News Direct's video: Ship That Survived Tsunami Sets Hole-Drilling Record

HAMAMATSU, JAPAN — A little known fact is that Japan’s massive 2011 tsunami almost destroyed a very expensive research ship that later came very close to becoming the first machine to drill through Earth’s crust. Here are the details: Nature magazine reports that Japan’s Chikyu research vessel drilled the deepest undersea hole ever drilled by a research ship. The massive ship cost $526 million to build and achieved its drilling record only a year after being badly damaged by the massive Japanese tsunami of 2011. It is the first research ship to feature a massive tower that assembles a super-long pipe known as a “riser” which envelops the main drill pipe. This riser technology is usually found on oil rigs and makes an undersea drill system much more stable, enabling the Chikyu to drill much deeper than normal research vessels. The ship set out to drill through a very thin part of Earth’s crust, south of the city of Hamamatsu. The plan was to drop the Chikyu’s drill and riser pipes through 6 kilometers of ocean before drilling up to 5,200 meters into the sea floor. This should have been enough to make it the first vessel to drill through Earth’s hard crust and reach the softer mantle layer. Unfortunately, the drilling had to stop after 3,250 meters, because the drill hole kept collapsing. In the end, the Chikyu did set a drill record, but also proved how incredibly hard it would be for humans to drill through Earth’s crust and study Earth’s mantle.