Scientists aim to drill 12km into Earth to collect unique mantle samples

Scientists embark on mission to drill deeper into Earth than ever before

THEY'RE not exactly journeying to the centre of the Earth, but a pair of scientists are about to embark on a world-first mission to find out what's there.

Dr Damon Teagle, a geologist at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, and Dr Benoit Ildefonse from Montpellier University in France, are leading a team which will aim to drill through more than eight kilometres of solid rock in the Pacific Ocean.

And no, they're not expecting to find any giant mushroom forests or dinosaurs.
Rather, the purpose of the mission is to retrieve samples of the boundary between the ocean crust and the mantle, known as the "Mohorovicic" or "Moho" for short.

It's not the first time drilling to the Earth’s mantle has been attempted - a team of American scientists attempted it in the 1960s - but Dr Teagle and Dr Benoit hope to be the first to manually extract samples.

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