News > Underwater hole in Earth's mantle can hold clues to origins of life

Underwater hole in Earth's mantle can hold clues to origins of life

The deepest hole to have ever been drilled into Earth's mantle is in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. Scientists dug 1268 metres below the seafloor near an underwater mountain called Atlantis Massif. The initial plan was to just go 200 metres deep, which also was ambitious considering this had never happened before. The drilling has exposed a new rock core which can offer insights into how life began on Earth, besides the evolution of the planet's outermost layers.