The Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole was drilled starting in 1970 to learn about Earth's crust. American scientists had and then abandoned their Project Mohole in 1966.
After 24 years of digging, the deepest branch of the Kola Superdeep Borehole stopped in 1994 at 12,262 meters (about 7.5 miles).
It's not a wide hole all the way down (nine inches in diameter at the bottom) but it is deeper than the Mariana Trench.
If you want to insult the Borehole, you can say it is not the longest hole. That adjective belongs to an oil well, but it doesn't go anywhere as deep. S there.
What has this deep hole revealed to us? There's water down there, but it's not like a pool. It is
probably water formed from stray oxygen and hydrogen atoms squeezed out of rock minerals.
They found plankton fossils down at 6700 meters. Explain that, please.
And it's hot. 350+ °F.
Did they reach the center of the earth, like that novel and movie I loved as a kid? Not even close. With all that digging, they only went 0.2% of the way to the center.
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