Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 310, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1919 — To Explore Earth’s Interior. [ARTICLE]

To Explore Earth’s Interior.

Our Knowledge of the earth from actual contact is confined “to a thin layer of only a few hundred feet, and what exists deeper down is a subject for speculation. The idea of exploring further by a bore-hole some ten times as deep as any yet attempted was again brought up in the late presidential address of Hon. Sir Charles' A. Parsons to the British association. He- proposed in 1904 the sinking, of such a shaft to a depth of 12 miles, and estimated that it would require eighty-five years of time and cost $25,000,000 —an outlay about equal to that for one first-class battleship. S’nce then Prof. F. D. Adams has concluded ( that a depth of 15 miles could be reached in limestone before the rockp would give trouble by being crushed, and in granite about 30 miles could be reached. Such “a shaft might throw much light on the earth’s internal constitution— especially as related to very heavy minerals. In Italy,, bore-holes sunk to moderate depths in a volcanic district discharge great . volumes of high pressure steam, and this is being utilized to ganerate about 10,000 horsepower by turbines.