Here's Why Russia Sealed The World's Deepest Hole

The Kola Superdeep Borehole holds the record for being the deepest artificial point on Earth, reaching almost 12,262 meters into the ground. The project was started during the Cold War era, as the Soviet Union had the ambition to create the deepest man made hole ever. Surprisingly, Soviets weren’t alone, as throughout the Cold War, there was a race among global superpowers like the US, Japan and Germany to dig deeper into the Earth’s crust, even reach the planet’s core. To avoid this challenge, they developed vertical drilling systems and they worked well for the Kola Superdeep Borehole project, which could drill until a depth of 7.5 km. According to Uli Harms, the original plan was to drill even deeper than the Soviets, but the project failed to reach the desired depth of 10 km within the given time.