Scientists were trying to get to the mohoe break, which is a place inside the earth where materials suddenly become dense. They drilled really deep under the ocean and they actually got some rocks from the bottom. But people were really jazzed about this as a kind of a proof of concept. It has been six decades since Project Mohole and we still do not have a fresh sample of this mahoe break.
Sixty years ago, geologists tried to drill down through the Earth’s crust to pull up a piece of the Earth’s mantle. Their mission didn’t go exactly as planned. But it sowed the seeds for a new field of science that’s helped us rewrite not only the history of the planet, but, potentially, our definitions of life itself.
The documentaries featured in this episode are "The First Deep Ocean Drilling: Mohole, Phase 1" and "Project Mohole: Report No. 1."
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