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0 km
15°C
1 atm
Surface
Journey to the
Center of the Earth
Scroll 6,371 km straight down through every layer of our planet. From topsoil to solid iron.
Total distance: 6,371 km
Scroll to descend
Entering
Earth's Crust
0 — 35 km deep
▼ 3 meters
Burial Depth
The standard depth of a human grave. Below this, earthworms become rare and soil transitions to subsoil — a mix of broken rock, clay, and minerals.
▼ 12 meters
Constant Temperature Zone
Below this depth, the ground temperature stays constant year-round, unaffected by seasons. This is why caves feel the same temperature no matter when you visit.
🌡️ Temperature here: about 13°C (55°F) — Earth's average surface temperature, locked in permanently.
▼ 40 meters
Deepest Foundations
The deepest building foundations on Earth reach about this depth. The Salesforce Tower in San Francisco has piles driven 91m, but most skyscrapers sit on bedrock at around 20-40m.
▼ 105 meters
Deepest Metro Station
Arsenalna station in Kyiv, Ukraine — the deepest metro station in the world. It takes a 5-minute escalator ride to reach the platform. Built this deep partly because of the hilly terrain, partly as a nuclear shelter.
▼ 300 meters
Deepest Basements
CERN's Large Hadron Collider sits in a tunnel at this depth beneath the Franco-Swiss border. The 27-kilometer ring is the largest machine humanity has ever built.
🌡️ 25°C — It's already getting noticeably warmer. Temperature rises about 25-30°C per kilometer in the crust.
▼ 1 km
One Kilometer Down
This is deeper than any natural cave on Earth. The deepest known cave, Veryovkina Cave in Georgia, reaches 2,212m — but horizontally, not straight down. At 1 km depth, rock pressure is enormous.
⛏️ Deep gold and diamond mines reach these depths. Miners at South Africa's Mponeng gold mine work at 3.9 km depth where rock temperatures reach 66°C.
▼ 3.9 km
Deepest Mine
Mponeng Gold Mine in South Africa. Miners descend for over an hour. Ice slurry is pumped down to cool the tunnels. Without cooling, the rock face temperature is 66°C — hot enough to cook an egg.
💎 At these depths, the pressure is about 1,000 atmospheres. Tiny earthquakes happen constantly as rock shifts and cracks.
▼ 8.85 km
Height of Everest — But Downward
If you flipped Mount Everest upside down and pushed it into the Earth, the peak would only reach here. We're still barely scratching the crust.
▼ 12.26 km
Kola Superdeep Borehole
The deepest hole humanity has ever drilled. A Soviet project that took 20 years (1970–1992). They had to stop because the rock at this depth was unexpectedly hot — 180°C — and behaved more like plastic than solid stone.
📏 12.26 km is just 0.19% of the way to the center. We've barely dented the surface. Everything below this point is scientifically inferred — no human has ever seen it directly.
▼ 35 km
Base of Continental Crust
We've reached the Mohorovičić discontinuity — the "Moho" — where the crust ends and the mantle begins. Discovered in 1909 by Croatian seismologist Andrija Mohorovičić, who noticed earthquake waves suddenly speed up at this depth.
🌡️ 400–600°C · Pressure: ~10,000 atm · The crust makes up less than 1% of Earth's mass.
Entering
Upper Mantle
35 — 670 km deep
▼ 80 km
The Asthenosphere Begins
The rock here is so hot it becomes partially molten and behaves like extremely thick honey. This is the layer that allows tectonic plates to drift across Earth's surface — at roughly the speed your fingernails grow.
🔥 The mantle isn't liquid magma — it's solid rock that flows incredibly slowly. Over millions of years, it churns in massive convection currents like a pot of water on a stove.
▼ 100 km
Where Diamonds Are Born
Diamonds form here, between 150-700 km deep, where carbon is subjected to pressures exceeding 50,000 atmospheres and temperatures above 1,100°C. They're blasted to the surface in violent volcanic eruptions called kimberlite pipes.
💎 The oldest diamonds are 3.3 billion years old — three quarters the age of Earth itself. They've been sitting in the mantle, waiting.
▼ 200 km
Earthquake-Free Zone
Below about 300 km, earthquakes become extremely rare. The rock is too hot and plastic to fracture — it just flows. The deepest earthquake ever recorded struck at 735 km in 2013 beneath the Sea of Okhotsk.
🌡️ ~1,400°C · The rock here is peridotite — dense, olive-green stone made mostly of olivine and pyroxene. You'd never see these rocks at the surface unless a volcano brought them up.
▼ 410 km
The 410 Discontinuity
A major boundary within the mantle. The mineral olivine is crushed into a denser crystal structure called wadsleyite by the immense pressure. This transition zone may hold more water than all Earth's oceans — trapped inside the crystal structure of the rock.
🌊 In 2014, scientists found evidence of a vast reservoir of water at this depth — possibly three times the volume of all surface oceans, locked inside ringwoodite minerals.
▼ 660 km
Base of the Transition Zone
Another major boundary. Minerals undergo a final phase change into a super-dense form called bridgmanite — the single most abundant mineral on Earth, making up 38% of the planet's volume. Yet it was only officially named in 2014.
🌡️ ~1,600°C · Pressure: ~240,000 atm · We're now about 10% of the way to the center.
Entering
Lower Mantle
670 — 2,900 km deep
▼ 1,000 km
One Thousand Kilometers
Roughly the distance from London to Madrid — but straight down. The lower mantle is a thick, sluggish layer of super-compressed rock. Convection currents here move at about 2 cm per year. A single convection cycle takes about 100 million years.
▼ 1,500 km
Slab Graveyards
Remnants of ancient tectonic plates — oceanic crust that subducted hundreds of millions of years ago — sink through the mantle and pile up in "slab graveyards" at these depths. Seismic imaging has revealed continent-sized slabs of ancient ocean floor resting here.
🌡️ ~2,500°C · At this temperature, the rock glows a dull red. But under this pressure, it remains solid — just barely.
▼ 2,000 km
Mantle Plumes Rise From Here
Giant columns of abnormally hot rock rise from deep in the mantle like slow-motion lava lamps. These mantle plumes create hotspot volcanoes like Hawaii, Yellowstone, and Iceland — volcanic activity far from any plate boundary.
▼ 2,700 km
The Ultra-Low Velocity Zones
Near the base of the mantle, seismologists have detected mysterious patches where seismic waves slow dramatically. These Ultra-Low Velocity Zones (ULVZs) may be partially molten regions, possibly remnants of the ancient magma ocean that once covered early Earth.
🔬 Two enormous blob-like structures — each the size of a continent — sit beneath Africa and the Pacific. Called Large Low-Shear-Velocity Provinces, they may have existed since Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago.
▼ 2,890 km
The Core-Mantle Boundary
The Gutenberg discontinuity — the most dramatic boundary inside Earth. Below this line, everything changes. Solid silicate rock gives way to liquid iron. The temperature jumps. Pressure is staggering. This is where Earth's magnetic field is born.
🌡️ ~3,500°C · Pressure: ~1.35 million atm · We're 45% of the way to the center. The mantle (84% of Earth's volume) is behind us.
Entering
Outer Core
2,900 — 5,150 km deep
▼ 3,000 km
Liquid Iron
You've crossed into a roiling ocean of liquid iron and nickel, 2,260 km thick. Despite being hotter than the surface of the Sun, it remains liquid because the pressure — while enormous — isn't quite enough to force it solid.
🧲 Churning currents of this liquid iron generate Earth's magnetic field through the geodynamo effect. Without it, solar wind would strip away our atmosphere. Life might not exist.
▼ 3,500 km
Rivers of Metal
The outer core flows in massive convection currents, driven by heat escaping from the inner core. These flows move at about 40 km per year — roughly 2,000 times faster than tectonic plates. The fastest "jet streams" of iron flow beneath Alaska and Siberia.
▼ 3,950 km
The Halfway Point
You're now roughly at Earth's geometric midpoint by radius. 3,185 km above you is the surface. 3,186 km below you is the very center. Every direction is up from here.
🌡️ ~4,500°C · Pressure: ~2 million atm · The liquid iron here is as runny as water on the surface despite being thousands of degrees.
▼ 4,500 km
Magnetic Reversals
The chaotic flows of the outer core occasionally cause Earth's magnetic field to flip — north becomes south, south becomes north. This has happened roughly 183 times in the last 83 million years. The last reversal was 780,000 years ago. The next could happen anytime.
🧭 During a reversal, which takes 1,000–10,000 years, the magnetic field weakens to about 10% of its normal strength. Navigation by compass would be useless.
▼ 5,100 km
Approaching the Inner Core
The Lehmann discontinuity is near — discovered in 1936 by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann, who proved Earth has a solid inner core by analyzing seismic waves from a New Zealand earthquake. She was one of the great unsung scientists of the 20th century.
🌡️ ~5,000°C · Pressure: ~3.2 million atm · 80% of the way to the center.
Entering
Inner Core
5,150 — 6,371 km deep
▼ 5,150 km
Solid Iron Ball
Despite being hotter than the surface of the Sun, the inner core is solid. The pressure here — over 3.5 million atmospheres — forces iron atoms into a crystalline lattice so tight that even 5,400°C can't melt it.
📐 The inner core is roughly the size of the Moon — about 2,440 km in diameter. It's a metal planet inside our planet.
▼ 5,500 km
Crystals of Iron
The inner core is a single massive iron crystal — or possibly made of enormous iron crystals aligned roughly north-south. Seismic waves travel faster through the inner core along the polar axis than the equatorial one, hinting at this crystalline structure.
▼ 5,800 km
The Inner Inner Core
In 2023, scientists found evidence of a distinct innermost inner core — a ball about 650 km wide at the very center with a different crystal alignment. This may be a fossilized record of a dramatic event in Earth's early history — perhaps a massive impact or a shift in the geodynamo.
▼ 6,000 km
Growing Slowly
The inner core is still growing. As the outer core slowly cools, liquid iron crystallizes onto the inner core's surface at roughly half a millimeter per year. The latent heat released by this crystallization helps power the magnetic field that protects all life on Earth.
⏰ The inner core is relatively young — estimated to be only 1-1.5 billion years old. For most of Earth's history, the core was entirely liquid.
Center of the Earth
6,371 km deep · 5,400°C · 3.6 million atm
You've reached the very center — a point of perfect gravitational balance where you would be weightless, suspended in solid iron hotter than the surface of the Sun. No light has ever reached here. No instrument has ever measured it directly. Everything we know about this place comes from listening to earthquakes ripple through the planet.

And yet it shapes everything above — the magnetic shield that guards our atmosphere, the heat that drives tectonic plates, the iron that colors our blood. The center of the Earth is 6,371 km away, but it's keeping you alive right now.

What Is Journey to the Center of the Earth?

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a free interactive scrolling experience that takes you 6,371 km straight down through every layer of the planet. As you scroll, you pass through soil, bedrock, the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core, with real depth markers, temperature readings, and pressure data at every stage. The deepest humans have ever drilled is just 12.26 km — this experience goes 500 times further.

How It Works

Simply scroll down the page to descend through Earth's layers. A real-time HUD displays your current depth in kilometers, temperature in degrees Celsius, pressure in gigapascals, and which geological layer you are in. Each layer features factual information about its composition, density, and notable features. The journey is to scale, so deeper layers take proportionally longer to scroll through.

Frequently Asked Questions

How far is it to the center of the Earth?

The distance from the Earth's surface to its center is approximately 6,371 kilometers (3,959 miles). This journey passes through the crust (up to 70 km thick), the mantle (2,900 km), the outer core (2,200 km of liquid iron), and finally the inner core (1,220 km radius of solid iron at over 5,000 degrees Celsius).

What are the layers of the Earth in order?

The Earth's layers from surface to center are: the crust (5-70 km thick), the upper mantle, the lower mantle (extending to 2,900 km depth), the outer core (liquid iron and nickel, 2,900-5,150 km), and the inner core (solid iron, 5,150-6,371 km). Temperature increases from about 15 degrees Celsius at the surface to over 5,000 degrees Celsius at the core.

What is the deepest hole ever drilled into the Earth?

The Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia is the deepest hole ever drilled, reaching 12,262 meters (12.26 km) deep. That is only about 0.2% of the way to Earth's center. The project took 19 years (1970-1989) and had to stop because temperatures reached 180 degrees Celsius, making the rock behave more like plastic than solid.

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Last updated: March 2026 · whatifs.fun — Free interactive games, experiments & simulations