Quaise energy demos millimeter wave drilling for deep geothermal

On May 21,关键字2 2025, New Atlas attended a demonstration at the Nabors facility in Houston, Texas, where Quaise Energy showcased a literalgroundbreaking demo of its millimeter wave drilling technology, looking to prove its dream of revolutionizing geothermal energy extraction.

Quaise was officially founded in 2018 as a spinout of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. The idea of using a gyrotron – a device that uses high-frequency millimeter waves like a microwave on steroids – to vaporize rock goes back a decade earlier to 2008 when MIT researcher Paul Woskov suggested it could be used for deep drilling where conventional drill bits simply cannot.

The plan is to tap into Earth's spicy deep layers like they're a bottomless well of clean energy. Quaise wants to drill deeper and hotter than anything humans have ever attempted to do before – depths over 12 miles (20 km) below the surface, where Quaise expects temperatures to reach nearly 1,000 °F (500 °C).