Did you realize that just a few facts concerning the Earth’s innards are known?! According to others, we know more about the universe’s borders than we do about the planet’s center. What we do know is mostly based on seismic waves carried through the planet’s strata. The deepest drilling ever carried out on Earth was carried out by Russia in the Kola Peninsula for 22 years (1970–1992) and reached only 12.3 km (1/3 of the cortex and less than 0.2 percent of terrestrial radio).
The Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 is the outcome of a Soviet Union scientific drilling effort in the Pechengsky District, on the Kola Peninsula, close the Russian border with Norway. The project’s objective was to drill as deeply into the Earth’s crust as feasible.
World’s deepest hole is in Kola, Russia
Drilling began on 24 May 1970 with the Uralmash-4E and then the Uralmash-15000 series drilling rigs, and in 1979 it became the world’s deepest man-made hole. The boreholes with a diameter of 23 centimetres (9 in) were drilled by branching off from a central hole. The deepest point reached 12,262 metres (40,230 feet; 7.619 miles) in 1989, making it the world’s deepest artificial point.
It is the world’s deepest borehole in terms of real vertical depth. It was also the world’s longest borehole in terms of measured depth along the well bore for two decades, until 2008, when it was exceeded by Qatar’s 12,289-metre-long (40,318-foot) (7.636-mile) Al Shaheen oil well. We all want to know what is under the Earth’s surface. Digging a tunnel directly into the Earth’s interior would appear to be the most effective method of studying its innards. Numerous holes have been excavated for both commercial and research purposes. However, by excavating, we have literally barely scraped the surface of our planet. If the Earth were an egg, we haven’t even penetrated the shell. Indeed, the Earth does have a shell, referred to as the crust. The Earth’s crust is divided into numerous smaller plates that move very slowly over a more mobile or’plastic’ element known as the asthenosphere.
The deepest hole in the United States is the 32,000-foot-deep (6-mile-deep) Bertha Rogers gas well in Oklahoma. The well was halted when it came into contact with molten sulfur. Perhaps the most well-known attempt to penetrate the Earth is Project Mohole (which began in 1961), which attempted to drill through the Earth’s crust in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico, where the crust is shallow. The project was closed in 1966 due to a lack of funding. The objective was to reach the Mohorovicic discontinuity – often referred to as the “Moho” – between the upper mantle and the Earth’s crust. The effort fell far short of the Moho, reaching a depth of only 601ft in 12,000 feet of water. The Moho is 16,000 feet deep where they were digging, therefore the team fell far short of their aim. Nonetheless, valuable core samples were retrieved and significant knowledge about deep sea drilling was gained.
By far the deepest hole is one on Russia’s Kola Peninsula in Murmansk, dubbed the “Kola well.” Beginning in 1970, it was drilled for research purposes. After five years, the Kola well had reached a depth of 7 kilometers (about 23,000ft). Work proceeded until 1989, when the drill became trapped in rock just over 12 kilometers (almost 40,000 feet or 8 miles) deep. That is the current human depth record. The depth of the Kola’s well corresponds to the distance across Jackson. The project cost more than $100 million, or almost $2500 per foot. That is a lot of digging! Geologists would prefer to delve deeper for core samples if they had the technology and funds, but excavating such holes needs a great deal of patience, money, technology, and luck. Such holes yield a wealth of information; for example, the temperature at the bottom of this hole was approximately 370°F (190°C).
Today, the structure of the deep Earth is examined through more indirect methods. Perhaps the most efficient way has been to observe earthquake or seismic waves as they propagate between sensing stations. These natural waves let us to look within the Earth by reacting to its many layers, much like x-rays or magnetic resonance imaging do for the human body.
