El Kola Well it was excavated between 1970 and 1989 at a depth of more than 12.000 meters. It is one of the deepest man-made holes ever recorded and is located on the Kola Peninsula in the Pechensky District of the former Soviet Union.
In this article we are going to tell you everything you need to know about the Kola well and its characteristics.
Key features
With a diameter of 23 centimeters and a total depth of 12.262 meters, it was the deepest oil well ever recorded until it was surpassed in 2008 by the Al Shaheen well in Qatar (12.289 meters). Later, in 2011, a new excavation became the deepest - the Odoptu OP-11 well, located near the Russian island of Sakhalin, at 12.345 meters. The Kola Well was dug during a technological race between the two great superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) that were competing in the Cold War.
The objective of the project is to penetrate the earth's crust to study its characteristics. Although the ultra-deep hole is only a third of the length of the region's crust, it provides researchers with a wealth of data.
In fact, this well was not drilled all at once, but consisted of several wells superimposed on the previous one. The deepest, called SG-3, is only a few centimeters in diameter, but thanks to him we know more details about the composition of the earth's crust.
The Kola Well has also been the subject of several urban legends, the most famous of which is that it was dug so deep that it accidentally opened the door to Hell. As the story goes, the team that created the well-documented weird sound came out of the bloody scream and were fleeing the hole.
The urban legend was later shot down and it was discovered that the sounds were taken from the "Bloody Rave" movie soundtrack. However, even today, many believe that the Kola Well has actually reached the gates of Hell.
What was found in the Kola well?
Although Soviet scientists never achieved their goals, the fact is that the creation of this hole (the deepest on Earth at the time) helped make a number of important discoveries related to the nature and functioning of the Earth's crust. .
For example, before the excavation, it was believed that there was a large quarry of granite and basalt about 7 km deep; this turned out to be unreal. In fact, the researchers confirmed that there were only broken, porous rocks in this area, and that the holes were filled with water, much to the surprise of experts at the time.
In addition to this, evidence of plankton fossils has been found at a depth of 6 km and large amounts of hydrogen gas have been found.
How deep is the well?
The construction of the Kola Well was not done linearly, but in stages. In 1989, at the end of the SG-3 phase, the deepest point had reached 12.262 meters. That record stood until 2008, when a well in Qatar reached 12.289 meters.
However, all areas of the hole do not have the same depth. In the outermost part, the width is much greater than that which can be found in the deepest part. This is due to the technology used to carry out the excavation, which is created using ever smaller machines in a horizontal position.
As a result, the Kola well is only 23 cm in diameter at its deepest point, as conventional drilling rigs cannot operate at such depths. In this way, a special team had to be created to overcome some of the technical problems that the Soviets encountered.
On the other hand, although today there are still two holes deeper than the Well of Kola, the truth is that it is still the largest excavation ever carried out if we take into account the initial height at which construction began. world. This is because the other two start at sea level, so it's generally not that high.
The legend of Hell under the Kola well
But not everyone interested in Kola does so because of its enormous scientific and technical value. For the past several decades, an urban legend has circulated that the excavation went so deep that it opened the gates of hell, killed several workers, and unleashed colossal evil upon the world.
Urban legends started circulating around 1997. According to the story, a group of engineers, led by a certain “Mr. Azakov" began digging at an unknown site in Siberia and managed to reach a depth of 14,4 kilometers before finding a kind of underground cave.
Surprised by their strange findings, the researchers decided to take down the microphone, which was specially designed to withstand extremely high temperatures. Though the well was supposed to be kept at a temperature of 1.000º C, the team managed to record screams and wails, which, according to legend, would come from the condemned and tortured. They found hell.
Many scientists were convinced that they had found something very dangerous and immediately left. However, those who stayed that night were in for an even bigger surprise. A few hours later, a jet of electricity and natural gas is said to have shot out of the well; those present could see a bat-winged figure escaping from him.
The legend concludes that the presence of the demons caused such a commotion that the heads of those present were lost, and some of them died. To cover up the incident, the KGB sent a medical team to give the scientists special drugs to erase their short-term memory. Therefore, an attempt will be made to erase all memory of what happened, and the well will remain permanently closed until today.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about the Kola well and its characteristics.