Yes, there is a thing like the deepest hole in the world: it is 9101 meters (9953 yards) to be precise, a hole drilled into the crust of the world. Now you wonder: why? Me too! But once you visit the drillsite and walk through the information center, you’ll get a lot of answers to all the questions you’ve never even asked 🤩
Windischeschenbach is a small town in the northeastern corner of Bavaria. A stone throw away from Thuringia and the Czech republic. Before the wall between Eastern and Western Germany came down in 1989, this area was called “Ostzonenrandgebiet” (eastern zone border area), a neglected, unattractive and ugly area with lots of forests destroyed by acid rain that was caused by improper or non-existing industry emissions in Eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Nobody wanted to live there, it was unattractive and unhealthy. Today it is beautiful! 35 years since the wall came down, 35 years of improvement and beautification. No acid rain, but rolling hills with pretty little villages, mostly farmland, crops and cows and: the drill tower of Windischeschenbach.
Info Flyer:
https://www.geozentrum-ktb.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2015_Flyer-GeoTourGranit.pdf
‘Continental deep-drilling program of the Federal Republic of Germany’), abbreviated as the KTB borehole, was a scientific drillingproject carried out from 1987 to 1995 near Windischeschenbach, Bavaria. The main super-deep bore hole reached a depth of 9,101 m (29,859 feet) in the Earth’s continental crust.
The drill hole had a width of 70 cm at the beginning (27.5”) and narrowed down to 16 cm (6.3”) at the depth of 9101 meters. Conditions are very different and became more and more difficult the deeper you drill. Immense pressure and heat (275 Celsius = 527 F) made it impossible to drill deeper. The material of the drill itself and the sample tubes had to be changed as you go, delaying work, challenging circumstances.
When you arrive at the drilling site you wonder why it’s on top of a hill instead of a valley in-between – that could have saved them 50 meters of drilling, right? But everything made sense the more we learned at the information center.
The location of Windischeschenbach was not chosen to boost this poor, neglected Ostzonenrandgebiet and give them something to do and make them attractive. The reason for exact that location is that the earth crust is relatively cool there, making drilling easier. Another reason is that millions of years ago, when the continents were formed, they shifted and moved, they just didn’t float around on the surface like an oily dot in a broth. Plate dynamics happened deep down, pushing matter up to the surface and squeezing layers together, Windischeschenbach is in a location that started near Antarctica! It moved north to the Mediterranean, then further north to the Ostzonenrandgebiet. Little did they know! Well, here they are now and what is really interesting is the fact that all those layers, the plankton from Antarctica for example, were pressed together tightly und pushed up to the crust, right there in Windischeschenbach. On top of the hill and not in the valley. Drilling right there made the most sense: finding many layers in 9101 meters with relative cool temperatures was ideal! Right there in Windisch-you-know-where!
It’s actually funny when you drive to Windisch-you-know-where: most villages have very short names like Bach (stream) or Berg (hill), but nothing tongue breaking like you-know-the-town-with-the-drill tower…