Business Insider shared an animated video showing how far humans have dug underground through using many examples to provide perspective, and it is fascinating to the core.
A journey to the center of the earth would take a lot longer than you'd expect, so you might want to shelve any ambitions your parents instilled in you of digging a hole all the way to China.
What humans are capable of so far is already mighty impressive.
The video illustrates human excavating accomplishments beginning with a scratch on the earth's surface to where we ultimately wind up. Six feet under.
The typical grave is 6 feet down. Most Olympic swimming pools are 10 feet deep. Nile crocodiles dig burrows as deep as 39 feet deep. The Paris Catacombs are 65 feet underground.
Fascinating facts highlight our journey as we continue our descent to the lower depths.
The ancient city of Derinkuyu lies 279 feet below Turkey. The Greenbrier Bunker in W. Virginia is 720 feet underground. It was built to keep Congress safe in an emergency.
Need some perspective as to the scale of how far we've come? In the first example, the video uses a Parisian landmark for reference.
If the Eiffel Tower were buried up to the tip the base would reach down to here. The Woodingdean Well is 1,285 feet deep. It's the deepest hole that humans have dug by hand.33 Chilean miners were trapped in a mine for about 2 months in 2010. The Burj Khalifa would go 2,722 feet below the surface. The deepest known point in a cave is in Krubera Cave in Georgia. Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel is the deepest railway tunnel. Mponeng in South Africa is the world's deepest gold mine.
Humans have now exceeded the depths below the ocean floor, and that drilling project spans over four decades. How's that pressure in your ears?
The Kola Superdeep Borehole is only 9 inches wide. Russian scientists have been drilling it since 1970. It's now deeper than the deepest part of the ocean. The bottom is 356˚F, which is too hot for drills to go any further.
We have reached the farthest we could go. So far.
In 2012, Exxon completed the Z-44 Chayvo Well. This oil well is the deepest humans have dug.
Regarding reaching the center of the earth, we've barely pierced the earth's crust. It would take another 6o,000 feet to accomplish that. It's still a long journey with 21 million feet to go before reaching the center.
So how big are you feeling now?
Twitter can't even process the statistics of our digging accomplishments.
Flat-earthers out there had a question.
Do talk of crusts and cores make you hungry?
Maybe there's safety in not knowing.
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H/T - Twitter, BusinessInsider, YouTube
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