The spectacular scientific project featured in the Guinness Book of Records – The Super-Deep Wheel (SH-3) – still irritates the imagination of ordinary people and experts.

Soviet scientists have set ambitious goals – to explore the oldest rocks of our planet and to learn the secrets of the processes that take place in them. In order to carry out their plans, they had to drill more than 12 kilometers into the Earth – no one in the world had ever been able to overcome this depth.
Work on the Kola Super-Deep Well near Zapolyarnyi in the Murmansk region continued until 2008. During this time, Soviet scientists made many discoveries, obtained useful results and even encountered an “unknown”. Sputnik Polska asked Sergei Pevzner, head of the Geophysics and Ecology Laboratory, Chief Geophysicist at the Kolod Super-Deep Research and Production Center, to talk about his work on the Kolod super-deep well.

“First of all, I would like to draw attention to the fact that I first got to the Wheel Super Deep Well in October 1992 and started working on this unique building in early July 1993. Therefore, I only know about what happened before from publications and fund sources, and also from the narratives of the people who were at the beginning of this project and participated in the realization of all its phases. I was lucky enough to meet them and even cooperate with them, ”says Sergey Pevzněr.
Races underground and in space
A source of Sputnik Poland explains that by launching work on the Kola Super Deep Well, the Soviet Union pursued several goals. Representatives of basic Earth sciences wanted to study the oldest rocks of our planet and the processes that take place there.

Moreover, the state had a natural desire to obtain useful results that could positively affect its economic and industrial development – for example, to discover new deposits of copper and nickel ores

“In my opinion, the second reason was more substantial.” In the early 1960s, large-scale projects began to emerge in the USSR and other countries to search for new mineral resources – humanity began exploring the shelves of the seas and the bottom of the world ocean. “In 1961, the United States launched the Mohole Project. An unsuccessful attempt was made to reach the seismic Mohorovic border (Moho) by drilling through the sea, the maximum depth of one of the boreholes was 183 meters (at a depth of 3500 meters) The project confirmed that deep-water drilling could essentially start a new deep-water drilling program DSDP, which was launchedthe world-famous science-research ship Glomar Challenger. Soviet scientists were actively involved in its expeditions, ”said Sputnik Poland.