[Scenario Seed] The real Project Inferno

[Catsmate]

Real life is providing some interesting weirdness at the moment.

Drilling is about to restart (Project SloMo) at a spot in the southwestern Indian Ocean called Atlantis Bank by the international drillship JOIDES Resolution. It's hoped that the delayed mission will drill though more than through 1.5km of rock. The project, in addition to yielding core samples, is a precursor to the long delayed plan to drill through the Earth's crust into the mantle

• The Atlantis Banks (and isn't that an interesting name?) is a small patch of seafloor with a 24km² plateau on top that's only under 700m of sea, making it an ideal spot for drilling. Further the mantle is believed to 'bubble up' to within a few kilometres of the surface there, with a relatively thin crust on top.
  

Back in 1961 geologists began the first attempt to drill deep into the Earth to reach the Mohorovičić discontinuity (generally called the Moho), the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle. Mohole was led by the American Miscellaneous Society and funded by the National Science Foundation and used an oil drillship called CUSS I aided by new positioning technology to keep the drill on target despite ocean movements.

• The American Miscellaneous Society just screams out to be the front for either a Secret Conspiracy of Mad Scientists, a freelance UNIT type group or an overproject for Sinister Research by the US Navy.
  

Phase One began in the spring of 1961 off the coast of Guadalupe, Mexico. Five initial holes were drilled, the deepest to 183m into the sea floor, in 3.5km. While this wasn't a huge depth of rock it was unprecedented. The core samples proved interesting, with Miocene era sediment and basalt. However the next phase of Mohole was abandoned for lack of funds in 1966.

• Or was it? What did the drillship really find down there?
  

Project Mohole did lead to the US Deep Drilling Project and the international Ocean Drilling Program.

• Which is an excellent setting for an oceanic UNIT scenario. What horrors have the geologists¹ unearthed from under the oceans?
  

On the other side of the planet, and the Iron Curtain, the USSR began the Kola Superdeep Borehole in 1970, attempting to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust. Operational
drilling began on 24 May 1970 with a depth of 12,262m being reached in 1989 after a number of boreholes to various depths were drilled.
Curiously a "breakdown" on 27 September 1984 broke off a 5km section of the drill string at a depth of 12,066m, requiring drilling to be restarted from about 7km depth. Officially the project was abandoned in 1992 due to unexpectedly high temperatures at the depths reached. The site was abandoned in 2008.

So, what were the Soviets really looking for down there, what did they actually find, and did the project really end in 1992?

In the Whoniverse the possible answers are many. Inferno was inspired by Project Mohole (and could be re-set on a drillship or oil rig quite easily) so weird fluids and gases that cause mutagenic changes in humans are possible, as are weird foam and seaweed creatures (from Fury from the Deep).Perhaps the material is really a form of alien nanotechnology, released when a deeply buried crashed alien ship was penetrated by the drill?
There are persistent (if utterly silly) theories that the KSB was actually cover for attempts by the Soviet Union to recover buried alien materials (I believe it popped up in the original X-Files series). Mix in a little 'red mercury' (perhaps an energy dense nuclear isomer material or metastable form of matter?) as a MacGuffin for various factions to fight over.

• Red Mercury is an excellent MacGuffin. It doesn't actually exist and has so many amazing properties attributed to it by the conspiratorial fringe that it could be the vital ingredient for any Sinister Project or Mad Science. Pocket nuclear bombs, energy weapons, advanced stealth, power source...
  

Links.
Project SloMo
The Kola Superdeep Borehole


Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?


¹ They're getting as bad as the damned archaeologists.

[Marnal]

I remember reading about this in the "About Time Vol 3" book
www.madnorwegian.com/125/books/about-time-3-the-unauthorized-guide-to-doctor-who-seasons-7-to-11-2nd-edition/

Fascinating stuff!

[Catsmate]

Jan 27, 2016 0:43:08 GMT Marnal said:

I remember reading about this in the "About Time Vol 3" book
www.madnorwegian.com/125/books/about-time-3-the-unauthorized-guide-to-doctor-who-seasons-7-to-11-2nd-edition/

Fascinating stuff!

Absolutely. And the Cold War secrecy about Mohole added to the development of the story, with the Americans refusing to tell Don Houghton much about the project.
Even the parallel universe element to the story, which worked so well, were a cost-saving measure.

[Catsmate]

A quick thread bump.

An expedition is in progress to begin drilling into part of the Chicxulub Crater off the Mexican coast. This crater is the result of an asteroid impact in the distant past, believed to be that of the impactor that triggered the end of the age of dinosaurs, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

• Or so we believe...

The team, part of the International Ocean Discovery Program, will attempt to drill into the 'peak ring' of the crater, buried under about 600m of sediment and about twenty metres of water. The plan is to sink three pylons and then raise the drillship above the waves, providing a stable platform. Once the limestone and sediment are penetrated it's planned to drill multiple boreholes down to depths of 1,000 to 1,500m, taking core samples as they drill.
The drilling is expected to yield rock, microfossils, and microbial life.

But what else might be found? Strange minerals (like Zeiton-7) deposited by supernova explosions? Samples of the material of a spaceship's hull? Living metal or other nanotechnology? Strange alien life? Stahlman's gas, and it's associated metamorphic foam? Alien artefacts, like part of s starship's anti-matter containment system?

Science

[Catsmate]

The drilling into the Chicxulub crater was successful. No mention of weirdness in the core samples taken. So far...
Assuming the crew and scientists weren't possessed by disembodied aliens of course.

More.
Also this journal of the work may be of interest.

[Catsmate]

New BBC Future piece about the drilling.