The Sea Floor

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The drill touched bottom at 1215 and bit into the ocean sediment. Now we are drilling into the sea floor. From now on, there is a constant vigil. Day and night we watch the dials. Did we get a sample? Delight on the cuss. We brought up a great core of basalt, stark blue and very hard with extrusions of crystals beautiful under a magnifying glass. The scientists are guarding this core like tigers. Everyone wants a fragment as a memento. I asked for a piece and got a scowling refusal. And so I stole a piece. Then that damn chief scientist gave me a piece secretly making me feel terrible. They start

Sixty years ago, geologists tried to drill down through the Earth’s crust to pull up a piece of the Earth’s mantle. Their mission didn’t go exactly as planned. But it sowed the seeds for a new field of science that’s helped us rewrite not only the history of the planet, but, potentially, our definitions of life itself.

The documentaries featured in this episode are "The First Deep Ocean Drilling: Mohole, Phase 1" and "Project Mohole: Report No. 1."

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