The first 10,000-meter deep earth scientific exploration well in my country has been drilled

Xinhua News Agency, Urumqi, May 30 (Reporters Li Xiang and Gu Yu) At 11:46 on the 30th, as a giant drill bit pierced into the desert, my country's first 10,000-meter deep scientific exploration well was officially drilled in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang. This is a great feat of my country's exploration of nature in the deep field.

The well is named "Deep Earth Takko 1 Well" and is expected to be drilled to a depth of 11,100 meters. It is located in the heart of the Taklimakan Desert and surrounded by sand dunes. Before drilling, a steel tower about 20 stories high was erected on the ground, standing firmly on the quicksand. After drilling, the drill bit, drill rod, casing, etc. weighing more than 2,000 tons will go deep underground, penetrate more than 10 strata such as the Cretaceous System, and become a "telescope" for exploring the deep earth.

The picture shows the "Shendi Taco 1 Well" taken on May 30 (drone photo). Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Xiang

On May 30, engineers were checking the operation of the drilling rig at the Shendi Tak 1 well. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Xiang

According to experts, drilling a 10,000-meter-deep well is a bold attempt to explore unknown areas of the Earth and expand the boundaries of human knowledge.

The Tarim Basin, located between the Tianshan Mountains and the Kunlun Mountains, has undergone tremendous changes. After hundreds of millions of years of crustal movement, the surface is full of gullies and the underground is fragmented. The geological structure is extremely complex, and the difficulty of development is rare in the world and unique in China. Not only that, drilling 10,000 meters underground will also face challenges such as high temperatures of 200°C and high pressures of 1,700 times the atmospheric pressure. With each meter of drilling, the difficulty of drilling increases exponentially. In the view of Sun Jinsheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the difficulty of construction is as great as "a large truck driving on two thin steel ropes."

The picture shows the "Shendi Taco 1 Well" taken on May 30 (drone photo). Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Xiang

In recent years, my country has continuously advanced into the depths of the earth, breaking records of deep earth development many times, which has provided sufficient basic conditions, technical preparation and experience accumulation for the 10,000-meter deep well project.