When the rusty metal plug is removed, they will see the deepest hole on Earth, going kilometers deep into the center of the planet.
We know with greater certainty more about distant galaxies than we do about what lies beneath our feet.
That is why Soviet scientists in the seventies of the last century decided to go deeper than humanity has ever reached. For the next 24 years, they drilled into the Earth's crust.
The result is the Kola superdeep hole, which is about 12 kilometers deep. It is deeper than the deepest point of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, which is about 11 kilometers deep. This hole is in the Kola Peninsula in Russia.
Have we learned anything after decades of drilling? Fortunately, we did. Scientists have found microscopic fossils of single-celled organisms at a depth of seven kilometers. At approximately the same depth, they also discovered water. They discovered that the temperature at the bottom of the hole is an incredible 180 degrees Celsius.
Since it was not possible to drill any more due to the heat, the project was stopped in 1994.
Estimates are that the center of the Earth is about 6.400 kilometers away, so this hole practically only scratched the surface.
Bonus video:
