Scientists drilling into a magma chamber to obtain potentially unlimited energy

Boring science

The future of geology – and maybe even renewable energy – is gaining momentum, literally.

Scientists in Iceland are pursuing an ambitious project to drill directly into a magma chamber that could provide not only the first direct insight into oceans of molten rock breathing miles beneath the Earth’s surface, but also a revolution in geothermal energy that could potentially see the technology be used anywhere on the planet. world with unprecedented performance.

“This is the first trip to the center of the Earth,” said Björn Þór Guðmundsson from the Geothermal Research Cluster (GEORG) in Reykjavík New scientistwho characterized the potential payoff as “unlimited energy.”

Plunged by Magma

Because magma is so important to our understanding of Earth’s geology, finding it is an extremely rare feat, and obtaining direct, hard data on it is even more so. So far, no attempt has been made to deliberately drill directly into the magma chamber.

“Drilling into magma could never really be proposed,” said John Eichelberger, a volcanologist at the University of Alaska New scientist. “People would laugh at you and say you would cause an eruption. And besides, you can’t find her.”

But thanks to an incredible stroke of luck, scientists managed to do it. In 2009, a geothermal drilling project conducted for the Icelandic energy company Landsvirkjun unexpectedly hit a magma chamber near the country’s massive Krafla volcano. The fact that the crew was not immediately wiped out by the volcanic eruption was proof that drilling into magma could be safe.

In 2013, the same team that made the discovery, led by Bjarni Pálsson at Landsvirkjun, launched the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project to repeat its success. Drilling is currently scheduled to begin in 2026, with the main goal of deepening our understanding of magma.

“We don’t have any direct knowledge of what magma chambers look like, which is obviously crucial in understanding volcanoes,” said Pao Papale of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy. New scientist.

Increase power

KMT scientists plan to place an array of sensors in the magma that will continue to measure properties such as temperature.

“We hope that we will be able to measure at least temperature directly, which has never been done before,” said Hjalti Páll Ingólfsson from GEORG New scientist.

The key topic will be observing how rock melts into magma, as well as searching for indicators that may indicate an upcoming volcanic eruption, which is extremely difficult to predict.

Perhaps most exciting is the progress the KMT well could make in renewable energy. We hope to develop a new form of geothermal energy generation, called near-igneous geothermal, that would use the extreme heat of molten rock to heat water to even higher temperatures than is possible with current techniques.

But this potential clean energy miracle depends on the KMT, which has led to new insights into how to reliably find magma chambers. But by finding it in the first place, they’ve probably already done the hard part.

More about geothermal: Google launches a new, experimental geothermal power plant