it connects conn l ts in one Wa ay or another with the internal heat of the erth and therefore t we a sort of Df Tn bw an artificial deep might if Conce once it tere don down far fait enough form vent v nt for the heat of the earth On the th hand han had one of the wells been driven down dOn udder u der Michigan through the copper beds it jt ie is probable 1 Ie that even feet teet would not beget a temperature r too hot for breathing purposes let atone alone the production of steam This is the lay mind must appear strange in view of ot the fact that the region is full of cop copper copper per bearing rock and therefore ought to conduct heat readily Nevertheless it is a fact that these th Se rocks do not notI conduct condu t the heat Th temperature of I the lowest Calumet and Hecla shaft sh ft never goes far from 70 degrees Pro Professor j I fessor Agassiz buried thermometers at atI I J various depths in the mines and sot bot very little variation Professor Pierce of Harvard obtained some slabs bs ot 01 rock rom from the lower levels l vel and means of an electric thermostat th tested their properties prop which were reported to be small in com comparison parison with those of some other rocks His idea in this case however leans le ns more to an approximation of ot heat h con conductivity ef af rock in general in the end to form an estimate of the earths age since if the cooling rate of all rock Is known then taken in relation to thick thickness ness it would be possible to determine approximately approximate how long it has been since the exterior of the earth was molten The deep wells furnish data in this connen tion also Deep In the Land Under Sea Among other theories concerning the Calumet rock it Is suggested that per perhaps perhaps haps the proximity of f the waters of ot Lake L ke Superior has a cooling effect on the copper mines Low how temperatures are characteristic of all the suba deep holes hol S Beside the chasms in the ocean bed the holes in the land are as pin punctures for more mon than half of bf the whole see floor lies two I miles below the surface of the water of this latter area is de depressed I pressed below three miles This eighth Itself is seven seen million square geographical ical miles in extent and contains areas or rather basins which dip in places over five miles below the surface These test Jost almost unfathomable holes in the ocean bottom occur only in three places or at least only othree soundings of five miles or more been made There maybe may be others o ers of course cour se even de which nave have as a yet remained undiscovered The deepest of these holes exist in the South Pacific to the east eart of the K It is fathoms deep or feet more than five geographical miles The sounding that went to its bottom represents th farthest reach of humankind toward the center of the earth ear h Yet what came hack back with the rod was meagre in view o 0 might have been expect expected expected ed A little ooze a little of that curious red clay which covers nearly half of the sea floor a few manganese nodules some minute magnetic spherules of cosmic origin that was as all aU these and the positive assurance of intense darkness and bit bitter bitter ter cold The ooze was what was left of animal carcasses sweeping down downWard downWard Ward through centuries the clay was the plastic remnants of even earlier periods the spherules were represent representatives representatives of meteoric particles which had through immeasurable tance from outer dark dad to Inner dark Volcanic nic debris oxides of iron crystals manganese nodules and re remains remans mains mans of whales and sharks are char characteristic characteristic of these deep holes One haul of a trawl in the Pacific brought up from a depth of nearly three miles mUes many bushels of manganese nodules 1500 sharks teeth and fifty fragments of the bones of whales whal But beyond I these all other objects which might be expected to drop from the surface are wanting It is not surprising how u I W 1 n f I 1000 FT Fr 0 y 2 Fa T 3 Lu nHi 3 4 ij rI Wh o W FEET CALUMET HECLA O f T r 0 n Z J FE T Tl o l W l ever in view of the terrible pressure of ot the water at these great depths Nothing not especially adapted for it could withstand it It Is calculated tl t at att one mile beneath the surface the pressure pre sure of the water on nil 1111 sides of an object is one ton to the square inch In view flew of this it was formerly supposed su posed that the pressure at the lowest depths must be great enough to turn the bottom to stone slone But the dredge shows this to be untrue Habitants of Extreme Depths The fish that live in thes deep holes arc ar soft and gelatinous the only con condition in fact which would save fro effects of the pressure pr The Th tel t their soft structure and counteracts ite US own pressure As suggested above it is very old cold in the deep holes Professor mentions how cold the ooze from the bottom feels how cold mud nearly froze his hands stiff stitt under the broiling sun It gave him an IU idea for cheap refrigeration tion and andI a 9 bottle of wine line nearly two and a half miles mn under underwater underwater water for the purpose of freezing It Itt t Q 13 It came up cold enough to be pe sure but I full of muddy salt sak water which had I forced Us wa way through the cork i areas have been found orr the ea bottom lyng deeper than tran three mites mR Eight df these are deeper than t an four miles Th M are Nar Deep Deap in the North Atlantic tlc Ros RosS Deep In The n Uc Weber Deep in the Banda aea Challenger Tuscarora and Sapan Sa n Deeps in the North Pacific and Aldrich and nd Richards De ps in the I SQ h Pacific Three of or these deeps i contain five Ave mile holes They are Al AI Aldrich dri h Tuscarora and Weber Webe deeps dee But the Aldrich deep t hole is the deep deepest deepest est as was stated above Yet deep i as it i is In spite e of the fact that Mount i Everest the highest mountain n in thE I world if dropped into Ute the hole would sink out of sight in the ocean that lit littie littie f tie pinnacle caned called Sunday island standing squarely in hi this fivemile hole is able to rear real its head bead 2000 feet feel above the surface of the he sea t this conveys a vivid idea of ot ott the t e co tiu nature ture is able to make in inthe the th matter of high and deep holes Copyright by Theo r o Waters I |