Which mine is the deepest and what awaits miners at a depth of 12 km?

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While some engineers are perfecting construction techniques, creating taller and taller skyscrapers, others are digging into the earth. The history of mining began over 6,000 years ago (about 4,800-4,500 B.C., during the Copper Age), when people learned how to mine and process copper ore, extracting metal from it. But at that time the ore was extracted in quarries, where the rocks were stripped and processed layer by layer.

 

When it turned out that there were much more minerals underground (and some of them could not be found on the surface at all), the first mines began to appear. They were horizontal (or with a slight slope), with entrances on the slopes or foothills of mountains. As mining developed, the mines became deeper and deeper, and the work of the miner became more and more dangerous. There were no pumps and fans back then, so ground water was literally scooped out by hand in buckets to the surface, and the problem of ventilation was solved by natural draughts, connecting the neighboring mines with each other.

 

Nowadays it has become possible to build mines at depths of hundreds or even thousands of metres. The deepest mine today is Mponeng in South Africa (about 4,000 meters below sea level, producing gold). But the deeper the mine, the more difficult the miners face. After all, if you go up into the mountains, the higher up, the colder the air gets and the lower the atmospheric pressure. But when you dive into the depths of the earth, the opposite process occurs. At a depth of 4 kilometers the temperature of the surrounding rocks reaches 65C, so we have to use special ice (which is delivered in jelly-like form through pipes) for cooling.

 

It is technically possible to build deeper mines, but studies have shown that at a depth of 12 kilometers engineers will face a temperature of at least 200C. At a depth of 30 km, the crust ends and the mantle begins with a temperature of 900C!

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