The distance between the surface and the center of the earth is 6370 kilometers, slightly less than the distance between Rome and New York, but the exploration and knowledge of the interior of the earth is so limited that Richard Feynman in 1994 said that "we understand much better the distribution of matter inside the sun than that inside the earth".
Most mines are no more than 400 metres deep and the deepest drilling ever carried out is just over 12 km. The demand for rare earths for decarbonization and the supply of raw materials will lead to an expected increase in mining extraction of 60% by 2060 with a consequent development of drilling and extraction technologies. By 2026, perhaps a little optimistically, the company Quaise Energy expects to be able to drill 20 km into the earth's crust thanks to a microwave excavation device, in order to obtain practically unlimited geothermal energy; recently Scientists from Northwestern University in Illinois, in US, have unearthed a monumental reservoir of water three times larger than all the oceans combined, located approximately 700 km below the Earth's surface.
This images are an attempt to confront the scenarios suggested by these data in a mixture of urban development and underground excavation for extractive purposes. The dominant golden yellow color dominant was not a csual choice.
