How Deep Down Is the Earth's Core?

 How Deep Down Is the Earth's Core?

     Planet is like an onion with loads of different layers right now you're working through the earth's crust it's like a hard-boiled eggshell thin and tough it also takes up less than one percent of the planet's size at a depth of two feet you meet a digging buddy the mole can create more than 60 feet of tunnel per day

    almost 10 feet down and you recoil in shock is that an earthworm and a three foot long one at that you move deeper than 23 feet underground which means you won't see tropical forest plant roots anymore you get carried away and at a depth of 39 feet you nearly bump into a nile crocodile these reptiles dig the deepest burrows among all animals you see an underground urban farm 108 feet below the surface they grow vegetables 

    And herbs there at a depth of 400 feet you still come across tree roots but those are the deepest known ones they belong to wild fig trees that grow in south africa almost 510 feet underground and you find a hotel room ah that's the sola silverman the world's deepest hotel built in a converted silver mine at a depth of 940 feet you see a road tunnel that's the ice and tunnel in norway and it goes under the sea.

    when you're nearly 1300 feet under the surface you reach the bottom of a water well the wooden ding well in the uk is the deepest hand dug well in the world it was built to provide a workhouse with water at a depth of 3 300 feet the pressure reaches 330 atmospheres that's like four elephants piled up on your head or two pandas balanced on your thumbnail you see a tiny worm living in gold mines when you're more than four thousand feet down underground in 2020 the world's deepest concert took place at a depth of 6200 feet the shaft bottom boys performed at vale's creighton mine in canada you move deeper and see the home stake gold mine almost 5 000 feet below the surface before closing in 2002 it used to be the deepest and largest gold mine in north america in 1965 scientists managed to detect and count tiny subatomic particles from the sun and it happened in a lab located inside the mine just a bit deeper than that and it gets freezing cold that's permafrost a thick permanently frozen layer of soil that doesn't warm up even in the summer it mainly occurs in polar regions and is the thickest in northern siberia about 6 500 feet.

 below the surface and you still meet some living creatures those are springtails teeny eyeless insects that live in super deep kabura cave in georgia the country not the state at a depth of almost 7 200 feet you reach the bottom of veronia cave in georgia that's the world's deepest cave known to people now if you had been in creighton mining canada in may 2005 you would have heard the deepest live radio broadcast it occurred at the depth almost 500 feet deeper than verona cave the deepest single shaft elevator on the planet reaches 10 200 feet underground and the deepest multi-cellular animal people know about lives at a depth of 11 800 feet in the tautoa mine in south africa.

     It's a tiny but incredibly hearty worm that can deal with extreme temperatures and dehydration four miles down underground is the average depth of the oceanic crust it's the part of the earth's crust that lies under the ocean it's way thinner than the continental crust at the same depth in northeast china you meet the deepest known microbe you see the bottom of the deepest artificial hole when you get down to 12 000 feet under the surface the kola super deep borehole is a mere nine inches in diameter but the pressure at its bottom equals four thousand atmospheres like 54 elephants piled up on your head more than nine miles below the surface and you find yourself in a pool of scorching hot molten rock that's yellow stone's super volcano's magma chamber below yellow stone national park in the us you dig deeper if you carry on like that you might get through the crust soon the oceanic crust is usually three to six miles wide while the continental crust can measure 28 miles wide in some places but even though the oceanic crust is thinner it's way denser that's why it floats lower in the mantle than the continental crust the thickest parts of the crust lie under mountains mountain roots are less dense than mountains themselves.

     If you place the material they're made of on water it would float like icebergs the deeper you go the hotter the crust becomes at the boundary with the mantle its temperature can reach 750 degrees most stone pizza ovens can only heat up to 500 degrees still the crust is the coldest part of the planet at a depth of about 18 miles you reach the boundary between the crust and the earth's upper mantle there the pressure reaches a mind-boggling 10 000 atmospheres more like 130 elephants balancing on your head the mantle is a layer of hot rock which makes up two-thirds of the entire earth's mass and 84 percent of the planet's volume.

    It's 1800 miles thick and is a mix of iron silicon magnesium oxygen and play-doh well not the last one  the rock closer to the inner portion of the mantle is semi-solid like caramel candy the most exciting thing you see while traveling through this layer is diamonds geologists actually believe that all diamonds we mined today were formed in the mantle then about 1 billion years ago they were delivered to the surface by volcanic eruptions the upper part of the mantle along with a crust is broken into huge pieces and resembles a gargantuan jigsaw puzzle these pieces known as tectonic plates drift at a lazy speed of one to two inches per year while moving through the upper mantle you feel the temperature start to rise from 900 degrees to 1600 degrees and the deeper you go the more you sweat near the core boundary it's already more than seven thousand degrees the lower mantle pressure reaches 240 000 atmospheres that's already 3 200 elephants forming a tower on your head at a depth of about 1800 miles you cross the boundary between the mantle and the outer core this layer is heated 

    Up to 9000 degrees mostly due to the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium such a temperature is high enough to keep the outer core liquid and even though the pressure there is almost 2 million atmospheres it's still not strong enough to make the iron solid again the outer core is 1500 miles thick and is made mostly of iron and nickel in their liquid forms this liquid churns in massive turbulent currents and generates a magnetic field it extends into space for 830 000 miles and protects our planet from the solar wind in the outer core the earth's magnetic field is 50 times more powerful than at the surface you are more than three thousand miles down underground now congrats you've reached the center of our planet it's inner core it's a solid metal ball 1500 miles across that's about three quarters of the moon's diameter the inner core is immensely dense and spins faster than the rest of the planet it's almost as hot there as on the surface of the sun scientists think that 99 of all the earth's gold and platinum can be found in the inner core it took about 500 million years for the inner core to form which means it's younger than some parts of the crust there's also a theory there might be an inner inner core if it existed it would consist almost entirely of iron now how the heck do you get out of there i don't know see you next time.