China is digging one of the deepest ever holes in hope of finding signs of life
One of the biggest holes in human history is currently being dug by China as they seek to find potential life down there.
At 10,000 metres deep and going through 10 layers of rock, they'll be digging this one for ages but there is a purpose behind it all.
Before you ask, the answer is no, it's not to link up to all of the holes kids on the other side of the world tried to dig to China when they were younger.
While there might be some risks involved with delving too greedily and too deep into the ground, they want to reach rocks and minerals that are up to 145 million years old.
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That'd be unearthing things which have been part of the ground since the days when dinosaurs ruled the world, with these minerals which have been undisturbed for millions of years potentially valuable.
On top of that there are hopes that they could find some sort of life down there, but we're not talking about a horde of murderous mole-people who will come swarming out of the ground to make war upon the surface world.
Obviously if mole-people do end up invading through one of the holes China is digging then we'll look a daft for naysaying but I'm willing to stick my neck out on this one.
Anyhow, the kinds of life they'd be looking for would have more in common with plankton than monsters as previous excavations found some four miles below the surface of the earth while digging.
The deepest hole ever dug was about 12,000 metres down and started from a project kicked off by the Soviet Union, which was done on and off again between 1970 and 1995 before the Russians ran out of money and canned the project.
It's going to be an incredibly expensive and time consuming endeavour for the Chinese too, as the amount of equipment required to dig down 10,000 metres is quite a lot.
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables,” Sun Jinsheng, an academic from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told news agency Xinhua.
Along with the potential search for life and minerals, as well as the prestige of having a really big hole to play with (just don't drop your wallet, keys or phone down it), China is hoping that digging down will have other benefits.
Among them is the hope that the excavation will help them identify natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic activity.
Who knows what they'll find down there in that massive hole?
Topics: China, World News, Weird
Joe Harker