We Dug Miles Into the Earth and Found a Lost Civilization

Bright Side

🌍 Ever wonder how deep humans have actually dug into the Earth? From the deepest basement under the Sydney Opera House to the mind-blowing Gotthard Base Tunnel slicing through the Alps, we’re going underground to uncover some seriously cool stuff. 🕳️🚇 We’ll even check out one of the deepest building foundations ever made — it’s like the skyscraper version of tree roots! But the real star of the show? We’re diving into the story of the deepest hole ever dug on Earth — and trust me, it’s not what you’d expect. So hit play and let’s go deep... like, really deep. ⛏️🌎  Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: Сама скважина: by Rakot13, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Сама_скважина(заварена),_август_2012.JPG сверхглубокая скважина: by Andre Belozeroff, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Кольская_сверхглубокая_скважина_crop.jpg Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Telegram: https://t.me/bright_side_official   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00Humans invest a lot of time and money exploring the unknown.

00:05First, outer space.

00:06Then, the ocean floor.

00:08But there's another frontier we're trying to conquer.

00:11Scientists call it the deep frontier.

00:14I'm talking about how far down to the Earth's core we've made it so far.

00:19During the 60s, humans tried digging the deepest man-made hole on Earth.

00:24This took us deep into the Arctic Circle.

00:26What later became known as the super-deep borehole,

00:30is also the deepest artificial point on Earth,

00:33reaching the depth of 40,230 feet.

00:36It took 20 years to drill this far into the Earth's crust.

00:40And researchers say this is only about one-third of the way through to the mantle.

00:46Here's a quick anatomy of our planet.

00:48If the Earth is like an onion, the crust is like the thick skin of this onion.

00:53This part is only 25 miles thick.

00:56Beyond this is the 1,800-mile-deep mantle.

01:01And after that, right at the center of the Earth is the core,

01:05which is made up of two layers, inner and outer.

01:08Now, can you guess where on the planet the crust is at its thinnest?

01:12On the ocean floor.

01:14When American scientists understood that,

01:17they started drilling holes on the seabed.

01:19This gave way to Project Moholl.

01:22It began in 1961,

01:24but their technology to drill deep holes on the ocean was really bad.

01:29They had to improvise.

01:30They installed a system of propellers along the sides of their drill ship

01:34to keep it steady over the hole.

01:37The main challenge was to drill as vertically as possible.

01:41Otherwise, that deep hole would look more like a deep maze.

01:44Both the Kola Superdeep Borehole Project and the Project Moholl

01:48came to an official stop in the years that followed.

01:52But hey, humans have built some pretty deep stuff underground.

01:56In 1963, a Turkish man took a swing with his sledgehammer

02:01to improve his basement and discovered a tunnel.

02:04That tunnel entrance led to more openings

02:06that connected a multitude of halls and chambers.

02:10He didn't know it, but he had discovered Derengoyu.

02:13This once-lost city was up to 18 stories tall and 200 feet deep.

02:19The city was large enough to host 20,000 people,

02:22and it was simply standing beneath Cappadocia in Turkey the whole time.

02:28Cappadocia hosts hundreds of subterranean dwellings.

02:3140 of these underground cities are at least 2 stories high,

02:35but none of them are as huge as Derengoyu.

02:38There's not a lot of historical accounts of how Derengoyu was born.

02:42Some speculate that the oldest part of the complex

02:45was dug about 2,000 BCE by the Hittites.

02:49The Hittites were an Indo-European civilization

02:52who formed one of the first major civilizations

02:55of the Bronze Age in West Asia.

02:58Scholars think they built this underground city

03:00to protect themselves from invasion.

03:03Others think it was actually the Christians

03:05who built the city in the first century CE.

03:07They speculate that it could have been constructed

03:10to protect people from the intense temperature variations,

03:14extreme heat in summer and freezing cold in winter.

03:19Geographically, the terrain under Cappadocia is great for building.

03:23The rocks are soft, which makes tunneling easier.

03:27For that same reason, opening large caves underground is fragile.

03:31That's why most chambers have pillars that support them.

03:35On the bright side, and we are,

03:37none of the floors at Derengoyu have ever collapsed.

03:40The builders of Derengoyu thought of everything.

03:45The city was shut off from the world by huge rocks that hit its entrance.

03:49It was ventilated by a total of more than 15,000 shafts,

03:54around 10 centimeters wide.

03:55This way, they guaranteed enough breathing air in the upper levels

03:59in a way that they ended up being used as the living and sleeping quarters.

04:04The lower levels of this impressive maze were mainly used for storage.

04:09But honestly, they had it all.

04:12A room for a wine press, for domestic animals,

04:15small religious buildings.

04:17They certainly didn't spare any efforts

04:19to make that underground city as complete as an above-ground one.

04:23Now, speaking of impressive underground stuff,

04:28Switzerland has the longest tunnel in the world,

04:31built here on the Swiss Alps.

04:33This absurdly huge tunnel was built over 8,000 feet below the surface.

04:39Check this out.

04:40This is what the Gothard Base Tunnel looks like.

04:43The first idea to build the tunnel was put forward as early as 1947,

04:48but construction only officially began in 1999.

04:51It took them years to approve the project

04:54and then scout for the perfect location.

04:58Even so, the 73 different rock types that compose Massif

05:02turned the construction into a real challenge.

05:05Some of the rocks were as hard as granite

05:07and others were as soft as sandstone.

05:10This meant they needed different approaches and equipment

05:13so the whole thing wouldn't crumble down.

05:15Overall, they had to excavate about 28 million metric tons of rock

05:21to make way for the tunnel.

05:23There were many other challenges to build that far into the Earth.

05:27The deeper into the mountain they got,

05:29the hotter the temperatures were.

05:32Since there's no natural ventilation,

05:34temperatures would get as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit,

05:38making it really hard for workers to endure.

05:40The tunnel stretches for 35 miles from one end to the other.

05:47During the construction, workers had to use four massive tunnel boring machines,

05:52aka moles, to penetrate through the massive.

05:55Each of these moles was around 1,400 feet long.

05:59But that was one of the best things they could do,

06:02since these machines limit the disturbance to the surrounding ground

06:06and helped to produce a smooth tunnel wall.

06:10You'd never guess that the world's deepest basement

06:13belongs to the Sydney Opera House in Australia.

06:16The building goes as deep underground as it grows above ground.

06:20But this basement isn't just the Opera House's foundation.

06:24It's a parking lot.

06:26This unique parking garage penetrates 120 feet underground,

06:31or 12 stories deep,

06:32while most car parks are only 4 or 5 stories deep.

06:36But that's not all that makes it unique.

06:39You see, if they decided to build a normal rectangular parking space,

06:43this would end up eliminating a bunch of possible parking spaces.

06:47And since they wanted to maximize the space they had available,

06:51they had to come up with some superb structure.

06:54First, they opened up a man-made cavern to make that dream possible.

06:59Then they had to come up with a design.

07:01That's what led to the donut-shaped cavern,

07:04or what engineers call a double helix.

07:07This design shocked the engineering community for its innovative approach.

07:12But hey, it worked!

07:13Today, there is space for over a thousand cars down there,

07:17which seems about right for an Opera House.

07:21Let's wow once again real quick.

07:24Some underground structures may take up to an hour to reach.

07:27Take this gold mine in South Africa that lies around two and a half miles below the surface.

07:34Yeah, you may think, hey, it's just a couple of miles,

07:37why does it take an hour to get there?

07:39But the conditions are hard, and it's not for the weak.

07:43But Milan Ladina, an Ecuadorian runner,

07:46even completed a half marathon there,

07:49despite temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit,

07:52high humidity at 80%,

07:54and an atmospheric pressure of 1.4,

07:57comparable to what divers experience 5 meters under the sea.

08:01Yikes!

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