ANSWERS: 21
  • For any number of currently unresolveable reasons. A. we don't realy have the skills to make a tunneling machine capable of withstanding the types of heat and pressure that you would encounter once you got to the deeeper parts of the mantle. B. Even if we had this technolegy, it would be next to impossible to carry enough energy along with you to power it for the whole journey, or run a cable down to it. Hope that helps.
  • Because the core of the earth has pressure of the whole earth itself, its weight is all being centered in the middle, making the core extremely hot. any drill would've melt before it even reached the core. And its a waste of metal for the drill. And nobody even knows if there is a center of the earth, the core is just a theory, If there is a core we don't know how big it actually is. it could be the size of a tennis ball for all we know.
  • In one of my geology classes I heard about a project that attempted to drill a hole through the crust to the mantle. The people who attempted this did not succeeded in reaching the mantle. They only got to a depth of about 12 km and couldn't get any further because their drill bits kept melting on them. Earth has a radius of about 6,000 km. In other words, the deepest hole ever drilled only got 0.2% of the distance to Earth's center. Let me give you a little more perspective on the magnitude of the job that you are proposing. Some estimates put the temperature at Earth's center at over 6,700° C. The surface of the Sun is only about 5,000° C. So, in order to drill to Earth's center, you will have to deal with temperatures that exceed those at the surface of the Sun. I am sorry, but we are no where near advanced enough to even seriously consider such a feat.
  • Why would you want to drill to the center of the Earth?
  • WE actually made an attemp to do that in the 1900s,we used miles upon miles pushed down into the crust at the lowest known point of the Earth(or at least really close)we nearly made it into the upper mantle,but at the last second a scientsint brought safety dangers into the picture......THEY HAD NO IDEA WHAT WOULD HAPPEN!,they think they most definately wouldve made it pretty far into the Erath,but they pulled the plug.We never plan to make an attempt at getting into the mantle again.
  • I heard if anyone did dig to the center of the earth it could cause major disruption to the earth with escaped gases, flying hot lava, and possible volcanoes.
  • because if thay did thay would burn to death because of the molten and lava in the earths crust.
  • RFlagg's answer that you couldn't "carry enough energy along with you to power it for the whole journey" is a little short sighted. Of course fuel could be trasported down to the drill at any time. As for the question "Why would you want to drill to the center of the Earth?" - well obviously to harness the abundant energy. If this could be achieved, imagine how this could resolve energy issues. We would never need to burn fossil fuels again. No need to build power stations, because we would be using earth's very own natural power station. Problem is, we can't currently drill to the center due to the immense temperature and pressure (the very energy we need to harness). Who knows, if we drilled as far as we possibly could, we could at least tap into a small percentage of the energy reserves. Does this seem crazy?
  • In case you are thinking of the movie "The Core", we are nowhere near that level of technology. Those "inventions" that the movie showed are fiction.
  • I beleive if we *really* wanted to, we could. It would take billions of $, and probably at least a decade. Its just a matter of applying engineering processing to the well-understood physics of temperture, pressure and materials-science.
  • Humans could probably not get to the center of the earth, but I don't think "drilling" at least in the conventional sense would be the method used if an attempt was made. If you look at some of the deepest open pit mines in the world some of them are up to nearly a mile deep. This is with a 2.5 mile wide opening at the top. Assuming you continued down using the same grade of .75 miles down for every 2.5 miles of cross sectional distance and you used The Eurasian pole of inaccessibility, the point on land farthest from any ocean, is located approximately 320 km (200 mi) from the city of Urumqi, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, at 46°16.8′N, 86°40.2′E (in the Dzoosotoyn Elisen Desert). This position is at a distance of approximately 2648 km (1645 mi) from the nearest coastline. You could then feasibly dig to a depth of 493.5 miles below this sea level since that is where the top of your dig would start once you reached the oceans. Then using the dirt you extract to fill in the oceans at these extreme edges as well to keep the bottom dry you could then start your drill at a depth of atleast 490 miles below sea level. This would start you atleast 70 times deeper then the mariana trench and you would still be on dry land making the drill much easier. At this point you would still have about 3,500 miles left to drill. With the deepest drill on record as stated earlier of 12 km or maybe 8 miles we are still a far cry from reaching the center. This would atleast get to a point of the lower mantle by most estimations, but we would have to dig out the entire himalayan mountain range and displace billions of people. Assuming the pit was conical it would be nearly 1.4 billion cubic miles of dirt to dig the pit, this is 1/200 of the entire earth. This is 5,835,454,555,616,812,032 cubic meters. The largest excavtor in the world, MAN Takraf RB293, can move 240,000 cubic meters a day. There is only one in existance but if more were made, many more like 1 billion to be working constantly the progect could be completed in as little as 67 years. Assuming the trucks could move it that fast. The dirt extracted would have to go somewhere and could concievably allow you to dig deeper by using this dirt to fill in the surrounding oceans but I have no idea where to even start to determine how much. By the time we have dug a hole of this size the earth would probably start to rotate differently and all manner of disasters would happen. Either way I would love the job security of this project, what can I say I'm a dirt contractor with a thing for math. The picture is my guess at the size of the hole.
  • Because they're not supposed to. The earth has suffered enough damage at our hands
  • The heat would be to intense.
  • CLAY, Once you hit a clay layer the ability to spin the rods is reduced to next to nothing bogging down the machine and stopping the drill cuttings from being extracted from the earth
  • Because the drill would need to be 3,000 miles long, and it would melt long before it reached the core.
  • I don't think there would be anything strong enough to break through it all. Plus the heat of the core.
  • It's too hot and there is far too much pressure. In addition, once you got to a certain depth there would be a barrage of ionized radiation. Also, the implications of messing with the circulating iron that is probably what generates the Earth's magnetic field would mess with the planet quite a bit to say the least.
  • the friggin drill bit keeps breaking on me
  • it is too hot there, the pressure is too high. No existing materials would survive it. Plus the no humans who would work there would survive the conditions.
  • The best I can say is cost .... followed closely by a reason to do it ... The space program and the large particle accellerator projects would be dwarfed by a project of this magnitude. (for many of the obsticles already pointed out) So... who would want to fund it and why ?
  • why would they? if you forget about all the problems that make it impossible there is the question:"why would someone want to drill to the center of the earth?"we already know what is at the center from volcanos and if we had the technology to explore deeper we would start from a volcano right? i don't believe there are any mysteries hidden at the center of the earth

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