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What’s at the Bottom of the Deepest Hole on Earth? · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Question, what's the highest mountain on earth?
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did you like just about everyone who's listening say Mount Everest?
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Give yourself a point.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now it's as the opposite.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's the deepest hole on earth?
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some smart Alex among you might be saying the Mariana Trench, but that's wrong.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: There exists a whole so deep it exceeds the deepest depths of the famous Mariana Trench, and shockingly, it was dug out by humans.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, what they found at the bottom no one expected.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: What did they find?
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: How deep did they go?
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how deep have we dug before?
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Come with me as we dig into some of the deepest holes on earth.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what lies at the bottom of them?
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you think about what the deepest holes on earth look like from the surface, I bet you imagine a jagged circular hollow cutting into the crust and leading down into impenetrable darkness and doom.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not always the case.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take Shunbara Rhee, for example.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Found in Rajasthan Eastern India, this isn't a simple circular cavity cutting into the earth, but a complex stepwell.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you didn't know, step wells are wells with a long corridor of descending steps that drop down to the water level.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This particular step well built during the 8th century provided the areas around Rajasthan with the dependable water source centuries before modern water delivery systems were introduced.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: As it happens, Shambhara Yi is the deepest step well in the whole world.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all this striking structure consists of 3,500 narrow steps cascading 13 stories constructed 100 feet down under.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: That depth equivalent to around 5 giraffe stacked on top of one another.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's their reward for braving the colossal climb down, murky green stagnant water?
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Delicious!
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still, it's worth it for the view alone, which isn't something you can often say about, you know, a big hole.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not all deep holes are the result of man-made construction, however.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Picture this, a helicopter pilot flying over the Yamal Peninsula in the Siberian wilderness back in 2014, spotted a perfectly circular crater gaping in that tundra below.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: A clean almost suspiciously precise hole punched into otherwise flat featureless ground with walls dropping straight down into the darkness.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Genuinely unnerving to look at this perfectly circular hole stretches 66 feet across and has a terrifying 170 foot deep drop.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The question is why did a giant hole open up here?
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: conspiracy theorists pointed to everything from meteorites to stray missiles and even aliens.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet scientists seem to think this curious cavity may have been formed by a Pingo.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: No relation to the cartoon penguin of similar name.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: A Pingo forms when a layer of frozen ground is pushed up by water that's managed to flow underneath it.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the water freezes, it expands to create a mound, warming temperatures causes the mound to melt and collapse, leaving behind this massively unnerving crater.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Another theory is that, as the ground warms up underground ice formations may thaw, this could release long-held methane gases that force their way to the surface before exploding out causing giant craters like this.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, whatever the causes of this gigantic hole extraterrestrial are otherwise one things for sure, you wouldn't want to fall down it.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now it's not just our land that's filled with massive and mysterious gaps, these holes can also be found in the world's waters, and the next one is a real headturner.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine a perfectly circular opening in the middle of a calm blue lake, ringed by smooth concrete with water rushing inward and disappearing down into it.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: From above, it looks like a giant plug hole has been pulled from the lake, like the whole reservoirs draining into another dimension.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: What sadly, it's not quite as glamorous as that.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: This water hole is actually a spillway.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Spillways are basically overflow drains ensuring that when reservoir water levels reach a certain point, the excess water flows into the spillway instead of over a dam, which could cause damage to the structure of the dam itself.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Monte cello dam in California reaches capacity, it's circular spillway channels water down and a rate of 48,800 cubic feet per second.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's more than half the water that makes up an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: As for the spillway itself, it has a daunting depth of 200 feet, so is about as deep as an 18-story building is toall.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even if I had wings, I wouldn't go near that thing and apparently some birds agree with me while others very much don't.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's actually footage of an unfortunate bird flying a bit too close to the ram getting caught in the current and disappearing right into the spillway like you as be flushed away.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure he's fine.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, the temptation to take a dip here wasn't just too great for this bird, but also for a woman called Emily Schwallen.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1997, she decided to swim near the spillway before being caught up in the powerful current the whole created.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somehow she managed to hold onto the ramp for about 20 minutes, but she was eventually sucked in and sadly didn't survive.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So not only are these holes on Irving to look at, they're also literal man and bird eaters.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the wilderness of Texas, 1,400 miles southeast of that sinister spillway, you'll find another unnerving hole, except this one is much drier.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Explore, I'm in Billings first discovered this sinkhole back in 1867.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was so scared of what he saw below him, he referred to it as the Devil's own sinkhole.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in fairness, it's a pretty apt name for this hole.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The main cavern is a circular 65-foot wide crevice and drops down a hair raising 350 feet deep.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That means you could fit the statue of liberty in here, basin hall, and still have 40 feet to spare.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: If that wasn't devilish enough, the sinkhole is also home to 3 million Mexican free-tailed bats
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The footage of those 3 million bats pouring out of the cavern at dusk is honestly, one of the most striking natural phenomena you can see, a thick swirling smoke-like column of wings or rubbing from the ground.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But while the devil himself would be proud of this sinkhole, he didn't make it.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually the result of a natural process which started around 1 million years ago when slow-moving acidic groundwater carved a huge cavity into the limestone here.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the water table dropped, the water that once held up the ceiling of the cavern drained away leaving the roof to cave in, creating this incredible formation.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: While it may not be the work of the devil's hands, this sinkhole is definitely hellish.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of hellish holes, that brings us on to our next creepy cavity found in the Desert Landscape of Al Mahada and Eastern Yemen.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here the land stretches for miles of flat, dusty desert until you reach what looks like a perfectly round, almost surgical cut in the earth, as if someone took an enormous cookie cutter to the desert floor.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Known as the well of hell, this vast void is close to 100 feet wide in a jaw dropping 367 feet deep.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't have you scrambling backwards, those brave enough to get near the whole report of foul, almost a bare-able stench whafting up from below.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so pungent, it's lead locals to suggest that the well of hell was created as a prison for demons.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite those creepy claims, the team of 10 daring explorers journey down the whole to discover what exactly was lying at the bottom of it?
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It invite any demons, but they did come across waterfalls to lagmides, cave furrow, snakes, and birds.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not the alive kind, though.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's what's responsible for the Ovaloroma.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: One thing is for sure, though, this hole wasn't formed with the purpose of housing evil spirits.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's just an ordinary single.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so it's not a demon prison, but considering that it's home to foul smells, dead birds and scary snakes.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still not too keen on dropping down this female in this hole.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: As we've seen with the Monte cello dam spillway, Hujos can prefer eat water as well as the land, but while that soring spillway is found in a dam, some other screened vests was in the middle of the sea.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take for example the ATLINAMED GREAT blue hole.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This pit found 40 miles off the coast of Belize formed around 15,000 years ago.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: This C-Shap was once a limestone cave system found on dry land, when sea levels were lower.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over time, acidic rain reacted with the limestone causing it to dissolve in the cave roof to collapse.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then, when sea levels rose again, the cave system began to flood creating what is now the Great Blue Hole.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And total, the great blue hole is a staggering 143 feet across and drops down a gut-wrenching 407 feet, which is far deeper than this surrounding water.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, it holds a much darker color than the surrounding water making it pop out from the sea.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just the dizzying depths that you've got to watch out for.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considering that this place used to be a cave, the sinkhole is filled with stalactites and stalagmites.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also home to arrange a marine life from Caribbean Reef sharks to eagle rays and even a rocious barricutas.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Safe to say, it's not a place you want to find yourself at the bottom of, for a number of reasons.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you thought a 400 foot drop was a long way down, you ain't seen nothing yet.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Located in Kimberly, South Africa is the Kimberly Diamond Mine, even more appropriately named the Big Hole, this chasm is enormous.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So enormous that it stretches over 1,500 feet wide and plumets down 705 feet deep below the waterline.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The question is, what's such a huge sinkhole doing in the middle of the South African country side?
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out that way back in 1871 diamonds were found on the site, sparking a diamond rush to the area.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just one year into the diamond discovery, the population of diggers grew to 50,000.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, as digging progressed, many men met their end in mining accidents.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: While the unsanitary conditions lack a food and water and intense summer heat also wiped out much of the digging population, by 1914, after untold losses of workers excavation on the mind finally ceased.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't all doom and gloom, by that point over 22 million tons of rock had been excavated yielding 31 tons of diamonds.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: For context, that's the way to four African elephants.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Geez, no wonder that holes so huge.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: After it was abandoned in the large pumps keeping all the groundwater at bay were turned off, it was left to collect ground and rainwater and began accumulating what is now 130 feet of picturesque looking, turquoise water.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, those 100 foot tall shear sides are near impossible to scale, so pretty as it is I wouldn't recommend jumping in there.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, not if you ever want to make it out.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Although the big hole trumps the great blue hole for depth, there's one marine cavern that plunges even further down than the South African diamond mine.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the Dragon Hole, found in the South China Sea.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: That makes it exactly as deep as China's Hong Kong Tower is tall.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the Great Blue Hole, this would've formed as a result of water eroding the limestone causing the cave roof to collapse.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then, as sea levels rose, the blue hole emerged.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to local legend, the Dragon Hole is where the monkey king from the famous Chinese novel Journey to the West acquired his famous golden
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sadly, it doesn't look like this big blue hole is actually ruled by a dragon deity, although this place does hold some marine mysteries.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The upper portion of the dragon hole is home to at least 20 species of fish, yet below depths of 300 feet virtually nothing exists.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's because the dragon hole doesn't have any open caves that lead in the ocean tides.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: This results in isolated and stagnant deep waters that are devoid of any oxygen, and no oxygen equals no life.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Dragon Hole, scary by name, and even scarier by nature.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Play Stone a Sidewalk in the middle of Brighton England, you'll find a small, easy-to-miss brick housing.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Looks a bit like a tiny garden shed wrapped in a metal cage, the kind of utility structure you walk past every day without a second glance.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Monus as it looks at first glance, this is actually the sight of winning the Indian water well, the deepest hand dug well in the world.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: In total, this whopping well goes down, seriously, get ready for this, 1,285 feet, meaning that it's deeper than the Empire State Building is tall, excluding its antenna.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what exactly is such a huge hole doing in the middle of a sidewalk?
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're started on this shaft back in 1858.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back then, it was Dr.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Provide Water for a nearby warehouse.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: An exchange for food and a bed the workouts residents were expected to dig the well.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a test that was carried out night and day for four years with only candlelight to dig by.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine climbing up and down an Empire State Building size well every single day, with just a flicker of light to show you where you're going?
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, after four grueling years, the workers finally struck water.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Finally, all that hard work was worth it, right?
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nope.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite the massive cost enormous effort and promise that the well would save the town of fortune and water rates, whattinged in Dean Well was only used for four years before being abandoned in favor of a more practical water supply.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, if I had been one of those workers, it would have taken everything and made that through myself down the well after that.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you might not have assumed a winning-dending well was a deep drop at first glance the same can't be said for mere mine.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: This open-pit diamond-mine inside Buria has a diameter that stretches 3,900 feet across.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to depth, mere mine plummets down a massive 1,722 feet.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the name suggests, this site was once an open-pit mine, after Soviet geologist discovered diamond-bearing deposits in the area.
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1957 mining began, but this was no easy task.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Being located in Siberia, where average winter temperatures dropped in negative 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the ground was covered in a rigid permafrost.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: To break through this, workers had to use jet engines to thaw the ground.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite the difficulties digging, Miramine quickly became the largest diamond mine in the Soviet Union, producing over two tons of Kimberlight diamond per year in the 1960s.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mining operations continued until 2017 when flooding rendered the mine two dangers to use, but this place isn't just a hazard to those working within it, it's also a threat to aircraft flying overhead.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds crazy, but apparently the Earth warms the air inside the depths of the hole compared to the freezing surface temperature.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The warm air inside the hole rises while the cool air around its sinks.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such a big temperature difference between the in-hole air and above-ground air results in a deadly vortex capable of dragging down aircraft into the chasm.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: While there have been no recorded accounts of this actually happening, man, I'm going to have nightmares thinking about this huge hole.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Almost 5,000 miles away from your mine is an even more profound pit, located in Butte Montana, you'll find a Berkeley pit, a former open pit copper mine.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The pit operated from 1955 to 1982, and that time around 1 billion tons of copper silver and gold were extracted from the side.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considering the amount of material extracted from this place, it's no surprise there's a pretty huge hole here.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll Berkeley Pitch Trich is a whole mile across, and is a half mile wide while it drops down a staggering 1780 feet, meaning the one world trade center could fit in here.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And fact, this hole is so mind-blowingly big, it can even be seen from orbit in space.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Due to the pit being so deep the groundwater has now infiltrated
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: filling it with 900 feet of water.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this isn't any old water, due to the presence of sulfuric acid that's leaked from exposed rocks the water as an acidity of 2.5 pH.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: For reference, mass about as acidic is lemon juice.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But not only is it acidic, and also has a high concentration of metals.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It contains over 70,000 copper parts per billion, over 50 times higher than the human drinking water standard.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, this hole is so toxic that a 1995 a flock of migrating geese died after they landed in Berkeley Pittsburgh's waters.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lab test showed the insides of the bird's bodies were lined with burns and sewers from exposure to high concentrations of copper, cadmium, and arsenic, e-yikes.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Efforts have since been made to purify the water and make it safe for wildlife, but still, canonically, Montana was once owned to the biggest toxic pit in the world, which seems let's be fair, pretty on brand.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyone trekking through the beautiful mountainous landscape of Chong Chen and southwestern China can expect to see miles of lush rolling green hills, well, for the most part.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see, in the middle of all that emerald greenery lies a colossal circular cavity, and seen from above it genuinely looks like some enormous alien footprint pressed into the hillside, all sheer vertical walls dropping into a green fringe pit.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this is in fact, oh, here we go.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shayao Jai, Chen Kun, the world's deepest sinkhole, and the most difficult thing to pronounce if you're not a native.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: At least I tried.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: This huge hole formed gradually due to the flow of water carving out underground cave systems.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over time the underground cavities became larger and larger until the cave roof collapsed and on itself resulting in this sinkhole.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as sinkholes go, Shiojai Tinkyu is huge.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: For starters, it measures 2,054 feet long and 1,762 feet wide.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: On top of that, this place drops down 2172 feet deep.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's over twice as deep as the UK's tallest skyscraper the shard is to all.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all, some 1,285 floor and fauna species are found here, including the rare ginko plant, elusive clouded leopard, and the six-foot long Chinese giant salamander.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Much of the landscape and the real regions of Utah's Salt Lake City are dominated by tall mountainous peaks, much but not all.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see this is also the home of the Bingham Canyon mine, the deepest open pit mine in the world.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mine has been in production since 1906, since then it's produced some 19 million tons of copper more than any other mine in history.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even today, the mine is still in use employing 2,000 workers in excavating some 450,000 tons of material every single day.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you can imagine, so much excavation has made bringing canyon mine humongous.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all it stretches two and a half miles wide in the colossal 3,960VD.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's over eight times the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And considering that excavations here will continue until 2032, it won't be long until this bit, gets even wider and deeper.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Holy moly.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you can see Bingham Canyon mined from way up in the sky the same as in true of an even deeper hole.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hittin' in the lush mountainous landscape of Abkhazia, Georgia?
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, might walk right past a tiny 10 by 13 foot opening in the ground without giving it
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It looks like a slightly wider than usual crack in the rock, but this small shaft is actually the entrance to Vieriaf Kino Cave, the deepest known cavern in the world.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The cave was initially discovered in 1968 by Spelunker's who reached a depth of 377 feet, but that's just the tip of this cavern-ish iceberg.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Explorations have continued ever since with Spelunker's finding new untold depths to this place.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: and 2023 a team of explorers descended down a staggering 7,293 feet.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: That means this place is almost twice as deep as the gigantic Bingham Canyon mine.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So large is the descent down that it takes plunkers a grueling four days of scaling walls and squeezing through crushingly tight spaces until they finally reach the bottom.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stounds impressive, but can you imagine how grueling it be to spend eight days trekking up and down this place?
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: True to its name, this cave is a very deep chasm.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a region even more remote than the desolate Abskani in mountains, you'll find the ice cube neutrino observatory.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now before you ask scientists aren't monitoring some super sized ice cube.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, the observatory found that the Asminton Scott's South Pole station and Antarctica is designed to study neutrinos.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: neutrinos are tiny, massless, charged with particles that rarely interact with any particles, making them almost impossible to detect.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Although occasionally neutrinos do react with water molecules in ice, and this is where the ice cube neutrino observatory comes in.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Using a hot water drill 86 holes varying at depths between 4,750 and 8,000 feet were carved into the ice.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: For reference, the deepest of those holes is almost 6 times the height of the willest tower.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: A vertical string was placed in each hall with each string holding 60 light sensors.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: These light sensors were then used at attack to enable light the neutrinos and met allowing scientists to infer the presence and properties of neutrinos.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2013, just three years into the project, the ice cube detected 37 neutrinos that originated from outside our solar system.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, who knew we could detect these alien atoms?
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a thank-all it took was drilling 86 shoe mungus holes in the Antarctic ice sheet.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the world's deepest holes aren't always found in desolate places, or, so it seemed.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in February 1997 a man who identified himself as male waters called up coast to coast A.M. radio station.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Waters claimed that he owned a property near Ellen'sberg Washington to contain a mysterious hole.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Waters, the whole had an unknown depth, a client after using 80,000 feet of fishing line that was attached to a weight, he still hadn't hit the bottom.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: That mean that the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, could fit inside this chasm 30 times over.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: What was that?
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine how terrifying it'd be getting your morning cereal knowing one slip could result in an unintentional skydive without a parachute.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But depth isn't the only crazy thing about Mills Hole.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Waters also claimed the chasm had, magic powers.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently a neighbor's dead dog had been discovered alive sometime after it was thrown into the hole.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Waters said that due to the whole supposed magic properties, U.S. federal agents seized his land and funded his relocation to Australia.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as bunkers as it sounds, online conspiracy theorists pointed out that the whole is near to Yikima training center, a U.S. Army training base.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows, maybe the whole is home to some secret government alien activity?
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In reality though, geologists say that such a huge hole can exist.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something that deep would collapse into itself due to the tremendous pressure and heat from the surrounding strat.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: fair to say there are a few holes in Mell's story.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: While Mell's hole sounds pretty baseless, literally, what's the real deepest hole in the world?
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the answer lies in the Colopanensila, a remote region of northwestern Russia.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the side of the Koya Super Deep Bored Hole, the world's deepest recorded hole.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Although you wouldn't guess it from looking at it, the entrance to the deepest hole in the world is just a rusted abandoned metal cap bolted to a concrete bed in the middle of nowhere, about the size of a manhole cover.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Crumbling weather beaten, no signage, no fencing, if you didn't know what was underneath it, you'd think it was a long forgotten utility hatch.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how deep is it and what's underneath that cap?
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: to find out we've got to go back to the 1960s.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: During this time, the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was at its height, with each trying to outdo one another.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, history remembers the space race both also engaged in a race to the center of the Earth.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: America's project Mohol drilled 600 feet into the Pacific Ocean, but the Soviet scientists blew that effort out of the water with the Kolia Super Deep board hole.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Drilling began in 1970 without from the Earl Marsh for E-Rig.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the operation ended in 1989, the 9-inch wide hole had reached a mind-boggling depth of 40,230 feet, or 7.619 miles.
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: For context, that's over 5 miles deeper than the world's deepest mine, and nearly a mile deeper than the bottom of the mariana trench.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that wasn't crazy enough, the whole's depth is the height of Mount Everest and Mount Fuji placed on top of one another.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So deep as this hole that if you somehow managed to fall down this thing, it take a terrifying 50 seconds before you crash to the bottom.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how did they dig so deep?
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: When drilling began it was easy to plow through the granite rock, but around four miles down the layers became more dense and difficult to bore into.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, drill bits broke causing the diggers to change the drilling directions several times.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Gradually, they made it further down, but as they got over one obstacle, another soon popped up.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The heat.
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Due to the heat flow from the Earth's mantle, the further down you go, the hotter it gets.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: At over seven miles down, temperatures hit 356 degrees Fahrenheit, twice what was expected at that depth.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The soaring heat was beyond the capabilities of their drilling equipment, leading the Soviet scientists to abandon the project in 1992.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was that, or was it?
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some online theories have suggested something far more earied led to the end of the experiment.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It said that wicked wailing screams of tortured souls were recorded from the whole, painted to the belief that it went all the way down to the underworld.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The supposed recording, which has been doing the rounds online for decades, sounds like a course of distant, agonized, whaling, layered, over a low, rumbling roar.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of thing you'd expect from a budget horror film.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as it turns out, that's exactly what it is.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before you chew off the last of your fingernails, it's almost certainly just an urban myth.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: For starters, the recording devices wouldn't be able to withstand the 356 degrees temperatures.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: While amidst bustling website analyzed the sounds and found that they were suspiciously similar to audio used from the 1972 horror movie, Baron Blood.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even still, a potential portal to the underworld that burrows down close to eight miles below the Earth's surface is certainly a hair razor, or should I say, a little razor.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And with that we've dealt to the bottom of the world's deepest holes.
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have you stumbled across any huge holes of your own?
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let us know on the comments if the platform allows, and if you enjoyed this episode, hit follow wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss our next one.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.