The deepest well ever drilled by humans is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia. It reached a depth of about 7.62 miles (12.262 kilometers). The borehole was started in 1970 and drilling continued until 1994, primarily for scientific research purposes to learn more about the Earth's crust. | Rodney Keith Copley

The Kola Superdeep Borehole remains a testament to the absolute limits of human engineering. Reaching a vertical depth of 12,262 meters (7.6 miles), this Soviet-era project in the Russian Arctic is officially the deepest man-made point on Earth—surpassing the 11-kilometer depth of the Mariana Trench. While we have sent humans to the moon, we have only managed to scratch the top 0.2% of the distance to the Earth's center, proving that the ground beneath us is far more hostile than the vacuum of s