Will We Reach the Other Side of the Earth, If We Dig the Ground?

This post is a part of the crazy Google searches we did.

Have you ever wondered if you can reach the other side of the earth by digging the ground?

Imagine this - If its possible, the world countries today would have had a separate part of military, say Underground Defense, just like the Army, Navy and Airforce.

The Underground Defense would be responsible to stop the other country citizens from entering your country's land illegally from underground. Funny, isn't it?

Ok, enough of that imagination. Now let's get back to the topic :-)

When we use a sharp object and pierce it through any spherical object (say a ball) , we can reach its other end. Then why don't we apply the same logic for the earth also?

If we dig the ground, we should logically head towards the other side of the earth.

But hang on. There's a catch here!

It appears to be possible from a geometric standpoint. But the interesting question is - Is it possible in reality?

Well, here's the quick answer - In reality, it's impossible to reach the other side of the earth by digging the ground. The reason is we'll be able to dig only up to a limited distance underground, beyond which it's too hot for humans or equipment to penetrate.

In fact, the deepest hole dug on the earth has penetrated only about 12km underground. It's called the Kola Superdeep Borehole.

The Kola Borehole digging started in the 1970s and ended in 1990s. When the Scientists realized the temperature is too high at the maximum distance (at about 12km) they were able to penetrate underground, they stopped digging any further!

The center of the earth is called the core, and its thousands of miles away from the ground. The core is also the most hottest part of the earth. The scientists believe the core is even hotter the sun!

If its impossible for mankind to penetrate even beyond 13km underground, it's certainly impossible to pierce through the core of the earth (which is thousands of miles away from the ground) and reach the other side.

Hence, the final conclusion is - It appears to be geometrically possible to reach the other side of the earth when we dig the ground (as the earth is in spherical shape). However, its practically impossible due to the increase in temperature with increasing depth as we dig the ground!

Below are the main references we used for gathering interesting information for this post, and to arrive at the above conclusion:

The Deepest Hole We Have Ever Dug - By Mark Piesing (BBC)

Can I Dig a Hole Through the Earth - By SciShow Kids (Youtube Channel)

Google, of course :-)

We've kept this post as short as possible just to provide a crisp answer to the question in the topic. We recommend the readers to refer to the sources listed above for even more interesting information on this topic!