Why did China drill a hole 10,000 m deep into the earth’s crust?

Bloomberg on May 31 reported that the move was made in the context of China’s desire to explore new boundaries above and below the surface of the blue planet.

This is the deepest hole China has drilled into the earth’s crust so far.

Drilling began in China’s oil-rich Xinjiang region on May 30. Early that morning, China sent its first civilian astronaut into space from the Gobi Desert.

The deepest man-made hole on Earth is still Russia’s “Kola Super Deep Hole”. Photo: Bloomberg

According to Xinhua, the wormhole will penetrate more than 10 continental strata or layers of rock and reach the Cretaceous system in the Earth’s crust, where the rock is about 145 million years old.

“The difficulty of this drilling project can be compared to that of a large truck running on two thin steel cables,” said Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

In a speech to some of the country’s top scientists in 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Beijing to make more progress in deep-earth exploration.

Things like drilling deep holes can help identify mineral and energy resources and help assess the risk of environmental disasters, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The deepest man-made hole on Earth is still Russia’s “Kola Super Deep Hole”, reaching a depth of 12,262 m in 1989. It took Russia 20 years to complete the Kola wormhole drilling.