earth: China has started boring us to depth, with plans to drill to the Earth’s core

China is digging a hole for itself. No, really. As part of a series of studies to know more about what lies beneath – deep below the Earth‘s surface – China National Petroleum Corporation has started drilling a borehole on Tuesday in a desert in the Tarim basin in Xinjiang province.

The plan is to bore a shaft 11,100 m deep – it’s about 2,900,000 m down from the surface of Earth to the surface of the liquid outer core – over 457 days. Why? Well, one, in mountaineer George Mallory’s words, ‘Because it’s there,’ and, two, to understand the internal structure and evolution of Earth.

But we, having a suspicious disposition that has evolved over a long time of living next to the neighbours that we still have, believe there is a third reason. Earth being spherical, upon a point of its surface being dug will lead to the other end of the surface if dug long and deep enough via the core.

So, while lazy thinking gets us to believe that if we dig long enough, we’ll end up in ‘Australia’, it’s a bit more lat-long specific than that. So, on the exact other side of Beijing, for instance, lies Bahia Blanca in Argentina; ‘opposite’ of Shanghai is Salto, Uruguay.

So, careful of China, Argentines and Uruguayans. But hang on, what’s antipodal to Delhi? Valparaiso in Chile. Hmm. Let’s start digging our way out, so that we don’t bore you to depth.