Have you Thought of Digging The Ground to the Bottom?

As a child I wanted to dig the ground until I reach the core of the earth and then surpass it till i get to space from digging. I always believed that if we could reach space from the sky, then we should be able to reach it from digging since our planet are all in a space in the solar system. As an adult, i would have loved to try this out but I know that it is a mission that wouldn’t happen anytime soon but what would we see if we dug the ground?

For most of us that have tried to dig into the ground, our dream always get cut short by the water table below the ground surface even before we hit bedrock at all. Asides from random people, scientists have tried to dig the earth to reach the bottom but it looks like 6400km of earths ground distance is a lot.

flickr

When we want to start digging into the earth, thr first place we will need to encounter is the crust and the thinnest of all the crust is the oceanic crust of about 10km and made from Basaltic igneous rock. With its thin surface, it has been difficult to dig through the igneous rock and even with deep ocean drilling, we have not been able to go pass 2km below the sea floor so that leaves ua with going from dry ground.

Compared to the bottom of the sea, the crust on land is more thicker and it would require more work and digging as it is about 70km thick. As we descend into the inner part of the planet’s crust, the temperature increases evey kilometer about 25 degrees Celsius and as a result of the rocks on the surface, the pressure increases every 3 meters down by 1 atmosphere.

All I just mentioned is what has deterred us from digging down the earth although there have been several attempts like the Kola Superdeep Borehole and this just went about 12km but still holds the record of the deepest hole dug and took over a decade to reach that point and that length is just 0.2% of the earth. The drilling exercises usually stop as a result of the earth being to hot that the metals used to dig becomes too soft for them to work.

wikimedia

Between us and Uranus or pluto, there isn’t anything except space or let’s say vacuum but digging the earth to reach here is a very difficult problem. If were to be continue digging possibly with laser or any new innovations then with seismology, we can tell tell that digging deeper into about 3km of the earth crust, we could still find organisms like the devil worm that feed on microscopic bacteria and these organisms can withstand the heat for up to 5km. About 10km below the earth crust, cracks of water can be still be seen as they permeate to this region.

Just like we have fresh water in this region so are there pockets of salty waters in rock underneath the earth. In this region of the earthcrust, there are fossils of previously existing organisms like Trilobite fossils which existed about 250 million years ago. Also, scientists believe that the rocks witth salty water would possibly have fossils of bacteria.

The deeper we go down, the less likely we are to see fossils as pressure and temperature reshapes the earthcrust to create metamorphic rocks. In this region, mudstone becomes schists, and limestone becomes marble. After 10km of digging, we reach the mantle which is divided by a boundary from crust and the boundary is known as Mohorovičić discontinuity. Once we enter mantle, we will hit peridotite and the mantle goes as far as 2800km but we have only dif through the lithosphere which is the outer part of the mantle. While the temperature of the mantle reacha 500 degrees celsius the peridotite acts as solid.

The lithosphere can ho as far as 300km beneath the earth surface and it is in this parts that diamonds are born and violent volcanic eruption bring out the diamonds to the surface such as in places like South Africa, Botswana, and Russia. As we go deeper, we reach the Aethenosphere with 1300 degrees Celsius. Scientists believe that at this point it starts to display characteristics like liquid as it is believed that there are three times the amount of water in the ocean at this point but the liquid is formed inside crystals known as Ringwoodite which gives the ringwoodite the blue color.

Flickr

700km below the Arthenosphere, we begin to reach the lower mantle with a temperature of about 3000 degrees celsius. Some geologist believe that the lower mantle doesn’t convect. Drilling to 2890km from the lower mantle, the outer corr is reached and at this point, the temperature is about 4000 degrees Celsius. At this point, instead of rocks, metals are found there. These metals are iron, nickel, platinum, gold, and cobalt and the all exist in a liquid state mix and the motion of the liquid is affected by the earth’s rotation and create the earth’s magnetic field.

At 5150km, we reach the inner core of the earth with a temperature of about 5500 degrees Celsius with a pressure 3.6 million times the pressure of the earth’s surface. Going down 1200km more into the metals is where we reach the center of the earth. At this center, if we keep digging, we will see the same thing again but this time, having gravity work against us.

Back to the 12km depth of hole on the earth crust constructed by the Soviet Union, it took 24 years to reach that depth but if are to continue digging so as to be able ti reach the center of the earth, it will be a long journey as it will take over 13000 years.

---

---

^Reference

---

---

^{https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2001JB000712
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL093549
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022GL098271
https://astrobiology.com/2023/11/mysterious-giant-blobs-of-material-near-earths-core.html
https://csmgeo.csm.jmu.edu/geollab/fichter/metarx/Barmetachanges.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/lower-mantle
https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap2-What-is-a-Plate
https://www.gsi.ie/en-ie/education/our-planet-earth/Pages/The-Earth-structure.aspx
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/crustal-thickness
https://www.space.com/earth-innermost-inner-core-metallic-ball
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/mar/earths-deep-mantle-flows-dynamically
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary
https://www.space.com/earth-core-mantle-boundary-diamonds
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/what-would-happen}