Eli5 – Why is it so difficult to dig to the Earth’s core?

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The most central part of the Earth’s interior would require drilling approximately which is 6,370 kilometers (20,898,950 ft)

The deepest drilling ever conducted in world history is only 12 kilometers (39370,1 ft)

Why is so hard and and is the effort worth it? Or we only will find more rocks ?

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10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Traditional drilling techniques (like a metal drill breaking up the rock) are unfeasible because of what others have said about temperature, pressure and changes in the “state” of matter.

A point I haven’t seen mentioned is that with drills, there is also a need to constantly transport the material removed back to the surface. The deeper you go, the more difficult this becomes.

There is an interesting new concept that tries to use directed energy “drill”, vaporising rock with energy instead of grinding it up with a solid drill. It is nowhere near guaranteed that it’ll work, but they got enough funding to try.

[link to the project at ARPA (civilian DARPA) ](https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/millimeter-wave-technology-demonstration-geothermal-direct-energy-drilling)

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