Digging Straight Down In Montana Reveals Surprising Destination

Where Would You End Up If You Dug Straight Down From Montana?

When you were a kid, did you ever start digging a hole and then have one of your parents come by and say, "What are you doing, digging a hole to China?"

I doubt I'm the only person whose parents told them they could dig a hole to China, but is that where we'd pop out if we were to try it here in Montana?

Understanding Antipodes: The Science Behind Digging Through the Earth

If two places are on opposite sides of the Earth, they are called antipodes, and a line passing through the Earth would connect them.

As for Montana, digging straight down means we wouldn't end up in China since we are both in the Northern Hemisphere, meaning we’d pop out somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. But where exactly?

Let's use Helena as our starting point for our experiment. We're also going to be using the website named "If I Dug A Tunnel," which was created by a father and daughter team for a science fair at school.

Montana’s Underground Destination: Not China

We’re starting in Helena, and when we finish digging, we’d end up somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Thankfully there is some land nearby that we could swim to called the "French and Southern Antarctic Lands," which is basically France's claim to Antarctica.

How Far Could Humans Really Dig? The Deepest Hole Ever

Oh, and good luck getting all the way through, considering the deepest we've dug into the Earth was back in 1989, when the Russian went 7.6 miles deep when digging the Kola Superdeep Borehole.

Source: If I Dug A Tunnel