Beyond the abyss: The mission to drill through the Earth's crust

I watch for an age, until the activity around the rig changes and I realize the drilling has begun. The tone of the machine changes slightly, but it’s still a sterile mechanical sound. The drill bit is now nearly 30,000 feet below the surface and sound waves won’t travel this far, but it seems odd, almost antiseptic, that we can’t hear or feel the rock being slowly torn apart. 
~an excerpt from Sleep of Reason

THE REAL SCIENCE:
Drill beneath the sediment on the sea floor and you hit the oceanic crust. One advantage of drilling into oceanic crust is it's approximately 7 kilometers thick, while on land it is many times thicker, explained Koppers. That allows scientists to sample closer to the Earth's mantle.

"You're learning about how the world works at a planetary scale," he added. "There's a fundamental question about the origin of life on Earth, and then (by) extension, to any other planet."

www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/world/modern-explorers-ocean-drilling-iodp/index.html

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