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$1 Billion Mission To Reach the Earth's Mantle

Posted by timothy on from the because-it's-the-closest-one dept.

black6host writes "Humans have reached the moon and are planning to return samples from Mars, but when it comes to exploring the land deep beneath our feet, we have only scratched the surface of our planet. This may be about to change with a $1 billion mission to drill 6 km (3.7 miles) beneath the seafloor to reach the Earth's mantle — a 3000 km-thick layer of slowly deforming rock between the crust and the core which makes up the majority of our planet — and bring back the first ever fresh samples."

6 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Paging Lawrence Fishburn by DaKong · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please remember to wear your heat suit when venturing outside the vessel.

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    If not us, who? If not now, when?
    1. Re:Paging Lawrence Fishburn by MiniMike · · Score: 5, Funny

      Because it's too easy? It's like picking on a disabled kid- it would be easy, but it's just wrong to do.

      Because it's too cheesy? Some movies approach the cheesiness boundary carefully, but don't get too close. This one seemed to leap over that line early in the movie, and just kept running for the fence.

      But mostly:
      Because one would have to admit having seen The Core?

    2. Re:Paging Lawrence Fishburn by FreonTrip · · Score: 5, Informative

      That wasn't Lawrence Fishburne, that was Delroy Lindo. And yes, The Core is one of the most hideously inaccurate, ostensibly scientific films ever made. What galls is that the film itself isn't awful in terms of character development or plotting - it's just oriented around a series of terribly wrong fundamental assumptions, and then ties itself into progressively more ridiculous knots to support them.

      On the other hand, it is riotously funny to watch with a room full of tipsy geologists.

  2. Sounds fun. by Sparticus789 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if by samples, they mean the live dinosaurs that inhabit hollow earth.

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    sudo make me a sandwich
  3. We must stop them! by nysus · · Score: 5, Funny

    I know how this ends...with a giant sucking sound as the world's oceans drain into the earth's core. Then, as steam builds inside the planet, the earth turns into a giant exploding kernel of popcorn.

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    ---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.

  4. Diamond juice by Lev13than · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Down there," said Golg, "I could show you real gold, real silver, real diamonds."

    "Bosh!" said Jill rudely. "As if we didn't know that we're below the deepest mines even here."

    "Yes," said Golg. "I have heard of those little scratches in the crust that you Topdwellers call mines. But
    that's where you get dead gold, dead silver, dead gems. Down in Bism we have them alive and growing.
    There I'll pick you bunches of rubies that you can eat and squeeze you a cup full of diamond-juice. You
    won't care much about fingering the cold, dead treasures of your shallow mines after you have tasted the
    live ones of Bism."

    "My father went to the world's end," said Rilian thoughtfully. "It would be a marvellous thing if his son
    went to the bottom of the world."

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    When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire