Our Mission

Today the chief scientist Andy Fisher, from the University of California at Santa Cruz, came and talked to our group about the transport of hydrothermal fluids beneath the crust. A few years ago a scientific device called a CORK was placed in an old borehole on the Juan de Fuca plate just west of the state of Washington. This device was to be used in the study of the seafloor and the transport of fluids trapped beneath the sediment blanket on the seafloor. The problem with this site is the the seal around the CORK did not fully seal the oceans water from getting into the borehole. What we are going to attempt to do is to pump cement down to the CORK platform some 2660 m beneath the surface and seal it off properly. We should be on station tonight around midnight and will start lowering drill pipe down toward the ocean floor. Sometime tomorrow we will attempt to seal the leak.

We are also conducting an unscheduled experiment. Each teacher in the School of Rock will be sending down a foam cup in a bag outside of the drillpipe. Afterwards we will see what effect the pressure of the deep had on the cup.

Later

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