Scientists drill ‘world’s deepest ocean hole’ five MILES deep near site of Japan’s Fukushima disaster
THE DEEPEST manmade ocean hole in the world has just been drilled off the coast of Japan.
Scientists created the hole in the hope of understanding the reasons for past earthquakes better.
"During earthquakes, bits of the earth fall into the ocean and settle on flat seabed.
"And that continues to collect, which is why we aimed to go to those depths."
The hole was created with a 40-foot-long piston corer, which is essentially a long heavy tube that can drill into the Earth and extract samples.
The drill is controlled from a Japanese ship called the Kaimei.
The scientists also broke the record for the deepest sub-sea level sample ever taken.
That sample is 124-foot-long and could teach us about earthquakes that happened before humans were around.
Previously, the world’s deepest water drill record was set in 1978 who collected sediment from the Mariana Trench at 23,077 feet deep.
What was the Fukushima nuclear disaster?
The nuclear accident happened on March 11, 2011 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi site in northern Japan.
It is second worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power generation.
A tsunami that was triggered by an earthquake damaged the backup generators at the plant.
All three of reactors that were operating were successfully shutdown, but the loss of power caused the cooling systems to fail with in the first few days afterwards.
The government was forced to declare an 20-km evacation zone and nearly 230,000 residents had to flee.
In other news, Japan has said radioactive water waste collected at the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will have to be dumped in the ocean.
SpaceX is about to rocket 128 glow-in-the-dark baby squid into space for Nasa.
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And, an electric Moon buggy that will take astronauts around the lunar south pole is being created by Lockheed Martin and General Motors.
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