Chinese scientists are digging a 10000-meter-deep pit inside the earth. It aims to explore new frontiers above and below the Earth’s surface for the country with the world’s second-largest economy.
Drilling for China’s deepest borewell ever began in the country’s oil-rich province of Xinjiang on Tuesday, according to China’s official news agency Xinhua. Earlier in the morning, China sent its first astronaut into space from the Gobi Desert.
The deepest man-made hole on Earth is still the Russian Kola superdeep borehole. The hole reached a depth of 12,262 m (40,230 ft) in 1989 after 20 years of drilling.
According to the report, the thin shaft in the ground will penetrate more than 10 continental layers or rocky layers in the earth’s crust till the Cretaceous system. The age of the rock found in the earth’s crust is said to be 145 million years.
In 2021, President Xi Jinping, while addressing some of the country’s leading scientists, called for exploration in the depths of the earth. Such work can help in the exploration of mineral and energy resources. It can also help in assessing the risks of environmental disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.