A few years ago _Science News_ ran some dubious sounding idea about using a batch of molten iron to take instruments all the way to the mantle.
Supposedly the weight of the iron would cleave right through miles and miles of rock.
I can't remember if there were any details like the quantity of the iron, at least hundreds of tons if not much more, or how the instruments would be insulated from the heat and still be able to use sonar? to get the information back to earth.
Bret Cahill
- - - - - - - - - - They were probably using molten iron that did not transfer its heat to the surrounding rock, and turn into a solid long before it melted more than a few feet of the surface. This type of molten iron can only be found inside demented skulls, it is referred to as "pig iron".
"Ask not what a rock can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for a rock" JF Kennedy, if he had become a geologist instead of a politician
- - - - - - - - - -
What if you kept the iron melted with electric wires?
The wires would melt
Copper would float on top of the iron while melting.
The 'instrument' package must be denser than iron or it will also float out.
So maybe we take all the real hot & heavy isotopes from spent reactor fuel rods, plus all the excess plutonium warheads etc, stir briskly and pour .................
Jim Lillie
How far do you think it would get before it cooled down enough to solidify?
How fast would it move (viscosity counts!)?
How big would it have to be to make it all they way without freezing?
Tom Davidson Richmond, VA
How much is it heated by the friction of plunging through rock that gets hotter and hotter the deeper it goes?
John Popelish wrote in news:1vSdnZOkqa5ZjEbanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
How the hell do you get that much iron that hot anyway?
Brian
The pressure is in the millions of psi which would crush anything period.
The only way to do anything is to monitor the iron from the surface.
Bret Cahill
Liquid metal has a high heat transfer coefficient so maybe a hundred gigawatts cooling +/- an order of magnitude. A 100,000 ton batch would cool 1000 F in less than an hour +/- an order of magnitude.
They might beat the bore holes but the iron in the center of the earth didn't get there by this process.
Bret Cahill
Actually, something in that direction *has* been proposed, seriously, as a disposal mechanism for the "hotter" types of radioactive waste. Basically, drill deep into a suitable stable batholith with 500mm- scale hole diameters ; load up the holes with canisters of 'hot' waste, keeping them cool in the process by flushing with water ; carry out conventional cementing operations above ; repeat /ad nauseam/ , probably as a "birdsfoot" well profile, multiply sidetracked. After a few decades, your batholith will heat up enough to lose structural strength, and your hot waste starts sinking, in it's immediate containment, into the depths. If someone managed to surreptitiously (!!) drill down towards the waste to try to get it back, the drilling fluid used to sweep the cuttings out would chill the cutting face of the rock, making it harder. Interesting idea, but I don't think you'd get many buyers. FERGUS G. F. GIBB "A new scheme for the very deep geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste" Journal of the Geological Society, Jan 2000; 157: 27 - 36.
So much for the China Syndrome.
Stuart
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