A company aims to power the world for millions of years by digging the deepest holes ever

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An MIT spinout aims to use X-rays to melt rock and repurpose coal and gas plants into deep geothermal wells - effectively transforming dirty fossil-fuel plants into clean ones. 

The brain behind the concept is a research engineer in MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Paul Woskov. The engineer has spent the last 14 years developing a method that may bring an abandoned coal power plant back online, entirely carbon-free, within a decade. And his method, which is being commercialized by a company named Quaise Energy, could work on nearly every coal and gas power plant on our planet, according to a press release.

Ultimately, the company intends to up the ante by vaporizing enough rock to create the world's deepest holes and capture geothermal energy on a scale large enough to meet human energy needs for millions of years. Imagine that.

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