Scientists to drill into the Earth’s mantel
Japanese scientists want to discover one of the last secrets of our planet and have a plan of drilling into the Earth’s mantel, inhabitat.com reports, citing CNN.
An international group of researchers led by Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology want to be the first to drill into the mantel, the region between the Earth’s inner core and outer crust, since, according to researcher Natsue Abe, “We don’t know the exact [composition] of the mantle yet.”
The Japanese agency will deploy one of its biggest and most sophisticated drilling vessels, called Chikyu, to go through 2,5 miles of ocean and another 3,7 of crust (sea floor).
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“In Japan we have some volcanoes, earthquakes and such kind of natural hazards,” Abe continued. “People [want to create] some monitoring or analysis equipment but we don’t know … what kind of factor to use. So we need to know the natural system more clearly or precisely … we have to observe the Earth more precisely,” he stated.
There are three drilling sites currently under consideration, all of them located in the Pacific Ocean – off Hawaii, Costa Rica and Mexico.
“We already drilled and have taken some samples from the ocean floor but [only] from the top. [We want] to dig from the ocean floor to the deep pristine mantle,” Abe concluded.
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