China dug a 10,000-meter pit, and no one knows why

Chinese scientists have mysteriously begun digging a 10,000-meter (32,808-foot) hole deep in the Earth’s crust — and no one knows why. One of the participants explained that it was an attempt to explore our planet.

While no one has identified a motive, the fact that drilling began Tuesday in the oil-rich region of Xinjiang may explain why, as China, the world’s second-largest economy, struggles to find more sustainable alternatives to its energy and mineral resources. In this type of search, mineral and energy resources may lie deep below the Earth’s surface, especially if the hole is about to reach depths in rocks that originated 145 million years ago.

Wang Chunsheng, a technical expert for this operation, said that drilling at a depth of more than 10,000 meters is a bold attempt to explore the unknown areas of the earth. “The construction difficulty of a drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables,” he said.

The underground shaft is said to be extremely narrow and will penetrate more than 10 layers of rock, according to Bloomberg, which said drilling plans to reach the Cretaceous system in the Earth’s crust.

“The difficulty of drilling a well is like driving a large truck on two thin steel cables.”

Wang Chunsheng

China’s latest efforts

Chinese President Xi Jinping said deep-earth exploration could help assess environmental hazards and identify energy and mineral resources, according to Bloomberg News.

The initiative comes the same week China sent its first civilian astronaut into space, and just after the completion of an offshore drilling rig designed to tap geological reserves of natural gas.

The deepest man-made hole on Earth is currently the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, which reaches a depth of 12.2 kilometers (7.5 miles) below the surface.