Why China Is Drilling A 32,808 Feet-Deep Hole Into The Earth’s Crust

China is drilling a 32,808-foot deep hole into the Earth’s crust for a number of reasons, including:

Scientific exploration: China wants to study the areas of the planet that lie deep below the Earth’s surface. This will help them to better understand the Earth’s formation, evolution, and composition.

Resource exploration: China is also hoping to find new sources of minerals and energy resources by drilling this deep. This could help to reduce China’s reliance on imports and make the country more energy independent.

Disaster prevention: China is also hoping to learn more about the causes of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions by drilling this deep. This information could help them to better predict and prevent these natural disasters.

The drilling is taking place in the Tarim Basin in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The drill is designed to reach a depth of 11,100 meters (36,400 feet). The drilling is expected to take several years to complete.

China is not the only country that has drilled deep into the Earth’s crust. The Soviet Union drilled the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which reached a depth of 12,262 meters (40,230 feet) in 1989. However, the Kola Superdeep Borehole was abandoned due to technical difficulties.

The drilling of this deep hole is a major scientific and engineering undertaking. It is a sign of China’s growing technological prowess and its ambitions to become a global leader in scientific research.

Why China Is Drilling A 32,808 Feet-Deep Hole Into The Earth’s Crust

The narrow shaft into the ground will penetrate more than 10 continental strata, or layers of rock and reach the cretaceous system in the Earth’s crust.

Chinese scientists have begun drilling a 10,000-meter (32,808 feet) hole into the Earth’s crust, as the world’s second largest economy explores new frontiers above and below the planet’s surface.

Drilling for what is set to be China’s deepest ever borehole began in the country’s oil-rich Xinjiang region on Tuesday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Earlier that morning, China sent its first civilian astronaut into space from the Gobi Desert.

The narrow shaft into the ground will penetrate more than 10 continental strata, or layers of rock, according to the report, and reach the cretaceous system in the Earth’s crust, which features rock dating back some 145 million years.

“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables,” Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Xinhua.

President Xi Jinping called for greater progress in deep Earth exploration in a speech addressing some of the nation’s leading scientists in 2021. Such work can identify mineral and energy resources and help assess the risks of environmental disasters, such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions.

The deepest man-made hole on Earth is still the Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole, which reached a depth of 12,262 meters (40,230 feet) in 1989, after 20 years of drilling.