Scientists extract a kilometer of rock from Earth’s mantle in a record-breaking mission

For the first time, scientists have drilled into an underwater mountain to collect a record-breaking piece of Earth’s mantle — a rocky core more than 3,280 feet (one kilometer) across.

This amazing feat was achieved by drilling in the Atlantis Massif, an underwater mountain located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge under the North Atlantic Ocean. By aligning drills at this site, geologists have drilled a 4,156-foot (1,267-meter) deep hole in the mountain and extracted an “astonishing” amount of serpentine — metamorphic rocks that form at deep tectonic plate boundaries — from Earth’s interior.

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