Digging a hole to China
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A common childhood legend in the United States is a claim that if a hole were to be dug deep enough, the center of the Earth would be traversed, and the hole, technically a tunnel at its terminus, would exit the Earth in China. Actually, such an excavation would end in the Indian Ocean from most points in the Contiguous U.S.. Because most of the Earth is ocean, similar tunnels from various land points in the World would incur aqueous exodus. Exceptions include Earth diameters between Asiatic and South American extremities.[1] A further logistic issue with such a concept is the fact that the Earth's Core is believed to be molten metal, and the crust contains magma at various locales. The deepest man-made hole was completed in 1989 by the Soviet Union entitled Kola Superdeep Boreholewith a depth of nearly 8 miles, only 0.094% of the Earth's diameter.
