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If you've ever thought, what if I just dug a really, really deep hole?
That's what the USSR did right here.
That hole is 12.2 km or 7.6 mi deep.
That makes it deeper than the Mariana Trench.
It's deeper than Mount Everest is tall.
The USSR dug it starting in 1970.
It was part of a race to see who could retrieve a sample from the Earth's mantle first, kind of a space race, but the opposite.
The United States only reached 600 ft before pulling funding, but the USSR kept going for 20 years.
They made it about a third of the way through Earth's crust before the temperature got a lot hotter than they expected.
Their drill bits started melting.
The rock was so hot, it was like plastic, but along the way, they invented all kinds of drilling and scientific equipment that we still use today.
They found fossils of organisms dating back 2 billion years and discovered that there was water much deeper than previously thought.
It's crazy though that the deepest hole humanity has ever dug is still .002% of the way to the middle of the Earth.
There is so much that we still don't know about our own planet.
If you like optimistic science and tech stories, follow for more.
What if you just… keep digging? That’s what the USSR did in 1970. This hole is 7.6 miles or 12.2 kilometers deep, making it deeper than the deepest part of the ocean and deeper than Mt. Everest is tall.
It was part of a race to see who could retrieve a sample from Earth’s mantle first - kind of like the space race, but DOWN. Here’s what they found...
Humanity’s deepest hole is only 0.2% of the way to the middle of the Earth. There’s still so much left to learn about our own planet.
If you like optimistic science and tech stories, follow for more of our show Huge If True!
#animation #deepest #science #technology #historyfacts