The deepest point of the ocean
Challenger Deep – 10,898 meters / 6.77 miles
Most people have heard of the Mariana trench, a huge curve shape trench stretching over 1500 miles and hosting the deepest seabed of the earths ocean, but fewer people have heard of Challenger deep. This is the deepest point of the deepest trench, and has only been visited once by a manned submersible. This point reaches a staggering 10,898 metres below the surface of the ocean, and is home to some very strange sea life.
Worlds Deepest Borehole
Kola Superdeep Borehole 12,262 metres / 7.61 miles
(The cap used to seal the top of the hole, this is all that remains of the world deepest borehole)
This hole is the result of a Russian project to see how deep it was possible to drill into the earth, and apparently the answer is 12,262 meters. Drilling began in May of 1970, but it took 19 years of drilling to reach its current depth. The project was abandoned in 1995 when the Soviet Union broke up and the hole was sealed up and left.
Some interesting finds of the drilling included microscopic plankton fossils found 4 miles below the earths surface, which means at some point in the earths history, parts of modern day Russia was 4 miles underwater.
Worlds Deepest Oil Field
Al Shaheen Oil Field – 12,290 / 7.63 miles
Even though the Kola borehole holds the record for being the deepest drilled point in the earth, the Al Shaheen Oil Field holds the record for being the deepest artificial point on earth. The oil rig is built on a large lake, so they managed to skip drilling for the depth of the water, but even still they managed to make it in record time. The whole project took just 36 days to reach its current depth, and was drilled incident free.
Worlds Deepest Mine
Mponeng Gold Mine – 4000 meters / 2.5 miles
This mine recently took over the depth of the Tautona mine, officially making it the deepest mine in the world. Located in south Africa the mine extracts close to 5500 metric tonnes of rock a day, and is one of the most profitable gold mines in Africa. Even though the depth of the mine doesn’t come close to the bore hole or oil field, this is the only manned deep spot on the list. The reason people cant go much deeper than this is due to the heat, with the average temperature of the rocks surface at the bottom of the mine being 66 °C. The mine has to constantly pump slurry ice underground to cool the air temperature to 30 °C, but even at this level mining in the lowest areas is almost unbearable.
Worlds Deepest Cave
Krubera cave – 2,197 meters / 1.36 miles
The Krubera cave is the deepest cave on earth, with the furthest known point to be 2,197 meters deep. This depth was achieved by a single man who went in the submerged part alone with specialised scuba gear. He reported the cave continued on but it narrowed to much for any person to venture in, meaning the cave could be considerably deeper than its known depth, and may even open up again into another cavern system.
Located in the Arabika Massif, of the Western Caucasus in Abkhazia, Georgia, the cave twists and turns for over 8 miles before reaching the deep spot, and the journey down to the bottom and back can take up to 2 days.
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