The World's Deepest Drill

A massive floating laboratory is attempting to drill through four miles of seabed to take samples of the Earth’s core

The world’s deepest drill is about to get longer - long enough to dig into Earth's semi-molten interior. Already, the Chikyu research vessel is capable of fetching samples at depths of 2,890 feet below the seabed, two to four times that of any other drill. In 2007, off the coast of Japan, it became the first mission to study subduction zones, the area between tectonic plates that is the birthplace of many earthquakes.

Over the next three years, scientists will tack on at least an extra mile of drill and attempt the most ambitious mission ever: piercing the Earth’s mantle. There, scientists expect to find the same conditions as those in the early Earth—and perhaps the same life-forms that thrived then.

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