How Fast Do Energy Waves Travel Through the Earth?

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To understand this story, we have to know something about the deeper parts of the Earth. And so we need seismologists who look at seismic waves traveling through the deeper Earth. You can think of this work from seismologists as how scientists build a map of what's under our feet. So basically they're measuring how fast these earthquake waves travel and that lets them figure out exactly what the materials of the Earth are.

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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