China has launched a funny challenge: to dig as deep as possible towards the center of the Earth. And she hopes to reach 10 km in record time.
For two weeks, somewhere in the immense desert dunes of Taklamakan, nicknamed the Sea of Death, in Xinjiang, a strange machine has been digging again and again, day and night. And she will dig in total 457 days. This 2,000-tonne monster, capable of withstanding temperatures of over 200°C, will cross the layers of the continental crust and reach 10 kilometers. Higher than Everest, but underground.
Its goal ? Reaching rocks from the Cretaceous era, the period just before the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. The drilling must make it possible to collect new data, for the purpose of scientific research.
Find a hydrocarbon deposit?
But the Chinese have a second objective: energy, this time. The operation is led by the national oil company, the country’s main producer. The hope is to come across a large deposit. Because China, the second world power and the largest consumer of energy on the planet, is chasing its energy independence. Clean or polluting, it exploits all possible resources.
It’s also a kind of demonstration of her power… even though she knows she won’t win the gold medal. The deepest hole ever dug by man was made by the Soviets in 1989 at the Kola well in Russia. It was drilled for almost twenty years to reach 12,262 meters. The goal then was to reach the limit between the Earth’s crust and the Earth’s upper mantle, at 15,000 meters. Lack of funding did not allow them to go that far.
Space ambitions
China will dig shallower, but much faster, in one year, three months and two days. It’s very ambitious. But it is also about showing the world its ability to finance and carry out projects that go beyond the limits, whether in the technological, scientific… or space fields.
The day the drilling work began, three astronauts successfully joined the Tiangong station, and Beijing confirmed its desire to send a Chinese to the moon by 2030. The Middle Kingdom wants to extend, from the greatest depths of the earth to the edges of our galaxy. His ambitions are limitless.