How deep can humans dig into the earth now, and what will be the consequences if they dig through it?

This article is based on answering similar questions from netizens:

First of all, the earth cannot be dug through, and secondly, if you really have the ability to dig through it, the consequences will be the same. Of course, the earth cannot be dug through, which is based on the current capabilities of human beings and the special structure of the earth, not including some people's fantasy of how capable aliens are, using technology that we cannot understand to easily pass through the earth.

This article does not comment on such a thing that has no trace.

Let me first briefly talk about the structure of the earth.

To put it completely, the Earth is a rocky planet surrounded by an atmosphere, which is roughly divided into five layers: the first layer is the atmosphere, the second layer is the hydrosphere, the third layer is the lithosphere, the fourth layer is the mantle, and the fifth layer is the core.

If you want to dig the earth, you start from the surface. Let's not talk about the atmosphere and hydrosphere, but the lithosphere. The lithosphere is also called the crust. Below the crust is the mantle, and below the mantle is the core. If we divide it more carefully, the crust is composed of soil and rocks. The soil is composed of long-term weathering of rocks and cosmic dust; the mantle is divided into the upper mantle and the lower mantle, and the core is divided into the outer core and the inner core.

These dividing lines actually have no clear boundaries, but a gradual transition process. The average depth of the crust is about 35 kilometers, and it is thin in some places and thick in some places, ranging from 5 to 70 kilometers; below the crust is the mantle, with a depth between 35 kilometers and 2,890 kilometers; the radius of the core is about 3,470 kilometers, which is about 54% of the radius of the earth.

The deeper you go from the surface to the inside of the earth, the higher the temperature, density and pressure. Theoretically, the temperature rises by 1 degree (Celsius) for every 100 meters you go into the crust, but the actual drilling results show that when the drilling depth reaches more than 3 kilometers, the temperature rises by 2.5 degrees for every 100 meters you go, and reaches more than 200 degrees at a depth of 11 kilometers.

After reaching the mantle, the temperature is even higher, reaching 1300 degrees at a depth of 100 kilometers, and about 2000 degrees at a depth of 300 kilometers. When reaching the edge of the core, the temperature has reached 4000 degrees, and the temperature in the center of the core can reach 6000 degrees, which is the temperature of the surface of the sun.

The temperature inside the earth is not only high, but also very high. The pressure at sea level is 1 atmosphere. All organisms living on the surface have adapted to this pressure, and the body has achieved a balance with the pressure of 1 atmosphere inside and outside, so it is a comfortable state in this pressure. Once you enter the interior of the earth, the pressure will gradually increase with the increase of depth, following the formula: dρ/dr=gP.

Here P is the static pressure at a certain depth, g is the acceleration due to gravity, r is the depth, and ρ is the density. This formula shows that as the depth increases, the pressure increases, and the resulting value is a smooth curve.

According to this formula, we can calculate that at a depth of 10 kilometers, the pressure has reached 3,000 atmospheres, at a depth of 35 kilometers it can reach 10,000 atmospheres, at a depth of 2,900 kilometers at the edge of the core, it can reach 1.5 million atmospheres, and deep in the center of the earth, the atmospheric pressure can reach 3.7 million.

Therefore, this special structure makes it impossible for humans to dig through the earth/

In fact, anyone with a normal mind should know why the earth cannot be dug through after looking at its structure. Since the questioner doesn't understand, let's analyze it together:

The first is the temperature problem. As the depth increases, the temperature gets higher and higher. The temperature of the mantle is 1000~4000 degrees, and the temperature of the core is 5000~6000 degrees. What tools or drills on Earth can withstand such high temperatures? The single metal with the highest melting point is tungsten, which has a melting point of 3422 degrees; the alloy with the highest melting point is hafnium, which has a melting point of 4215 degrees.

In fact, any tool does not need to reach the melting point to become unusable. As long as the temperature is slightly higher, it will lose its toughness. Therefore, even if the tools are made of the most heat-resistant materials in the world, they cannot dig deep into the earth. Of course, if there are no tools, it is even more impossible to dig with just two hands, and it is impossible to dig the soil.

Secondly, if you want to dig a hole in the earth, the deeper you dig, the larger the hole on the surface needs to be. You need to have a certain slope to continue digging, otherwise it will collapse and you can't dig deeper. Therefore, to dig a hole one kilometer deep, you need to dig several kilometers wide. This method of digging is impossible to continue digging, otherwise to dig to the center of the earth, there must be a hole on the surface as big as the diameter of the earth.

The only way to explore the secrets deep within the Earth is to drill.

Drilling requires a drill bit and a drill rod. The drill bit is connected to the drill rod, and then the drill rods are connected one by one to drill downwards. Generally, the length of a drill rod is about 5 meters, and 200 drill rods are needed to dig one kilometer. A drill rod weighs about 160 kilograms. The weight of a drill rod for digging one kilometer is 32 tons, and 10 kilometers is 320 tons.

That is to say, the deeper the drilling, the more drill rods are needed. A drill rod must be connected for every 5 meters of drilling. If the geological conditions of the rock formations drilled need to be checked, the drill rod must be lifted frequently, and a drill rod must be removed each time it is lifted, until the drill bit is finally pulled out. Therefore, the deeper the drilling, the more troublesome it is, and the more powerful the drilling rig must be, which must be able to lift hundreds of tons of drill rods.

In fact, after drilling breaks through a certain depth, the drill rod requirements are higher and the weight may be greater, so the requirements for the drilling rig will also be higher. In addition, the deeper the depth, the more complex the geological changes and the higher the temperature. The current drilling method used by humans cannot reach the mantle layer, let alone drill down into the mantle layer.

In addition, the Earth is constantly rotating and revolving. The structures at different levels of the Earth are in transition between solid, molten, liquid, and solid states. These structures are also rotating with the Earth's rotation, but since they are not solidly connected, the rotation speeds are different. This is why the Earth produces a generator effect and has a strong geomagnetic field.

Since these layers rotate at different speeds, in the molten and liquid states, whether they are dug or drilled, the holes will be staggered or continuously merged as the layers rotate. Therefore, even if it is possible to drill through the earth, it is impossible to form a coherent hole.

What's more, the high temperature, high pressure and high density deep underground are beyond the reach of drills or tools made of any material on Earth. In the extreme environment of the Earth's center, any substance will be melted and compressed, destroying its internal crystal structure and becoming a special substance.

I see that many people are puzzled by the knowledge of the earth's structure by the scientific community. They think that if no one has dug through the earth, how can they know the earth's structure in such detail? Simply put, the scientific community now has many methods to explore the internal structure, such as ultrasound and seismic waves. These waves will return different echoes when they encounter materials with different structures, just like using ultrasound to examine the body, and the results obtained are consistent with the anatomy.

Many phenomena on Earth can be explained through scientific modeling, which is another topic and I will not elaborate on it. In short, many scientific things can only be understood after understanding them. If you speculate based on your shallow knowledge, you will go astray.

How much capacity do humans have to dig into the earth?

The deepest well in the world today is Russia's Odoptu OP-11 oil well on Sakhalin Island, with a depth of 12,345 meters; ranked second is the United States' Ashoshin oil well in Qatar in the Middle East, with a depth of 12,289 meters; ranked third is the Soviet Union's scientific drilling well on the Kola Peninsula, with a depth of 12,226 meters.

The most famous of them is the third one, because this well was the deepest well at that time, and it was drilled for scientific experiments with no other purpose but to see how deep it could be drilled and what was in the deep.

The drilling of this well took 24 years, from the heyday of the Soviet Union to its decline and disintegration. It took 13 years to drill 12,000 meters in 1983, and it took another 10 years from 1983 to 1993 to drill 226 meters, an average of only 22.6 meters per year! Thousands of engineers and technicians worked on the site, and the on-site drilling was directly led by the minister. 16 laboratories were set up to analyze the cores, and the cost of money and manpower was countless.

The well was originally planned to be drilled to 15,000 meters, but it was impossible to drill any deeper, so the well had to be stopped in 1994 and finally declared scrapped and sealed in 2006. What made the well even more famous was the rumor that it had been dug into hell, with ghosts howling and howling constantly coming from it. Someone even broadcast the terrifying so-called "original soundtrack of hell" on the media.

Later, some people who didn't believe in the rumors investigated and found that they were completely false. The so-called soundtrack of hell was just a sound effect synthesis in a horror movie "Baron Blood" shot in 1972. In fact, the reason for stopping drilling was very simple. First, due to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the capital chain was broken and it was impossible to continue drilling; second, due to technical reasons, it was completely impossible to drill further.

When drilling to a depth of more than 12,000 meters, the temperature had reached 316 degrees, and the geological conditions became more and more complicated. The special drilling tools were damaged after only a few drills, and accidents such as drill sticking and falling off often occurred. Every inch of drilling was very difficult, and with the technology at the time, it was impossible to drill any further.

These deepest wells can be said to be built with money and are the crystallization of mankind's top technology, but the depth they are drilled to is only about one thousandth of the diameter of the earth, which can be said to be just scratching the surface of the earth.

Science fiction movies have depicted going deep into the Earth's core, such as "Earth's Core", which tells the story of the Earth's core stopping its rotation. Without the protection of its magnetic field, the Earth's ecology is devastated by solar radiation, and humanity is about to perish. At this time, a group of scientists and civilian heroes stepped forward and invented a spacecraft that can drill into the Earth's core. They took a nuclear bomb on a bizarre underground journey, and after escaping death, they reached the Earth's core, activated the nuclear bomb, and used the explosion to make the Earth's core rotate again.

But this is just science fiction. The high-frequency pulse laser that can penetrate the ground and the so-called magical spacecraft that can use underground heat and pressure to convert into energy are impossible in reality, so this idea can only exist in fantasy. In a word, digging through the earth is just a dream, and those who have this idea should continue to dream.

What will be the consequences if it is really dug through?

This is of course a hypothesis. Since the earth cannot be dug through, this consequence does not exist. But we can still imagine that if the earth is really dug through, the effect will be very ordinary. It is nothing more than opening a channel between the crust and the lava. If the ground pressure is very high, the lava will spray out from this hole, just like a volcanic eruption.

It also depends on how big the hole is. If it is just a well, it is only a few dozen centimeters, at most 1 meter in size. You should know that the crater of a general volcano is several hundred meters in size, and the largest is thousands of meters. However, if the underground pressure is very high, it may also collapse the hole and become a new active volcano.

However, this kind of consequence does not require digging through, as long as the crust is dug through to the mantle layer, this kind of eruption can be achieved at the entrance. The consequences of digging through are similar, and the consequences are like this.

Of course, the consequences I described are a bit of a folk science, without rigorous scientific modeling, and are only for your leisure time conversation, so please don't take it too seriously. Thank you for reading, and welcome to discuss and comment.

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