4 ms·

How stable are abandoned holes like that? I would imagine that at those temperatures and pressures, the rock would slowly flow and refill the hole after a while

• mnw21cam 8y ago
  It got to 180C at the bottom. That's nowhere near hot enough to melt rock. Not sure about the pressure though. I get the feeling though that rock tends to either stay put or shift all at once (like an earthquake).
  • avian 8y ago
    Not hot enough to melt, but heat definitely reduces structural integrity of materials. And pressures on the rock so deep are immense. This article linked from Wikipedia seems to confirm that the hole tended to close itself when they were drilling: "At that level of heat and pressure, the rocks began to act more like a plastic than a solid, and the hole had a tendency to flow closed whenever the drill bit was pulled out for replacement." https://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-hole/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-hole/