The Deepest Hole

A very interesting article popped up on my Facebook feed the other day: What Is the Deepest Hole That Humanity Could Possibly Dig?

No, it doesn't look at what we're doing in the political and social arenas, although I could understand you making that assumption.

The article contains a fascinating, 8-minute video that dives straight down into the earth, looking at the various depths to which humans have dug, along with the depths of some natural features. It begins with the depth of the average grave* - 6 feet, or 1.8 meters - and continues down to the deepest hole ever dug by man: the Z44-Chavyo oil and gas well on Sakhalin Island, which is an astounding 12,376 meters (40,600 feet) deep. In between are these waypoints:

- The Paris Catacombs - 66 meters, or 217 feet below the streets of the City of Light;

- The deepest metro station in the world, in Kiev - 105 meters (346 feet);

- The deepest train tunnel, connecting the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido - 240 meters (787 feet);

- The deepest hole ever dug by hand - the Woodingdean water well in the UK, dug in 1862 and coming in at 392 meters (1,300 feet);

- The deepest hole from which you can stand at the bottom and see the open sky, the Bingham Canyon open pit mine in Utah, at 970 meters (3,200 feet); and,

- The deepest working part of the deepest mine in the world: AngloGold Ashanti's Mponeng gold mine in South Africa, coming in at a staggering 4,000 meters (more than 13,000 feet). It takes workers more than an hour just to go from the surface to the deepest mine face, where the temperature of the rock is more than 150° F.

So, Dear Readers, when you ask "how low can you go?", the answer is "pretty darned low." And we still haven't considered political discourse.

Have a good day. Watch where you step ...

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* A useful statistic, given the GOP approach to health care.