China is drilling its deepest hole into Earth’s crust for exploration
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Beijing: China is drilling a 10,000 metre hole into the Earth’s crust as part of deep Earth exploration, official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The drilling has begun in the country's oil-rich Xinjiang region on Tuesday which is set to reach 32,808 feet, China’s deepest borehole to date.
The narrow shaft will penetrate more than 10 continental strata, reaching cretaceous system of Earth’s crust.
Cretaceous system is ancient rocks dating back some 145 million years.
Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, compared the difficulty of the drilling project to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables.
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables," Sun Jinsheng was quoted Xinhua as saying.
President Xi Jinping in 2021 told a gathering of the country’s scientists to achieve greater progress in deep Earth exploration.
Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole is the deepest man-made hole on Earth reaching the depth of 12,262 meters after 20 years of work.
