Humans haven’t drilled very far at all into Earth’s surface. If we shrunk the Earth down to the size of an apple, then the crust would be as thin as the skin. Not only have we not taken a sizeable bite out of our apple-sized Earth yet, but we haven’t even managed to get through the skin!
Hole in one
If there was a hole right through the Earth, it would take 42 minutes to fall from one side to the other. You would also clock up a speed of 28,440 kilometres an hour, ignoring air resistance and the extreme heat, of course. Wow!
Dig Deep
A group from the Soviet Union once started digging to see how deep a hole they could make. After almost two decades of constant work, they’d only managed to go down 12 kilometres – that’s about 0.1% of the way through the planet.
Shell shocked
It may seem like the Earth is made up of one big solid rock, but it’s really made of a number of spherical shells, some of which are constantly moving!
