Chinese scientists have started drilling a hole into the Earth’s crust that is expected to be nearly 33,000 feet, or 10,000 meters, deep as the country is said to be exploring new frontiers above and below the planet’s surface.
The news comes from the official Xinhua News Agency, which shared that China is now digging its deepest borehole ever in the country’s oil-rich Xinjiang region.
According to the news agency, as workers drill deeper into the Earth, they will penetrate over 10 layers of rock or continental strata.
The goal of the project is to reach the cretaceous system in the planet’s crust, as it features rock dating back to 145 million years ago.
Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, shared with the news agency that the project will not be easy to complete, Time reported.
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables,” Jinsheng said.
Part of the reason behind the project comes as the nation’s president, Xi Jinping, calls for greater progress into deep Earth exploration in the hopes of identifying mineral and energy resources.
China also hopes the project will help assess the risk of environmental disasters like earthquakes and volcano eruptions.
The deepest humans have ever dug is 12,262 meters, in a hole called the Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole. The hole was dug in 1989 and took nearly two decades to complete.
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