The Mohorovichich Disruption

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The Mohorovichich discontinuity, or the Mojo for short. It is odd. And they named it after this person who helped to find it. They decided that they want to drill in the ocean as opposed to on land. So you realize that on land, the crust rock is like 22 miles thick,. Versus in the ocean, the crust is only four miles thick.

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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