Produced by: Manoj Kumar
The deepest humans have drilled is 12.2 km at the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia—less than 0.2% of the way to Earth’s center. The crust alone extends tens of kilometers.
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Temperatures at Kola reached 180°C. At the core, it’s around 6,000°C—comparable to the Sun’s surface. Most materials and electronics can’t survive long under those conditions.
The deeper you go, the higher the pressure. At the core, it’s over 3 million times atmospheric pressure—crushing anything we currently know how to build.
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Drilled between 1970 and 1989, the Kola project had to stop despite decades of work due to rock instability, temperature extremes, and equipment failure—not lack of will.
Deep Earth rock isn’t solid like surface stone—it flows, shifts, and collapses under pressure. That means drilled holes often close up or collapse from the stress.
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Deeper drilling requires exponentially more energy and resources. Even narrow boreholes cost hundreds of millions—and deliver diminishing returns past certain depths.
Concerns about “drilling too deep” triggering disasters are hypothetical. We’ve never approached magma chambers or tectonic boundaries at sufficient depth to cause such events.
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Instead of digging, scientists use seismic waves from earthquakes. Changes in wave speed and direction help map Earth’s internal layers, including the molten outer core and solid inner core.
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With lab tools like diamond anvil cells and computer simulations, geophysicists replicate deep-Earth conditions to study materials and make educated guesses about what lies below.
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