Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 314, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1920 — 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 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 rock would give trouble by being crushed, and in granite about 30 miles could be reached. Such a shaft might throw mubh 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 generate about 10,000 horsepower by turbines.