Something Called "The Object" Stops World's Largest Tunneling Machine

And the solution is......?

Nicely informative article. Not.

They either drill fom the face or drop a piling rig from above. With such a supreme lack of info it's hard to say which. I'm sure that somebody had a plan in mind for the eventuallity that the great big scrunching worm hits an obstacle. Of course they did, it will only cost millions per day if that happens. Sarcasm will be lost on them. If you spend big, then you plan big and figure as many fail scenarios as you can. 'sorry mommy, my toy isn't working'. Without more info it's hard to be constructive.

Just don't let the sun shine on it, it will notify the Others, that it has been discovered....

Ha,ha! My original (SiFi) thoughts too!

Could be a giant meteorite, or perhaps it's a hidden UFO like in "War of the World's", who knows?

http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/6114/Designer-Edge-Image-of-the-Day-Bertha-The-Worlds-Largest-Tunneling-Machine.aspx

Does anybody there comprehend the meaning of the word DETOUR?

Duh, when you can't go "through" it, you go "around" it (wink,wink)!

It's not that simple.

When engineers build a machine to drill through anything they don't build a reverse function being in theory it wasn't supposed to hit something it couldn't drill through.

Unstoppable force meets immovable object.

For the moment the immovable object is winning!

The Blob went underground, dried out, and got hard.

Did they find a presently stable fault line that could be subject to tectonic plate drift?

I'm guessing this thing is going to be huge bolder left over from one of the last ice ages.

We don't have any real major rock out croppings here in North Dakota but huge house sized boulders brought down from the north during the ice ages are not uncommon things to find here.

The other plausible object that could stop a machine like this would be a large chunk of Gneiss stone. Around here they are one of the few types of stones that can stop a huge stone crusher dead in it's tracks!

One of my associates works at a local gravel company and they have several Gneiss boulders in their shop and offices ranging in size from bowling balls to basketballs that have stopped their 400 - 600 HP crusher units dead in their tracks over the years.