Today we celebrate Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s summit of Mount Everest in 1953 with eight giant holes in the Earth. So enjoy the gallery, we promise not to make any jokes about your mom.
The Bingham Canyon Mine, or Kennecott Copper Mine to its friends, can be found in Utah. This hole in the ground is over half a mile deep and two and a half miles wide, in the process of creating this giant hole in the ground they have brought up more than 17 million tons of copper. That’s a whole slew of pennies.
India’s Chand Baori well was built by King Chanda between 800 and 900 AD. This was more than a well, since the temperature at the bottom of the well is cooler than at the surface it was a community gathering place for locals. The way they built the steps make this much more than your ordinary well.
Chile’s Chuquicamata copper mine is considered the biggest open-pit copper mine in the world. With a depth of 850 meters it’s the second deepest open-pit mine in the world, behind Bingham Canyon Mine. This has been an active mine since at least 550 AD, so they’ve had more than enough time to dig.
The Darvaza gas crater has been burning since 1971 when Soviet geologists discovered it, and subsequently attempted to burn off the gas when their drilling rig collapsed into the crater. The locals have lovingly dubbed the crater “The Door to Hell”. We should all be so lucky to have our own local door to hell.
The Diavik diamond mine resides in the cold northern wastes of Canada. This mine is situated on the island Lac de Gras, and is only 220 kilometers from the Arctic Circle which makes for some interesting mining come the winter months.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole was a Soviet scientific endeavor that resulted in a hole that reaches over 12 kilometers into the Earth. The Russians were boring this hole from 1971 to 1989, that must have been a very boring time.
The Mirny mine, or Mir mine if you want to be technical, was a diamond mine. It now sits inactive in Siberia. This hole is so large that the airspace above it is closed for helicopters, because there were several incidents where helicopters fell because of the temperature differences and unexpected air currents.
The Udachnaya pipe, or lucky pipe in Russian, was found in 1955 and has reached a depth of 600 meters. One thing that we can take away from this gallery is that Russia loves their diamond mines. Apparently there’s nothing else to do in Siberia besides mine diamonds.
