China Is Digging The Biggest Hole In Human History
China is digging six miles, straight down, in an attempt to find natural resources within the country's borders.
A sort of right of passage, many children strike out to dig a hole to China. Now, China is flipping the script and burrowing its own hole into the Earth as Bloomberg reports that the country has struck ground on what will someday be the deepest hole in the country’s history. Why? Apparently, they’re hoping to better understand the underground structure of our planet and further its drilling technology.
The hole, once completed, will be 32,808 feet or 10,000 meters which roughly shakes out to a little over six miles deep. How long will a feat of this stature take? China’s government is hoping that the country will complete its mission in 457 days, planning to slice through 10 continental strata – aka the different layers of the earth. The final goal is to touch the ground on the cretaceous system, an area of the Earth’s crust that clocks around 140 million years old.
Headed by the China National Petroleum Corp, the task will see the country pointing its eyes into the ground versus into the galaxy with Chinese President Xi Jinping pushing researchers to turn their sights on the world below us. One main reason for focusing their attention on the ground is so that the country can continue collecting as many energy sources and minerals as it’s able to. Drilling will occur in the Xinjiang region, known for its oil and gas-producing business.
As the world continues to rely on fossil fuels for much of its energy sources, it’s suspected that China will be just the first country to begin its search into the layers of deep rock that make up the Earth. Although the push for renewable energy has been a hot topic over the last few years, we are still finding ourselves hooked on fossil fuels, with each country trying to become as independent as possible when finding our own oil supplies.
Constantly finding themselves in the headlines, this bid for a better understanding of the Earth and its resources isn’t the first time that China has caught the world’s attention this year. Back at the very start of 2023, the country set off weather balloons for a reason still not understood by many of us. Not only did the balloons give way to a sea of questions about the vessels, which were rumored to be pieces of spy technology, but they kicked off sightings of UFOs in North America, Uruguay, and the rest of the world – another story that has since exited the 24-hour news cycle.
As global researchers attempt to better understand what makes our planet tick and what resources are waiting for us to tap further below the ground, we must approach these topics and missions delicately. We only have one world and one chance to not mess it up – something that we as humans are terrific at. For now, we’re sure that the rest of the globe is watching China’s every move as they drill a six-mile hole into the ground.
