Added: 2 years ago
From: NationalGeographic
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  • prepare the red matter.

  • thats just a huge hho flame torch using hydrogen and oxygen to break rocks but

    what if the rocks contain iron or silicon dioxide instead u end up making lava

  • I say bring it on. I wonder if it could be used to drill tunnels for subway systems. 100 ft per hour is really fast !

  • there's so many stuff using hydrogen as fuel and claims that's it's totally green for the enviroment as it produces no co2 when burn. creating pure hydrogen is an energy intensive process and the amount of energy you can get out of the hydrogen is always less then the energy used to create them (law of conservation of energy). unless this technology has alot higher efficiency then conventional methods, it's not going to be a real solution.

  • @penitent2401 Thats not what it's about, it's about being able to drill a hole deep enough to capture geothermal energy in most areas to generate power - nothing to do with using hydrogen to make energy.

  • @penitent2401 haha u dont get it do you, the drilling is for geothermal borehole, c'mon kid

  • It's not about drilling, but how do you keep the borehole open.

  • Pumping flammable gasses, and pressurized super heated air into a tiny deep hole. What could possibly go wrong?

  • How much gas does it use though?

  • no rock is solid, it has pores in it

  • they should have called it the fire drill

  • "I don't think drilling big holes is a pipe dream."

    *snigger*

  • did he mean t say that.

  • This appears to work well in a nice consistent piece of granite. I'd like to see some results drilling thru loose sand, wet sand, mud, etc. Not to mention the occasional gas pocket. Looking forward to more, real world testing.

  • If we could tap geothermal energy all over the world that would be great!

  • CRACKED haha

  • cracked

  • I didn't come from Cracked, I came from the Drill Appreciation Society and let me tell you, I don't appreciate this one bit. Theres no trigger, no drill bit, you can't feel it pulsate in your hands. Wheres the fucking soul in a superheated hydrogen "drill" man?

  • so, this is how they made underground tunnels, connecting to secret bases.

  • CRACKED

  • Well wouldn't you know. I clicked on that link, then thought to myself that people would be talking about inventions that doom humanity, scrolled down....and lo and behold.

  • Cracked

    btw I wonder ,,,,,,,,,,

  • I think oil drillers are going to find this useful... wait nm it might set the oil on fire.

  • Crackity crack cracked.

  • Yay cracked

  • Cracked

  • ALL THESE CRACKED FANS

    i respect it too lol

  • CRACKED!

  • Thanks a lot National Geographic, you just gave Scifi Channel a premise for one of their crappy movies. CRACKED.

  • cracked.

  • cracked.

  • What if they hit a patch of Cracked? Ask yourself THAT question

  • they've Cracked it

  • Cracked a hole right through that sucker

  • we are sooo doomed

  • Cracked ftw indeed

  • Cracked

  • Cracked ftw.

  • What if they hit a patch of natural gas or oil?

  • Something wonderfull happens. BTW Cracked.

  • all hell breaks loose

  • No oxygen down in those holes, but that which they send down, and the flame drill is using it all. Down there the temperatures are already fairly high and these pockets don't explode on their own.

    So not much , in short. Which is a boon for this thing working.

  • I don't see what's stopping this from being comercialized. We could use this now and start taking down half the coal plants in america.

  • The deeper you go, the fewer imperfections there are in the rock. It might slow down significantly over time.

  • nice!

  • Freeken awesome! I wonder how well it dose at normal cement I know allot of people that are tired of jackhammering and hammer drilling through that stuff.

  • good for drilling part way to oil. but its too hot to get too close. needs to switch to regular drill

  • It's for geothermal wells.

  • this technology has been around for years look up "Phil Shnieder" he explains it all. los alamos the lab on top of the BLACK CITY. look up illuminati.

  • Hell ya they have!

  • u fuking sick mother fuker.

  • I have one question for everyone that thinks fire can only happen if given oxygen. What do stars and the sun itself burns off of?

  • nuclear fusion

  • cool

  • fuck google and its ads.

  • @fixiosis mozilla firefor adblock... no ads in any youtube video!!

  • i definately wouldnt mind being that guy when his invention goes to market.

  • yea, if the oil co's don't kill him first....

  • he is gonna be rich

  • 6 months old? The patent was granted in 1978. This is 30 years old, but because it was in a movie every dumbass think it's new.

  • Solar panels are older than nuclear fission...

  • this is 6months old

  • This is the beauty of capitalism in action!

  • How?

  • Innovation, man! "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."- A. Einstein

  • awesome

  • the prototype could dig a hole 4" in diameter.

    Imagine if it were to create a big one...like say..for drilling a hole for laying foundations ..Imagine the heat it would produce..one mistake and that's it..

    but this is definitely a Massive breakthrough in the geo science world!

    KUDOS!

  • This reminds me of the new Star Trek movie. The huge drill they used in the movie was a gigantic flame drill. Once again, Science-Fiction is now becoming Science-Fact. Of course, since this was being invented 30 years ago, I guess the reverse could be said...

  • i jus jizzed in my pants

  • DRUNKEN FIRE WORKS 3 AM - TAKE A LOOK!!

  • GIGA...DRILL...BREAKER!!

  • wouldnt this be really dangerous.... if something went wrong...

  • wait a minute...if you used the flame jet drill on a oil deposit in the ground... wouldnt that be EXTREMELY cathastrophic? or will it just heat it up so much that the oil entirely dries up?

  • Dries up entirely. But I think that the flame drill will be used to get close to the oil deposit, and then the rest of the way will use a regular drill. The thing is there is also a water-drill, and an Ion-drill (air) that both exist as well...

  • Crude oil is not that much of a risk as it is mostly not explosive and with a lack of oxygen a sustainable fire would be impossible. Perhaps the real threat would be natural gas pockets.

  • I think I may be wrong ...... a high pressure well would force the oil to the surface where oxygen is plentiful. I actually have no idea how they would overcome this problem.

  • The flame actually is a jet of water. 3:00~3:20 had explain if you hear clearly.

  • so its steam right?

  • I did catch that but it is also super heated well past the flash point of Crude Oil.

  • It would suck if you hit oil.

  • I have the same ruler! lol! Man I wish I had one of those drills lol

  • Can't the drilling companies take it from here and invest the research dollars needed to build a bigger unit? They're flush with revenues in recent years, it should be a short term project.

  • They did originally call it a "fire drill" but as soon as they said the name, Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up out of nowhere holding a ferret screaming at everyone to "get to the chopper."

  • Hopefully the project managers and the seismologists will do a flammable gas risk-analysis before 'drilling'.  'Drilling' used loosely as drilling usually involves rotatory motion.

    I can see applications for construction, especially shallow horizontal tunneling.

    Either way, the caveat is ... Use with Caution.

  • yea, but what happens when you drill into a pocket of natural gas with that flame thrower leading the way. Brrrilliant!!!

  • Well, since there's no oxygen under the ground, nothing happens.

  • it burns hydrogen but hes right. you dont need oxygen necessary to burn. and it take longer to work on the site that was just dug. especially on a coal mine. so i guess it need farther reseach.

  • Actually you DO need oxygen to burn things. When you say that the torch burns hydrogen, you're talking about a chemical reaction called combustion where the hydrogen combines with oxygen and energy is released in the form of heat.

  • Same thing as when regular drills hit them. Boom.

  • so ,good!

  • same thing as that one welder the guy made run off of water , just alot bigger , i think you can still buy the welder , its fuel is plain water and electricity , and can slice through steel like butter

  • burning is reaction of a fuel and an oxidizing element, the most familiar is oxygen.

    The Flame Drill uses a Hydrogen flame, which is hydrogen burning with oxygen,

    The real drilling unit is the Hydro Drill, which drills with a jet of superheated water, which not ignite hydrocarbons.

    The drill is for Geothermal, but could be used for

  • @ johnccy

    even more, burning is the reaction of anything with oxygen, generating energy

  • Wow, thats impressive.

  • WHOAH! That's pretty awesome!

    What happens if some worker sticks his foot into the INVISIBLE flame. =))

  • Omfg cool

  • Engineer shotgun replacement revealed

  • tf2!!!!1!!!

  • hahaha good one :p

  • did he think about this ?

    most of the mines used are to mine resources that provide power to our industries. aka. coal, petroleum, mianly all hydrocarbons......

    when you are mining with a fire jet you need to think about what you are mining, if you are mining gas, or petrol your gonna cause all the petrol to burn rather than preserve and suck it up to ground safely. this kind of drill can only be used to mine iron ores and such.

  • I think the aim was getting to geothermal fuels easier.

  • geothmeral isnt a fuel, its the heat

  • oh come on, have some support. it's still only in the prototype phase after all

  • no it wont burn due to lack of oxygen in the underground

  • *slaps head* its fed with hydrogen, wood wont burn if theres a lack of oxygen, not hydrogen, aye aye aye

  • Nothing ever burns on its own. You need at least 2 different components to react. Hydrogen reacts with O2 producing energy+water. Hydrogen in a confined space without O2 will not burn.

    how UN stop the oil well in kuwait from burning after the gulf war? they use explosives to blow out the well tip. [2H2+O2=2H2O, C+O2=CO2] oxygen consumed thus stop the burning.

    why do rockets carry both hydrogen & O2 tanks? think abt it

    I though even the kids know what burning is, well I guess I was wrong.

  • It will they probably mix oxygen with the hydrogen, I think they just don't mention it because it doesn't matter. We see it work under water in the video so it must be being fed oxygen through the pipes, Somebody pleas correct me if I'm wrong.

  • i hope you are replying to someone else because its for geothemeral energy, not mining

  • This guy will make so much money

  • cool......

  • definitely not the best drill for oil deposits.

  • they better not use that thing arund oil in the ground!

  • sweet. magma power here we come

  • thats realy cool it could save alot of money and time. the isuee i see is if we go and drill for oil and it super heats the oil the the oil would burn up but that can be easily fixed by switching the blade thing i guess

  • I dont understand the whole thing

  • oh rele ??

    *curls beard*

  • yea:)

  • How is drilling more continuous holes in the earth faster, going green?

  • It produces no carbon emissions?

  • its hydrogen

    the same stuf those fancy cars run on

    it only produces water

  • its hydrogen and oxygen "Aspartame69" said that "the hydrogen alone would be useless at burning in that environment"

  • no the only thing that would come out of it i believe is water

  • It will make a hore for heat from the earths core to travel to the surface where we can use it to generate electricity

  • it's not the act itself that is green, it's what they're trying to do that is green

    deep within the earth's surface it's really freakin' hot. if you can access that heat, you can use it to generate steam which can run a turbine creating energy without producing any CO2 or other nasty pollutants. that's what's green.

  • wouldnt that thing light the oil on fire?

  • Good point

  • christians like this stuff the video is talking about?

  • that seems very cost effective.. not?

  • Wouldn't this flame drill become a problem when hitting flammable material underground?

  • i want two

  • I want one

  • yeah thats costs how much money?

    just eat a burrito with extra hot sauce and you BECOME one.

  • coolvido

  • this is amazing !! :]

  • very cool but also dangerous!~!

  • what if they reach petroleum with that flame?

  • WaBOOM!!!

  • Good point.

  • umm, yeh thats a good question.

  • Hahahahaha!!

  • i think you know the answer to that question.

    so why ask it?

  • There is no petroleum underground, pertol is a refined product, crude will not burn excessively without oxygen either.

  • Luckily we don't have oxygen on planet earth.

  • Luckily drills tend to be used to drill into solid materials rather than into open air.

    Not to say that theres no oxygen under the ground but its gonna be pretty quickly depleted in a 12' bore hole.

  • And fortunately natural gas and oil just sit in the hole and don't come out - if that happened then Saddam might've set fire to the oil wells in Kuwait or something.

    Oh wait...

  • Comment removed

  • Infact the only way they could fathom to extinguish the oil fires was a big cap to deprive the oxygen. These things were pretty huge and also not absolutely air tight. Im fairly sure more air was allowed to pass under the edges of a 50 meter well cap than would be able to suck into a 12 inch bore hole.

  • Ah well, then all's safe then when the oil and gas geyser up - I can see nothing in this situation that could possibly ignite it or go wrong.

    On a side note, how hot does the entirety of the presumably giant flame drill get? Is it electrically ignited? How hot are those melted flakes of stone flying around?

  • How hot something is doesnt matter in the slightest if there is insufficient oxygen to maintain ignition.

    Sometimes they even use dynamite to extinguish well fires, seems silly but the explosion steals the local oxygen from the fire for long enough for the fire to die.

    Fuel + air is required for combustion. Some materials can combust in water by breaking the chemical bond in H2O to release the oxygen, like magnesium/potassium , but crude old is not like that lol.

  • Ah, I think I understand now, they plan to use this drill to discover oil on the moon where the geysers of oil won't interact with any significant atmosphere and can't be ignited by the giant flame drill, super-heated flying fragments of rock or, for that matter, the erupting oil, which is presumably hot after encountering the "hotter than lava" flame of the drill.

    Thank you for explaining it to me.

  • Dude, combustion is not as simple as you think (if you could even remember your basic level science classes you would know this), especially in enclosed spaces, which at one end of a 12' tube thousands of metres under the ground, effectively is.

    Also, this is for tapping geothermal supplies of energy and striking oil is the exact opposite of what they are trying to achieve. Hitting oil would be an absolute failure.

  • hitting oil sounds like disaster.....massive explosion

  • The drill will have high pressure feeds of both hydrogen and oxygen, thats how it works. The hydrogen alone would be useless at burning in that environment, so would the oil.

  • You do realize that substances will spontaneously ignite at high temperatures right? They'd be applying an enormous amount of heat to a substance that is likely already quite warm, which would then travel along the tubes or hoses containing oxygen/hydrogen.

    If it didn't melt through those feeds then one would hope that the gas/oil itself wouldn't be hot enough to ignite when it reached the surfrace or encountered numerous other factors once it got there.

  • Essentially, it sounds like a gigantic gun. You have a super thin tube, with a "hotter than lava" flame at once end, and pressurized oil.

    Instead shooting bullets though you'd essentially get a surprise geyser of napalm near oxygen and hydrogen tanks.

  • "You do realize that substances will spontaneously ignite at high temperatures right?"

    Pressurised crude would kill the flame and cool the drill head in moments if it were to flood the bore hole.

    Why not join their team and design a drill with a stick of dynamite attached to it. It wont help crude burn without a good supply of air but then you can at least set off an explosion whenever you want.

  • So you think hot oil would kill the flame eh? And it would presumably do this by shooting up the bit where all the oxygen and hydrogen are.

    Interesting theory.

    Either the bit's pressure would be too weak to oppose the oil and it'd go up where all the oxygen and hydrogen are, or the pressure would be too great, and oxygen and hydrogen would be pumped into the geyser of oil as it erupted (if it managed to somehow put out the flame).

    Again - this sounds like a fantastic recipe.

  • Dude, youve got one hell of a pyrotechnic mindset going on. It would kill the flame by occupying the combustion area where the gasses mix. I wouldnt know what would have more pressure but either way it would seriously impede the efficiency of the drill. I would guess that it would extinguish it completely. Another guess is that these guys arnt as retarded as yourself and would probably know exactly what was happening at the drill head and would be able to kill the fuel supply.

  • You are right - I'm a complete moron for not completely trusting these engineers.

    After all, fine people like them designed the Hindenburg - that turned out well.

    Yep, between your guesses and their infallible skills nothing could possibly go wrong.

  • Now i know for a fact you are thick as fuck, you are still worried about the hindenburg disaster in the 30's?

    Get the fuck out you metal twat and go worry about something that you have the capacity to understand. Like your cleaning job.

  • Now go away you thick fuck, im glad you arnt working on any projects of any importance.

    ta ta.

  • Yep, good thing I never worked on the Columbia, Challenger, Apollo, Titantic, Hindenburg, Chernobyl or the Three-Mile Island reactor.

    Luckily, there were probably assholes like you back then too telling anyone with concerns about how safe and infallible all the engineers and scientists were.

  • There were more shuttles before and after columbia/challenger/apollo, more ships before and after titanic, more aircraft before and after hundenburg, more nuclear reactors before and after chernobyl/TMI, nearly all of which functioned as expected.

    Luckly no one listened to the cleaning staff nay sayers or we would have made no progress over the last 100 years..

  • Ah so because they built functional craft after their fuck-ups then that means they are perfect.

    Funny, even by your insane logic, that would mean that the flame drill, which hasn't been tested in any real-world sense, is likely to mess up since we haven't managed to make improvements after disasters.

    Oh, and moron, we stopped making ships like the Hindenburg.

    Also, by your insanely stupid logic, it would be impossible for us to have any future airline/spacecraft/nuclear disasters.

  • If this drill scares you, dont get a job working it.

    Infact lets just stop looking for better sources of energy and let this little rock we live on, thats already close to the inner edge of the habitable zone in our solar system and getting closer to the sun and warming, due to that AND burning fossil deposits. Let us just make ourselves practically extinct over the next 200 years with handfuls of survivors at the poles for a few more hundred years longer and hope some make it to mars eh?

  • Wow - and you think I'm paranoid?

    I suggest you watch Lord Monckton's speech on google video called "Apocalypse? No."

    I'm for alternative energy, but mainly to get us out of our toxic relationship with the Middle East - not due to scaremongering by politicians and their political entities.

  • O fuck off, you probably argue that the government are also ruled by the cooperations, the same cooperations that generally would like global warming under the carpet.

    Im going to test the water with this but, whatever the cause, global warming is as much a fact as human evolution though common descent. If you think politicians are scaremongering to piss off the middle east then you must think scientists are scaremongering to piss off fundamentalists.

  • Nope, not really, take CFC's which you mentioned, the corporations funded and gave voice to the environmental groups to help get them banned. Why? Well, the patent on CFC's had run out and when CFC's were banned they got to use their new and more expensive refrigerants and propellants.

    Asthma inhalers alone increased by up to 10 times their previous price with the CFC ban.

    And yes, certain people will make quite a bit of money with this global warming scare - most of us will suffer though.

  • Let me get this straight, do you deny a hole in the ozone? and do you deny global warming?

    Non if this really is in context since the main point is that a drill of the type in this video cant make a deposit of oil ignite, you might want to bash away at random topics until you find one you can make a point on but tbh given your lack of understanding of the original, and most relevant topic, i dont see any credence in anything else you discuss, no fuck off you little wussy prick,

  • No, I don't deny there is a hole in the ozone, it is in Antarctica, which, due to wind currents, doesn't get replenished much by the rest of the atmosphere, and since ozone is formed in sunlight, it can't form there during the long dark winter.

    In fact it is likely that the hole has always been there - growing and shrinking. If CFC's were the problem, then you'd expect, again due to wind currents, for the hole to be larger above the arctic (its not), where more CFC's would go.

  • And global warming is (or rather was) occurring, but likely due to the sun, weakening of the magnetosphere, or a host of other factors - our impact on it is negligible at best and the effects of global warming have been exaggerated beyond belief - as evidenced by your moronic apocalyptic scenario.

    Hell, tell me straight up, without looking it up, how many degrees of global warming mankind has caused? Failing that, tell me how many degrees have happened due to all factors like the sun?

  • You argument is like sticking your head up your arse. You think its dangerous to put a flame drill into an oil deposit without any abundant supply of oxygen but you dont think its at all risky to ignore out outputs into the ecosystem and just carry on under the blind assumption that we are not effecting any environmental process?

    Its safe to use a flame drill under ground. And its safe to assume that our actions are effecting the environement. Ill let you get back to fox news. thick fuck

  • Actually my position is quite consistent - people fuck up and are very arrogant. You arrogantly assume that man is responsible for global warming and you arrogantly assume that our science and engineering is infallible.

    Again, I recommend any watch Lord Monckton's speech - he debunks far more than I can with such word limit constraints.

    CO2 is safe, necessary and .04% of our atmosphere (up .01% from a century ago) - saying that is our fault or that it is even a bad thing is moronic.