A tunnel, dug from one side of the Earth to the other would be, on average, 12,742 km. So it's a shorter trip, sure, but that's not the best part. If you jumped into the tunnel, you'd fall down towards the center of the Earth, accelerating constantly, thanks to gravity.
Has anyone ever tried to dig through the Earth's crust? As a matter of fact, yes. During the 1970s, the Soviets gave it their best shot with the Kola Superdeep Borehole project on the Kola Peninsula. The project quietly took off during the Space Race between the Soviets and the Americans.
A scenario often presented to introductory physics classes is that of a "gravity tunnel" — a tube drilled from one side of the Earth to the other through the planet's center. The answer taught for nearly a half-century for how long a fall through such a hole would take was about 42 minutes and 12 seconds.
Are Geologists Able to Drill to the Center of the Earth? In a word, no. The center of the Earth is roughly 3,959 miles (6,371 km) down. The deepest hole that was ever drilled was the Kola Superdeep Borehole, at 7.6 miles (12.26 km) deep.
As depth increases into the Earth, temperature and pressure rise. Temperatures in the crust increase about 15 °C per kilometer, making it impossible for humans to exist at depths greater than several kilometers, even if it was somehow possible to keep shafts open in spite of the tremendous pressure.
Humans have drilled over 12 kilometers (7.67 miles) in the Sakhalin-I. In terms of depth below the surface, the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 retains the world record at 12,262 metres (40,230 ft) in 1989 and still is the deepest artificial point on Earth.
The center of the earth lies 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) beneath our feet, but the deepest that it has ever been possible to drill to make direct measurements of temperature (or other physical quantities) is just about 10 kilometers (six miles).
The inner core is a hot, dense ball of (mostly) iron. It has a radius of about 1,220 kilometers (758 miles). Temperature in the inner core is about 5,200° Celsius (9,392° Fahrenheit). The pressure is nearly 3.6 million atmosphere (atm).
Today, we know from radiometric dating that Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Had naturalists in the 1700s and 1800s known Earth's true age, early ideas about evolution might have been taken more seriously.
The deepest hole by far is one on the Kola Peninsula in Russia near Murmansk, referred to as the "Kola well." It was drilled for research purposes beginning in 1970. After five years, the Kola well had reached 7km (about 23,000ft).
The Kola Superdeep Borehole was just 9 inches in diameter, but at 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) reigns as the deepest hole. It took almost 20 years to reach that 7.5-mile depth—only half the distance or less to the mantle. Among the more interesting discoveries: microscopic plankton fossils found at four miles down.
At the Equator, the earth's rotational motion is at its fastest, about a thousand miles an hour. If that motion suddenly stopped, the momentum would send things flying eastward. Moving rocks and oceans would trigger earthquakes and tsunamis. The still-moving atmosphere would scour landscapes.
Take a closer look at a globe: China is actually not antipodal to the United States. That would be impossible, since they're both in the Northern Hemisphere. If you dug a hole from anywhere in the lower 48 states straight through the center of the Earth, you'd actually come out… in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
In reality, the earth is not perfectly rigid. Even the hardest bedrock is somewhat elastic. This means that when you jump, you don't actually exert a force on the entire earth at once. Being elastic, the entire earth does not accelerate all at once away from you when you jump.
Lava is molten rock. It is created deep beneath Earth's surface (often 100 miles or more underground), where temperatures get hot enough to melt rock. Scientists call this molten rock magma when it's underground.
It is a common misconception that “Terra” is the internationally-recognized scientific name of the planet, but in reality Earth does not have an official international name. The standard English name of the planet, including in science, is “Earth”.
With a radius of 3,959 miles (6,371 kilometers), Earth is the biggest of the terrestrial planets and the fifth largest planet overall.
If I were able to dig a hole from the U.S. through the center of the earth, what part of China would I end up in? The U.S. is in the northern hemisphere. If you went straight through the earth's center, you would end up in the southern hemisphere, nowhere near China.
The inner core is the most metal place on Earth—even more so than the outer core. Both are made mostly of iron, along with a smattering of nickel. But the iron is thought to also contain traces of lighter elements like oxygen, carbon, and silicon.
The mantle is the layer located directly under the sima. It is the largest layer of the Earth, 1800 miles thick. The mantle is composed of very hot, dense rock. This layer of rock even flows like asphalt under a heavy weight.
At the center of Earth is a solid iron inner core. The hot dense core has a radius of about 759 miles (1,221 kilometers) and a pressure of about 3.6 million atmospheres (atm).
The water has been found between the transition zone of the Earth's upper and lower mantle. The research team analyzed a rate diamond formed 660 meters below the Earth's surface using techniques including Raman spectroscopy and FTIR spectrometry, ANI reported.
Beneath the oceans, the crust varies little in thickness, generally extending only to about 5 km. The thickness of the crust beneath continents is much more variable but averages about 30 km; under large mountain ranges, such as the Alps or the Sierra Nevada, however, the base of the crust can be as deep as 100 km.