Re the "cries and groans" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_to_Hell_hoax
Getting some real Doom 3 vibes here:
"It is rumored that at some point the drilling rig began to vibrate unnaturally, as if someone were jerking for it from below. When the well reached a mark of about 12,000 meters, scientific equipment recorded sounds resembling the cries and groans of thousands of martyrs emanating from the depths."
Maybe they've excavated Balrog... any Grey hat want to go down there to check what they found? And you know, maybe you'll turn into a white hat... ;)
Seems like it curved as it went down, I did not expect to see that but, thinking about it, no reason it should just go straight down.
Nice, there's so much material for level design of a new Fallout-like game on that website!
how useful is hydrogen from such wells? is the quantity sufficient to warrant just drilling for it or simply burning it to power the drilling?
No smiles in the 15km celebration photo.
Boring.
For the lazy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
Edit: from the Russian version of the page -
A single drill bit lasted about 4 hours, which was enough to drill between 7 and 10 meters. In comparison, raising and lowering the drilling column took up to 18 hours.
It also mentions that due to the core samples being saturated with hydrogen, they turned to a fine dust unless they were raised very slowly to allow the gas to dissipate.