Is It Possible to Dig All the Way Through the Earth to the Other Side?

In fact, if I had been capable to excavation consecutive done the planet, I would person travel retired successful the Indian Ocean, astir 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) westbound of Australia. That’s the antipode, oregon other constituent connected Earth’s surface, from my town.

But I lone had a plot spade to determination the earth. When I deed rock, little than 3 feet (1 meter) beneath the surface, I couldn’t spell deeper.

Now, I’m a geophysicist and cognize a batch much astir Earth’s structure. It has 3 main layers:

• The outer skin, called the crust, is simply a precise bladed furniture of airy rock. Its thickness compared to Earth’s diameter is akin to however heavy an apple’s tegument is to its diameter. When I dug holes arsenic a kid, I was scratching distant astatine the precise apical of Earth’s crust.
• The mantle, which lies beneath the crust, is overmuch thicker, similar the soma of the apple. It’s made of strong, dense stone that flows up to a fewer inches per year arsenic hotter stone rises distant from Earth’s halfway and cooler stone sinks toward it.
• The core, astatine Earth’s center, is made of super-hot liquid and coagulated metal. Temperatures present are 4,500 to 9,300 degrees Fahrenheit (2,500 to 5,200 degrees Celsius).

The Earth is made up of layers. The lithosphere is the solid, outer portion of the planet, including the brittle precocious information of the mantle and the crust.
Volcan26/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Earth’s outer layers exert unit connected the layers underneath, and these forces summation steadily with depth, conscionable arsenic they bash successful the water – deliberation of however unit successful your ears gets stronger arsenic you dive deeper underwater.

That’s applicable for digging done the Earth, due to the fact that erstwhile a spread is dug oregon drilled, the walls on the sides of the spread are nether tremendous unit from the overlying rock, and besides unstable due to the fact that there’s bare abstraction adjacent to them. Stronger rocks tin enactment bigger forces, but each rocks tin neglect if the unit is large enough.

When digging a pit, 1 mode to forestall the walls from collapsing inward nether unit is to marque them little steep, truthful they slant outward similar the sides of a cone. A bully regularisation of thumb is to marque the spread 3 times wider than its depth.

Unstable walls

The deepest unfastened pit successful the Earth is the Bingham Canyon Mine successful Utah, which was dug with excavators and explosives successful the aboriginal 1900s to excavation copper ore. The pit of the excavation is 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) heavy and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) wide.

Since the excavation is much than 3 times wider than it is heavy and the walls are sloped, the pit’s walls are not excessively steep oregon unstable. Still, successful 2013, 1 of the slopes collapsed, causing two immense landslides that released 145 cardinal tons of crushed stone to the bottommost of the pit. Luckily, nary 1 was hurt, but the landslides caused hundreds of millions of dollars successful damage.

Suppose you were to effort digging done the Earth, and that the satellite was each solid. (We cognize that it’s not, but this is the simplest scenario.) The extent of a spread each the mode done the satellite would beryllium equivalent to Earth’s diameter, which is conscionable a sanction for a enactment that passes consecutive done the halfway of a circle. So your spread would request to beryllium astir 3 times arsenic wide arsenic the diameter of the Earth successful bid for it to beryllium stable.

Clearly, this is an intolerable task that would wholly change the planet’s shape.

Digging versus drilling

Drilling tin spell deeper much rapidly than digging due to the fact that little worldly needs to beryllium moved, and the smaller aboveground country of a borehole tin beryllium engineered to withstand much force. Energy companies routinely drill arsenic acold arsenic 3 miles (5 kilometers) beneath the aboveground to find lipid and gas.

The deepest spread successful the Earth is the Kola Superdeep Borehole successful northwestern Russia, which extends 7.5 miles (12.2 kilometers) deep. Deep boreholes similar this 1 tin archer scientists a batch astir Earth’s interior. However, the Kola task was yet abandoned owed to drilling challenges, specified arsenic temperatures too blistery for the instrumentality to function, instrumentality failures and precocious costs.

Drilling is simply a tedious process. A rotary drill spot astatine the extremity of a hollow, mud-filled tube grinds rock, penetrating conscionable a mates inches per infinitesimal for precise hard rocks. Assuming dependable advancement astatine this rate, it would instrumentality hundreds of years to drill done the Earth.

As the spot drills deeper, it takes much clip to regenerate breached parts. And the miles of drill tube tin go truthful dense that they cannot beryllium twisted oregon pulled retired of the hole.

Pressure is besides an issue. Borehole walls are nether tremendous unit and prone to failing. The dilatory question of Earth’s mantle would yet origin a borehole to crook and collapse. Magma, gases and liquid metallic heavy successful the Earth, nether tremendous pressure, could detonate upward done the borehole toward the surface.

Current drilling technologies conscionable aren’t accelerated capable oregon durable capable to drill done Earth’s mantle and core. But we tin inactive marvel astatine accomplishments similar the Kola Superdeep Borehole and Bingham Canyon Mine, and imagination of digging up rocks from adjacent greater depths.

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And since curiosity has nary property bounds – adults, fto america cognize what you’re wondering, too. We won’t beryllium capable to reply each question, but we volition bash our best.

Andrew Gase, Assistant Professor of Geoscience, Boise State University

This nonfiction is republished from The Conversation nether a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.