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The future of geology — and perhaps even renewable energy — is growing up, literally.
Researchers in Iceland are moving forward with an energetic project to drill a tunnel into a magma chamber that could give not only the first straight vision at the oceans of molten rock present miles below the Earth’s surface, but a revolution in geothermal energy that could potentially see the technology be used anywhere in the world, never achieved efficiency before.
“It’s the first travel to the center of the Earth,” Björn Þór Guðmundsson at the Geothermal Research Cluster (GEORG) in Reykjavík told New Scientist, which said the potential would give the desired results.
Surrounded by Magma
For how important magma is to our perception of the Earth’s geology, finding it is an great achievement — and getting proper information about it is even more tough. Since now, purposefully drilling directly into a magma chamber has never been tried.
“You could never really offer to drill into magma,” John Eichelberger, a volcanologist at the University of Alaska told New Scientist. “People would make fun of you and say, you’ll start an explosion. And also you can’t find it.”
But surprisingly, scientists did it with incredible luck. In 2009, a geothermal drilling project for the Iceland energy firm Landsvirkjun unpredictably bump a magma chamber near the country’s formidable Krafla volcano. That the crew weren’t quickly destroyed by a volcanic eruption was proof that drilling into magma could be safe.
In 2013, the same team that made the invention, led by Bjarni Pálsson at Landsvirkjun, started the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project to repeat their achievement. It’s now ready to begin drilling in 2026 with the primary motive of advancing our understanding of magma.
“We don’t have any particular information of how the magma looks, which is important in understanding volcanoes of course,” Pao Papale at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy told us.
Increase in Power
KMT scientists are thinking to apply an array of sensors in the magma that will take measurements on properties like temperature.
“We desire to be capable to take a direct measurement at least of temperature, which has never ever been happened,” Hjalti Páll Ingólfsson at GEORG told us.
A main topic will be noticing how rock melts into magma, as well as seeking for symptoms that could tell of an impending volcanic eruption, which are difficult to predict.
Perhaps most interestingly is the headway the KMT borehole could make for renewable energy. The expectation is to develop a new type of producing geothermal power called near-magma geothermal, which would use the ultimate heat of molten rock to heat up water at even more high temperatures than current techniques possibilities.
This potential clean energy miracle, though, hinges on KMT bring to new insights on how to faithfully find these magma chambers. But by finding one in the first place, they’ve already completed the difficult part.
