Can We Reach Earth’s Core With a Probe?

Humans have been out to Space, visited the Moon and even managed to exit the Solar System using an unmanned vehicle. Now how about our own blue planet? Can we send a probe to the center of the Earth and find out the mysteries that it holds?

The deepest known hole to be drilled was the Kola Superdeep Borehole. It was 12 km deep but that is merely scratching the surface when it comes to the 6,371 km radius of the Earth. The trouble is not just that it would be an engineering feat of extraordinary proportions, it is also that we don’t have a material sturdy enough to build the probe.

The Earth’s core has a temperature of 5,000 degree Celsius and a pressure more than 3000 times what is experienced at the bottom of the deepest ocean. Any present day material known to man would probably melt and be crushed to the size of a small ball under these adverse conditions.

The journey to the center of the Earth is likely to remain science fiction till we can come up with some material that can tolerate the heat that is generated at that depth in the Earth’s Core. It would be interesting to conduct a science project to see just what all properties the material will need to have.