World, Writing, Wealth discussion

We've discussed outer space and distant planets, however even this small ball known as Earth is barely explored much deeper than the surface.
I vaguely remember Jules Verne's 'A journey to the Center of the Earth', but it was quite adventurous.

Can something interesting await for us once we drill deeper than a few hundred meters? Can the depth offer a source of endless resources and minerals? Is a tunnel from London to Sydney going through the Earth possible?

And what's deep down in the water? Modern submarines can't go deeper than 600-700 meters, while the sea depth in usually much greater.
Can different Loch Ness - esque sit there?

A London to Sydney tunnel won't happen - the interior is at about 1500 degrees C, and the pressure is enormous, so your tunnel would immediately collapse as your drill melted.

I suppose there are a lot of resources, but they are still rather dilute, The interior is essentially contaminated perovskite, which compositionally is more or less the same as basalt as it comes out of volcanoes. There is no shortage of basalt in the world, so no need to dig. Most of our ores come from geochemical processing of basalt, usually in part at least by water, near the surface, or by phase separation as certain components crystallise out as they cool, or both.

As for the very deep, they are just starting to bring up some really strange creatures. They have just had a number of oddities from the Kermadec Trench (although that is also close to volcanic activity - the trench, I think, is a plate boundary) so I suppose it is also an unusual environment.

Who knows what's down there, but it keeps things interesting. I like it that there are unknown depths yet to be explored.

Wonder how deep the border of life on Earth lies. Would there be any creatures/plants - say 100, 500, 1000 km under the surface? Is there anything living at the bottom of Mariana Trench? What do you think/know?

I think there is evidence of life in deep trenches. Not sure about the actual bottom of the Mariana, and I do not even know if anyone actually knows where the bottom is. By definition of plants, there are none continuously deeper that a little over 100 meters because there is no light there. (How deep depends on where, and how transparent the water is.) Under the surface, it would be too hot 100km down. The most heat tolerant enzymes I know about can't go significantly above 100 degrees C, and it gets hotter fairly soon in many places, although "dead rock" goes deeper. There is no life in geothermal bore water. The deepest in rock may be in the Sth African diamond mines - and the life is miners :-)

Nik wrote: "Is there anything living at the bottom of Mariana Trench? What do you think/know?..."

I like to imagine that there is a species of giant, intelligent kraken living down there. The sort that could drag a modern warship to its doom.

I have a simple adventure story in the wings where a kraken ascends toward the surface, and grabs a US destroyer, and drags it down to a location only a couple of hundred meters down (the shallows as far as the kraken is concerned). Most of the crew die, but there are a handful who are trapped in an air pocket, and have to escape.

Meanwhile, back on the surface, there is talk of war as the US is wondering what happened to their ship, the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, etc all deny having anything to do with it.

With the world on the brink of WW III, will our plucky sailors manage to escape from a watery doom to reveal the truth, or will the kraken kill them all while human civilization gets thrown back to the stone age?

Read "The Rise of the Kraken"

Cool idea.

If the kraken is built for the pressures of such deep water, wouldn't it explode when it rises to the 1 atmosphere of the surface?

J.J. wrote: "If the kraken is built for the pressures of such deep water, wouldn't it explode when it rises to the 1 atmosphere of the surface?"

No -it would not contain enough gas. Pressure on liquids does not change the volume all that much. The limited gas in it might give it something like the bends though, as what gas was there came out of solution and formed bubbles. If it had a mount, it could froth at the mouth :-)