When we need to travel long distances, we can take a boat, a car or an airplane, and a variety of means of transportation are the result of human exploration in the three fields of sea, land and air. Human civilization continues to grow and develop, and mankind's exploration of the unknown continues to deepen. Mankind knows the beginning and end of the birth of the universe and the earth, almost all kinds of terrestrial creatures, the habits of deep-sea animals...
But there is a place that is not yet accessible to human technology, and although humans have tried to understand it more than a hundred years ago, but have not succeeded until today, it is the interior of the earth.
We all know that the earth is a sphere, and some people must have had this question: can the earth be dug through? What does 10,000 meters underground look like? What can be found digging deepest from the surface?
Inside the Earth
Earth is the largest diameter, mass, and density terrestrial planet in the solar system, and the Earth rotates at a speed of nearly 24 hours, so we can see the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. The Earth revolves around the sun, so we can have four seasons.
At the same time, the moon is still rotating around the earth for 27.3 days, so we can see the moon's cloudy and sunny circle. So what is the structure of the Earth?
The structure of the earth is a bit like an egg, which is mainly composed of three parts: "eggshell", "egg white" and "egg yolk". The outermost "eggshell" is called the Earth's crust, and although it is the thinnest layer, it is also 40 kilometers thick. The "egg white" in the middle is called the mantle, which is about 2900 kilometers thick, and the "egg yolk" at the center is the center of the earth, that is, the core of the earth.
The most superficial layer of the Earth is the Earth's crust
Some people say, haven't we yet explored the depths of the earth's core? So where do these thickness figures come from? In fact, these data were discovered by scientists more than a hundred years ago, and the main opportunity to discover them was because of earthquakes.
In 1910, the thickness of the Earth's crust was first detected. A seismologist named Moholovich observed that the seismic wave refracted 50 kilometers underground, which indicates that the geological structure after 40 kilometers underground is very different, so the seismic wave did not continue to spread.
To commemorate the discovery of this "eggshell" and "egg white" interface, people call this area "Moho noodles". In 1914, seismologist Gutenberg discovered a different sub-interface after discovering 2,900 km underground.
This is the interface between the "egg white" mantle and the "yolk" core, so people call this location "Gutenberg face". The earth is divided into three layers by humans, so what is in the depths of the earth?
Hierarchy of Earth composition
The crust, mantle and core are only a rough layer, but in fact, the structure of the earth is more complex than an egg, and its layers are like onions that wrap the core in layers. From the outside to the inside: the earth's crust, the upper mantle, the lower mantle, the outer nuclear layer, the transition layer and the inland nuclear layer. The land we are stepping on now, as well as the bottom of the ocean, are composed of fragments of different sizes, which are undulating, such as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is more than 65 kilometers thick, and the land on the seabed is about 5 to 10 kilometers thick, and the distribution is uneven.
Together, these fragments are the crust, and the average thickness of all crusts is about 20 kilometers. The earth's crust is composed of more than 90 kinds of elements, the main components are aerobic, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium 8 elements.
Where the elements are dense, mines are formed. But most of the time they come in the form of compounds, such as the common rocks of various kinds. By geologists examining the age of rocks on Earth, the crust is not a structure that has existed since the birth of the Earth.
Simulation of the Earth's interior
Compared to The Earth's 4.6 billion years old, the oldest crust is only 3.9 billion years old, so scientists speculate that the current crust, which is only 20 kilometers thick, should have been formed by volcanic activity and orogenic activity.
The mantle consists of two parts: the upper mantle and the lower mantle. It has been speculated that there is also an underthress between the upper mantle and the earth's crust, which is the source of volcanic magma. The temperature between the lower mantle and the core is about 3500 °C.
The earth's core is divided into three layers: the outer core layer, the transition layer and the core layer. The medium of the field kernel is a high-temperature fluid, which is 2080 km thick here. The transition layer is 140 km thick and the junction temperature with the core is about 6300 °C. The inland core is about 2,500 km in diameter and the temperature is about 6,600°C.
The closer the Earth is to the center, the higher the temperature and the greater the pressure, so it is difficult for humans to explore the center of the earth. The above data are the results of scientists through instrument testing or calculation. The deepest position that humans have reached so far is only 12,262 meters, what is in this distance we know?
The earth's internal temperature is constantly increasing
The Kola Peninsula, located in the Arctic Circle, is a palm-sized hole surrounded by rusty bolts and metal, surrounded by dilapidated buildings that resemble an abandoned, abandoned factory. But in this humble place, there are still people who come thousands of miles to see it. Because this is the deepest man-made well on Earth, the Kola ultra-deep well, which was once excavated by the Soviet Union at 12,262 meters.
The Soviet Union dug out single-celled biological fossils, gold ore layers, water sources and other substances in this pit, which brought a large amount of data to the study of geology, history, biology and other aspects of human beings at that time.
Kola Ultra Deep Well Memorial
But more than 20 years later, the Soviet Union abandoned the project due to a shortage of funds, so it became a deserted place. Although the land has been desolate for a long time, at that time, new discoveries were being made here every day.
Digging up to 6700 meters, fossils of single-celled organisms that have become extinct have been found. These single-cell fossils fill the blank space of prehistoric single-cell fossils of humans and provide material for scientists to study biological evolution and plate movement.
Digging to 9,000 meters, people found gold deposits. Scientists speculate that it must be an ancient gold-bearing meteorite that fell and was buried deep underground with the movement of geological plates. However, subsequent sources do not record whether these gold mines were mined and excavated.
Kola ultra-deep well
Dug to 12,000 meters, it is still gneiss. Originally, scientists estimated that they should have reached the basalt layer as early as 7,000 meters, but they never arrived. And the rock density here has decreased, making drilling more difficult.
The temperature is also getting higher and higher, and the pressure is getting higher and higher. Drilling is accompanied by a constant infiltration of mineral water. By 122262 meters, the temperature had reached an astonishing 180°C, and the rock here was so hard that excavations were very difficult.
At this time, the Soviet Union collapsed, and there was no longer any financial guarantee that the project would continue, so the entire project could only be interrupted. What would have happened if the project had gone ahead?
There are many hidden secrets lurking underground. For example, about 12 meters underground is the deepest place that other animals besides humans can dig.
About 35 meters underground hides the famous mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, and about 150 meters underground hides the underground arsenal of Ukraine. At this same depth, Sweden's famous Lhasa Silver Mine Hotel is also hidden.
There are many mines more than 700 meters underground, and China's neutrino laboratory is at this depth.
More than 2,000 meters underground is the depth of the Natural Cave of Kuruboyala in Georgia.
More than 2400 meters underground is China's dark matter detection laboratory.
More than 3900 meters underground is home to South Africa's gold mines...
More than 2,800 meters underground, magma composed of liquid metals and minerals is flowing. Because it is precisely because of the rotation of these metallic oceans that our earth has a magnetic field and direction.
People find a lot of things through the Kola ultra-deep well
And, also under their protection, we escaped most of the radiation from the sun. More than 4800 meters underground, the pressure here has made it difficult for any creature to bear, even those who have been accustomed to high pressure in the deep sea all year round cannot survive here.
If you have been successfully digging to the center of the earth, you will know what it really looks like. Because there is still direct evidence of what the center of the Earth looks like, there are many accounts of the Earth's core.
Some people say that the central temperature of the earth is so high that no matter what kind of material must be melted at high temperatures, so the core of the earth is a liquid mineral. It is also said that the center of the earth must be a solid state rich in iron, and the iron element in the mantle is still migrating to the core. There are also people who say that the core of the earth is composed of two substances, and even some people say that the center of the earth is crystal... All kinds of hypotheses have never been confirmed, and perhaps only by really digging through the earth can we see its true appearance.
Let's start with the conclusion: the earth cannot be dug through. Because at the current level of human science and technology, it is still impossible to overcome the difficulties existing in the in-depth excavation. The difficulties of digging deep into the ground are mainly in the following five aspects:
A steady stream of water seepage
There are many water sources hidden underground, and there will be a steady stream of groundwater deep into the mine during the excavation process, which will affect the speed of excavation at the light and collapse the mine, so this is the first difficulty for humans to excavate deep holes.
The underground rivers of the earth
Gases that explode at any time
The underground composition is so complex and hidden for hundreds of millions of years that somewhere you may be excavating flammable and explosive ingredients like coal, oil or natural gas lurking. So to dig deeper into the ground, you need to have equipment that can crush rock without generating high heat or impact that would lead to the risk of explosion.
Ultra-high temperatures that can melt everything
The temperature of underground molten slurry is thousands of degrees Celsius, and the thickness is also thousands of meters, so there will be high-temperature magma spewing out during the drilling process, and any anti-high temperature equipment invented by humans cannot resist this natural ultra-high temperature.
Simulation of high-temperature magma
Invincible radiation protection
Even if you overcome all of these difficulties, when you dig into the depths of the mantle, you must find a way to resist the damage caused by radiation. Because the center of the earth may be full of radioactive metal ores.
Unbearable high pressure
The deeper you go into the center of the earth, the more stressful it becomes. As the excavation progresses, the drill hole will be subjected to high pressure and deformed, and if you want to avoid the drill hole being squeezed by the high pressure to disappear, you must consider digging a hole that can withstand more than 400 times the pressure at the beginning, creating a device that resists high pressure, or counteracting the high pressure.
If someone can really penetrate the center of the earth and smoothly walk to the center of the earth, he may instantly become a "popcorn", because the strong pressure will squeeze him from all sides, and his flesh will explode.
Underground mines
If we really overcome the above difficulties, can we make a hole in the earth and build a tunnel through the earth? Currently it takes about a day if we fly from one end of the globe to the other.
If there really were a geocentric tunnel, wouldn't it take less than an hour to get directly from one side of the earth to the other? The answer is no.
First of all, we not only have to overcome the difficulty of drilling, but also build refrigeration equipment and tunnels to withstand the extreme environment, and more importantly, the temperature and pressure near the center of the earth are extremely high and extreme, and we humans may have died under extreme conditions before we reached the middle of the earth.
At the current level of technology, exploring the depths of the earth's core is still a distant dream, and perhaps this dream will not come true until we successfully colonize other planets. Although this dream may not be realized, the pace of human exploration of the underground has never stopped.
Until now, countries around the world are still trying to sample from the mantle through various technical means. I believe that in the near future, the successful mantle sampling project will bring us more surprises, maybe this day is in the near future, let's wait and see.
Imaginary map of human colonization of other planets