China has excavated an enigmatic 10,000-metre-deep hole in the earth’s crust. The deepest-ever borehole was reportedly begun on Tuesday (30 May) in the oil-rich Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang province Tarim Basin, according to available news.
China has the world’s second-largest economy. In addition to exploring and conquering new frontiers on Earth, it also desires to explore space.
According to the report, creating this narrow tunnel in the ground will penetrate more than ten continental strata, or layers of rock, and reach the 145 million-year-old cretaceous system in the earth’s crust.
This work can help identify mineral and energy resources and assess the risk of natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
However, the issue remains as to why China is drilling such a deep trench into the Earth’s crust.
Possible motives for such a mission include:
- China desires to create deep-earth nuclear weapons that can be tested without subsurface nuclear radiation. Thus, it can be accomplished without harming the environment.
- China desires to extract groundwater using deep earth aquifiers. To satisfy the requirements of one of the world’s most populous nations, China exploits every resource from the ground to the sky. China will no longer be dependent on foreign resources and will be able to withstand climatic changes as well.
- China is developing techniques for deep-earth carbon sequestration. Chinese scientists are devising new techniques to uncover more mysteries of the earth, and carbon dating is required to accomplish this. It is a scientific procedure that can precisely determine the age of organic materials up to about 60,000 years old.
- China will have unprecedented opportunities to research regions deep beneath the earth’s surface.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole in the Kola Peninsula of Russia, which was excavated between 1970 and 1992, is the deepest man-made hole on Earth.
The opening reached a depth of 12,262 meters and was used to survey the crust and mantle of the Earth.
Now China will make new history by excavating the earth to a depth of 10,000 meters.
