China is drilling a 10,000-meter-deep hole into the Earth's crust

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• May 31, 2023 | Dhupali Das

Chinese scientists have begun drilling a 10,000-metre (32,808-foot) hole into the Earth's crust as the...

Digital Desk: Chinese scientists have begun drilling a 10,000-metre (32,808-foot) hole into the Earth's crust as the world's second-largest economy explores new frontiers above and below the planet's surface.

The drilling for what is expected to be China's deepest borehole began on Tuesday in the country's oil-rich Xinjiang region, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Earlier that morning, China sent its first civilian astronaut into space from the Gobi Desert.

Reportedly, the narrow shaft into the ground would penetrate more than 10 continental strata, or layers of rock, and reach the cretaceous system in the Earth's crust, which contains materials dating back 145 million years.

"The construction difficulties of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables," Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Xinhua.

In a speech to some of the nation's best scientists in 2021, President Xi Jinping called for greater progress in deep Earth research. Such work can help find mineral and energy resources as well as analyze the hazards of natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions.

The Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole, which took 20 years to drill to a depth of 12,262 meters (40,230 feet), continues to hold the record for being the deepest man-made hole ever created.