China Announces Major Drilling Project

While many world leaders look to the sky, China announces its future lies far below the surface of the Earth.

Space awaits us approximately 73 kilometers above sea level, or 50 miles for the Imperial readers. To medieval scholars, Hell was like a fiery furnace ­ a hot, forbidding place deep in the bowels of the Earth. According to modern geologists, there really is an underground "forbidden zone" ­ not the biblical version of Hell but a subterranean region whose very existence would seem to be prohibited by the laws of nature. Simply, the deeper you go, the hotter it gets as pressure intensifies. The crust, the thin upper layer, is a mere 30-50 kilometers deep (some 20-30 miles). For years, geologists calculated that, for every mile you dig beneath the Earth's surface, the temperature rises 15º F and the pressure increases simultaneously at a rate of about 7,300 pounds per square inch.

However, recent data captured by satellites provided clear views of rocks in the Tibetan Plateau moving nearly 50 miles below the plateau's surface. These images revealed data showing that instead of the expected 2,200º F at the distance of 120 miles underground was only a 1,620º F. Thus, perhaps the forbidden zone was not forbidden at all.

And China is out to prove it. Chinese leadership has announced an endeavor for a massive drilling project to drill into the volatile Tibetan Plateau, where two tectonic plates meet and create massive rifts and earthquakes. China announced that by the end of 2025 they plan to drill the 73 kilometers below the Earth's surface so that it could match other space endeavors, or at least in the reverse direction.