Humans excavate the earth for many reasons, from drawing water to building a tunnel. The point is that no other animal reaches as low as we do : some barely reach 2.5 meters deep, and the deepest plant roots reach less than 70 meters.
However, we have reached 12 kilometers, and if we added the length of all the holes we have drilled, and spliced it into a single hole, then it would measure 50 million kilometers deep, the equivalent of all the roads in the world or 7 meters for every person living today .
The deepest hole
The deepest hole made by humans is on the Kola Peninsula. It was made for scientific purposes, so it is only 23 centimeters in diameter, but a spectacular 12 kilometers deep.
Or imagine a mine that comfortably accommodates the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai. Well, that mine exists, it is in the United States, and it is 1.2 km deep . Specifically, it is a copper mine in the Oquirrh Mountains, outside Salt Lake City (Utah). It is 4 km wide.
Apart from these examples, there are many more, as David Farrier masterfully describes in his book Footprints ; Around the world, there are thousands of holes on every continent, except Antarctica, and they will remain as untouched traces of our existence:
Some may bend and compress due to metamorphic processes, or gradually rise to the surface and turn to dust; however, others will remain there perpetually, columns that make their way towards the center of the earth, covered with residual oil and mud mixed with barium. Closed mines will lead to huge underground voids where, in our hunger for coal, we have mined entire layers.