[Rockhounds] The deepest hole

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The lakes, forests, mists and snow of the Kola Peninsula deep in the Arctic
Circle can make this corner of Russia seem like a scene from a fairy tale.
Yet amidst the natural beauty stand the ruins of an abandoned Soviet
scientific research station. In the middle of the crumbling building is a
heavy, rusty metal cap embedded in the concrete floor, secured by a ring of
thick and equally rusty metal bolts.

According to some, this is the entrance to hell.

This is the Kola Superdeep Borehole, the deepest manmade hole on Earth and
deepest artificial point on Earth. The 40,230ft-deep (12.2km) construction
is so deep that locals swear you can hear the screams of souls tortured in
hell. It took the Soviets almost 20 years to drill this far, but the drill
bit was still only about one-third of the way through the crust to the
Earth’s mantle when the project came grinding to a halt in the chaos of
post-Soviet Russia.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190503-the-deepest-hole-we-have-ever-dug