The Supernova Bomb

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Howbout a specialized missle that is capable of drilling into the earths mantle thus creating a volcano lets say an artificial volcano maker as it were. When all that heat and pressure is released it would lead to constant explosive results.If we had the technology to do that we would be unstoppable!!

We have yet to dig ten miles down. We have no technology that can even come close to doing this. Developing the technology would be extremely expensive and take a long time and it not clear there is a sufficient payoff for the effort. The people in Iceland live on top of a crack in the Earth's crust. Those lucky folks have been handed a free gift by nature. They can get right down to the magma and use its heat.

Even if we had the technology it would be dangerous, expensive and difficult to manage.

There are more economical and safer ways of getting heat such as nuclear fission. If we are going for the magma better to do it under the ocean where the mantle is thinner. That way if the lava erupts it is immediately cooled.

ruveyn

The Kola superdeep borehole has gotten pretty close to 10 miles. I say they should keep digging. You see, [b]this[b] is where a powerful laser might be far more useful than a mechanical drill.

Believed when seen.

ruveyn

We just need some Unobtanium to build the drill with.

Kola Superdeep Borehole



I honestly think that the project should be restarted. As it states in the article, the temperature down there exceeded the boiling point of water. Think it about, dumbdumb! Drilling causes friction, friction causes HEAT. If the combined heat produced by friction AND by the external heat coming from the surrounding rock is too intense, it can cause the drill to overheat and the tips will start to erode making the bit too dull. If they continued drilling far enough down that the reached the mantle, the temperatures will soar high enough that the combined heat would melt the bit. Since drills have moving parts, they require a lubricant. When there is ambient heat combined with friction this can cause the lube to evaporate and when you have moving metal against metal, the friction will cause the drill bit and the rotor mechanism to break and the drill will fail completely(as in cease it's rotation).

With a laser, it is the light beam and not the actual device that makes contact with the dirt and rock and simply vaporizes it. The vapors can be sucked out of the hole to prevent them from condensing and sealing it back up again. And furthermore, unlike a drill, a laser has no moving parts and thus no need for lubricant.

Last edited by AspieRogue on 27 Aug 2012, 1:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And just how much power can we deliver to a laser drill? It is one thing to bore a 1/4 inch hole in a three inch thick steel plate. It is another thing to make a hole in the earth wide enough to be of any earthly (sic!) economic use.

ruveyn

As much power as can be produced and distributed on the electric grid. With an adequate power supply it's possible to draw gigawatts of electricity off of the grid. I'd imagine such a laser probably wouldn't need more than 100 megawatts at a time(upper estimate).

You go right ahead and do that!

Do you have any science or engineering to back up that estimate?

ruveyn

CO2 lasers can produce continuous wave beams well into the hectokilowatt range(>100,000 watts). And there is this massive power supply which can output 1 Megawatt of electrical power. Most multi-megawatt lasers are Q-switched rather than CW, but I doubt you'd need that much power for drilling. The size of the beam isn't as important as the energy carried by the beam. Because the incident energy is transferred into the surrounding material during CW bombardment that you have ablation.