Tikyu hakken

Tikyu Hakken ( Japanese 地球 発 見 Tikyu: Hakken ) - translated from Japanese means “discovery of the Earth”, a project implemented by the Japanese Agency for Science and Technology for the Study of Marine Subsoil ( Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology , an abbreviation of JAMSTEC). The project’s goal, worth half a billion dollars, is to first drill seven kilometers under the seabed and reach the earth’s mantle ; this is three times deeper than the well 2111 m deep under the ocean floor drilled by the American JOIDES Resolution .

To achieve the mantle, Japanese scientists decided to drill the seabed despite the additional difficulties of underwater drilling. The crust at the bottom of the ocean is much thinner. The project aims to achieve several goals: to extract the substance of the mantle and deliver it to the surface; prospect mineral deposits; measure stresses at the tectonic plate border near Japan , often leading to earthquakes; specify the lower boundary of the biosphere. Although the planned depth of the well is significantly less than the Kola ultradeep well (it has a depth of 12 km), the scientific results are expected to be more significant. Record drilling is expected to occur 600 km south-west of Tokyo .