Newport daily independent., 1905-03-15
STARTLING PROJECT.
ENoLIsHMAN WOULD DIG HoL1
 TWELVE MILES DEEP.
Would Solve Many Questions Un- known to the Scientific World Estimated Cost $25, 100000
 and to Take S5 Years.

Experiments to be tried in the Wash ington monument by officers of the geo. logical survey to try to determine the compressiveness of the earth's mass, has awakened widespread interest in scientific circles. Coming as it does on the heels of a project broached by Charles Algernon Parsons, of England. to bore a hole F miles into the earth. the scientific world has much food for speculation.
 Prof. Parsons estimates that to sink . shaft 12 miles deep would cost $25, ,000,- 900, and that it would require 85 years to accomplish it. This shaft, cut down into the earth, would represent the equivalent of hole one foot deep in d mass 666 feet thick. It would solve many questions that the scientific knowl- edge of the world has left unanswered, yet it would investigate only the crust and leave thousands of miles of the in- terior mass still untouched.
 The amount of compression at the globes center should, to some extent at least, define the character of the mass of which 1t is formed. It is argued that the great mass of the interior of the earth Is solid. Against the contention that the planet, under crust 25 miles thick. is mass of fiery liquid Is arrayed ths fact of the known density of the globe That density in the earth's entirety Is about 5.5 times the density of the water 1 that covers three-Quarters of the sur face.
 l The assumption of comparatively thin crust requires, according to Sir William Thompson. that this crust should have a rigidity possessed by no known substance. The sun exerts such a strain upon the substance of the earth that the planet could not maintain it's shape as it does, he maintains, unless tho supposed crust were at least 2,000 or 2,500 miles in thickness.
 There is gradual increase in the tenn perature while penetrating the surface of the crust This increase in some To- calities is as rapid as one degree for each 56 feet of descent; in others one degree for 75 to 85 feet.
 In the Comstock silver mines of Ne vada, at a depth of 3,O65 feet, water has ] a temperature of ITO degrees, Fahren- heit. The deepest excavations in the earth are at the Calumet and Hecla cop- per mines in Michigan, where the longest perpendicular shaft goes down 4,9OO feet, while one Of the standing shafts Is more than 5000 feet in length.
 There are in these mines 25O miles of lateral galleries. Colossal engines arc required to ventilate the immense sub- terranean city and to keep the tempera- ture endurable in the lower levels. All 1 deep mine bOrings prove how stupend- ously difficult would be the task of de- scending below the mile level.
 At the lowest rate of increase in the temperature in penetrating the earth. the heat at the depth suggested by MT Par sons, 12 miles down, would be 800 de- grees Fahrenheit. This heat, though far from the fusing point of wrought iron, (3,2S0 degrees), would render the use of tools, even if the lower borings of the shaft were constructed as they are in oil wells, a diflcult process. It would defy the most colossal scheme of artificial re- frigeration to'render such depths avail able. for entrance by human beings. No considerations of commercial ben eft enter into the plans of MT Parsons in suggesting the 12-mile boring into the crust of the earth. It is a scheme purely ir the interest of scientific knowledge.