China drilling hole over 11,000m deep into the desert

News Snapshot:

China is drilling a hole in the desert more than 11,000m deep in order to study areas deep beneath the planet's surface. The operation - reported in state media - started on Tuesday and is located in the Xinjiang region in northwest China. The drilling process will go deep into the Earth, penetrating more than 10 continental strata. With a planned depth of 11,100 metres, the borehole is certainly no shallow effort but falls short of the deepest ever man-made hole. The current record has been held since 1979 by the Kola Superdeep Borehole, a Soviet project located near the...