# @stem_antics on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DaDbMD3gtbe
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/67155478-stem-antics-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/5ed5b369e8.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-06-26T15:08:07.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Stem Antics (@stem_antics) — https://gondola.cc/stem_antics

## Caption

Pulling a continuous cylinder of rock from kilometres below your feet is the closest thing geology has to time travel. Diamond core drilling is how the mining industry reads the subsurface before a single blast is fired.

The bit does the work. A hollow annular crown studded with synthetic diamond grit grinds a circular kerf, leaving an intact rock column threading up through its centre into the core barrel. Diamond wins here because its hardness outlasts the quartz and feldspar that would shred tungsten carbide in metres.

Then the elegant part: wireline retrieval.

- The inner tube uncouples and is winched up through the hollow drill rods
- The bit and the rod string stay downhole the entire time
- A fresh inner tube drops back to resume cutting

This avoids tripping hundreds of metres of rod out of the hole every run, the difference between crawling and real daily progress.

Recovered core gets logged obsessively. Geologists measure Rock Quality Designation, the summed length of intact pieces over 10 cm divided by the run length, to grade rock mass competence. Orientation lines scribed downhole let them rebuild the true dip and strike of ore-bearing structures in three dimensions.

Every metre is photographed and split, half sent for assay. Those grades feed the block model, the gridded digital orebody that decides whether a deposit is worth billions or worth walking away from. Standards like JORC and NI 43-101 exist precisely because that call rests on a few centimetres of stone.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole reached 12,262 m and returned water and microfossils nobody had predicted at that depth.

The earth keeps its ledger in stone, and drilling is how we audit it.

#stemantics #geology #mining #drilling #earthscience

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 518
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 4

## Tags

geology, mining, drilling, stemantics, earthscience

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