9 Ancient Mysteries Scientists Still Can t Explain

This monk decided to be buried alive, voluntarily. He sat in a wooden box, slightly bigger than needed to fit in a sitting position. He was bricked in, with only two holes left. One for air, and another for a rope with a bell. Every day he rang it, which meant he was alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the holes were sealed forever. No one cried outside, it was a celebration. Because if after a thousand days his body was preserved, he became a god. And this particular monk did. He was taken out of the box, covered in lacquer, dressed in gold, and placed in a temple. And for a thousand years, people came to pray to him. And then Dutch scientists x-rayed the old Buddha statue and found him inside. Hello friend, you're on the Curtop channel. Today, here are 9 stories about things people hid so deeply that we couldn't find them for thousands of years. Some of them will shock you. And some will make you think about what we really know about the past. A monk who became a Buddha from within. Let's go back to the monk. Because this story is much crazier than it seems at first. The procedure is called Sokushin Butsu. It roughly translates to becoming a Buddha in this body. It was practiced in Japan starting around the 9th century. The idea is simple and completely wild at the same time. A monk could achieve enlightenment, not through death, but by turning his body into an incorruptible relic while still alive. How did this work in practice? This is where the real horror begins. First 2,000 days of the strictest diet. No meat, no grains. Only nuts, seeds, roots and tree bark. The body starts to consume itself. The fat disappears. The moisture leaves the muscles. This was done intentionally. The less organic matter in the body, the less insects and bacteria can destroy it after death. Stage 2. The monk would start drinking tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree. This is the lacquer tree. The same one used to make Japanese lacquer. The sap is poisonous. In large doses it kills, but in small amounts it coats the internal organs with a thin protective film. For insects, this smell is unbearable. The body literally becomes inedible from the inside. Stage 3. The box. The monk sits in the lotus position. He was placed in a wooden sarcophagus and either buried or sealed up. Two tubes. One for air. The second was a rope attached to a bell. Every day, one ring. Alive. Every day. No one knows what he thought about in the darkness. What he felt when he realized the air was running out. How the last ring of the bell sounded. When the bell fell silent, the tubes were sealed. After another thousand days, the box was opened. If the body was preserved, the monk was recognized as a living Buddha. He was covered with lacquer, dressed in ritual robes and placed in a temple for worship. If not, he was buried with honors. Out of hundreds of monks who tried to follow this path, only a few succeeded. In Japan, there are about 12 confirmed cases. Monk Liu Quan is one of them. His statue stood in a Chinese temple for several centuries. Then somehow, it ended up in private hands. And eventually, it found its way to a Dutch museum. No one knows how. An old Buddha statue. There are thousands like it. In 2015, researchers decided to perform a CT scan. It's a standard procedure for studying old sculptures. To check for cracks or cavities. And they found him sitting in the same lotus position. Inside the bronze and gold, there was a man who, a thousand years ago, decided to become a god. And did. Analysis showed that inside the skull and chest cavity, there were scrolls with Chinese characters instead of internal organs. Monks sometimes filled the body cavities with sacred texts. So that wisdom would literally live inside the relic. This is no longer just history. This is another genre entirely. Now the question is. If a monk was willing to spend three years in darkness in order to become incorruptible. What does that tell us about people? That we have always looked for a way to cheat death. And sometimes we did it so radically that a thousand years later, Dutch scientists would open a statue and discover that it actually worked. A skull with a metal plate. Two thousand years ago, somewhere in pre-Hispanic Peru, a man received a blow to the head. We don't know with what. Maybe a stone. Maybe a club with a metal tip. Maybe in battle. Maybe in a ritual duel. But the skull fracture was so serious that without intervention, he would have died. This is a medical fact that can be seen directly on the bone. And then someone picked up a piece of metal. Most likely, it was a piece from a household item. A bowl. A fastener. Some kind of fragment that happened to be the right size and shape. It was processed. Shaped to fit the fracture. And implanted directly into the skull bone. This skull is preserved today. In the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma. It's about two thousand years old. And it's one of the most uncomfortable exhibits for people who think that ancient people were primitive. Because the patient survived. This is not an assumption. It's literally written in the bone. Regeneration began around the metal plate. Bone tissue started to grow around the implant. To accept it. To fuse with it. This is a process that takes months. That means the person lived long enough after the surgery for their body to adapt to a piece of metal in their skull. Think about what that actually means in practice. Someone two thousand years ago understood that you need to stop the bleeding, close the wound, and fix the bone. And they understood it well enough to do it with metal. Without killing the patient with infection, blood loss, or shock from pain. There was probably anesthesia. Cocoa was known in Peru. Some form of sterilization or wound treatment was definitely used. This is neurosurgery. And in the first century A.D. Without hospitals. Without education. Without textbooks. By the way, the exact composition of the metal still hasn't been determined. A museum representative admits this. Research is ongoing. It might be copper. It might be an alloy. But even without knowing the composition, we know the main thing. It worked. Now the second feature of this skull. It's elongated. Intentionally stretched. Not a disease. Not an anomaly. A tradition. In pre-Hispanic Peru, the elite could be recognized by their head shapes. As children's heads were tightly bound with special boards from birth. And the skull gradually took on an elongated shape. It was a sign of status. One that couldn't be faked. It was formed over years. Starting from early childhood. This means that our warrior with metal in his head was a person from the upper class. Which adds another layer to the story. The elite. That means he had access to the best people who knew how to do this. Maybe that's why he survived. While an ordinary soldier with the same fracture would simply die. Medicine. 2,000 years ago worked on the same principles as it does now. If you have money and connections, your chances are better. Some things never change. The first dog. 14,000 years ago. The Ice Age. Northern Europe is covered in ice. People live in small groups. They hunt. They are constantly moving. Following the animals. No cities. No agriculture. Every day is a matter of survival. And in this world, someone had a dog. Researchers from 17 scientific institutions conducted a DNA analysis of a bone fragment. It was found in Gough's Cave in Somerset, England. They compared it with a database of more than 1,000 modern and ancient dogs and wolves. The result is clear. This is not a wolf. This is a domestic dog. Dated to 14,300 BC. This is the earliest direct evidence of dog domestication in Britain. The previous record was 5,000 years younger. In one leap, Dr. William Marsh from the London Museum of Natural History said it directly. These early domesticated dogs were almost indistinguishable from wolves in appearance. No cute face. No floppy ears. It was a creature the size of a large shepherd dog. With wolf-like proportions. With a wolf's gaze. But it lived alongside humans. And people fed it. Here's where it gets really interesting. Isotope analysis of the bones shows that this dog ate the same food as humans. Not scraps. Not leftovers. From butchering carcasses. The same food. From the table, so to speak. During the Ice Age, this was insanely expensive. Every portion of food meant someone's survival. In winter, when hunting yielded nothing, people could go hungry for weeks. And yet they shared with the dog. Deliberately. Regularly. Why? Hunting is the most obvious explanation. The dog is a tool. It senses animals before humans do. It chases, holds them. An investment in hunting tools. That theory works. Guarding the camp. That also makes sense. Wolves and other predators are afraid of their own kind. Even if they're domesticated. The dog acts as a living alarm system. But here's what breaks the purely utilitarian picture. After death, these animals were treated the same way as humans. The same burial rituals. The same attitude toward the body. That's not how you treat a tool. When a tool breaks, it's thrown away. A family member is buried. It turns out that even 14,000 years ago, there was something in humans that didn't let them treat a living being next to them like an object. We became attached. We mourned. We buried them with honor. This is one of the oldest human traits that we can confirm with physical evidence. Not cruelty. Not war. But attachment to an animal. The Toltec altar with skulls. In 2024, in the Mexican city of Tula, builders were laying out a route for a railway. An excavator hit a stone. They stopped. They called the archaeologists in Aina, the National Institute of Anthropology and History. What they unearthed changed the picture of one of the most mysterious civilizations of Mesoamerica. The Toltecs. If you've heard this word, it's most likely in the context of the Aztecs. They literally worshipped the Toltecs as their ancestors and teachers. They considered them demigods. They credited them with inventing everything that was considered great. Tula, at its peak from 900 to 1150 AD, was one of the largest urban centers in Mesoamerica. With a population of tens of thousands of people. The structure they found is called Mamosli. It's a ceremonial altar. About a meter by a meter. Basalt. Andesite. River stones. Several lotires. And no stairs. That's a key detail. Altars with stairs were meant for the public. The priest ascends. The crowd below watches. The ritual unfolds like a performance. This altar has no stairs. So, no performance. It was a place for a private ritual. For those who were allowed in. Around the altar there are human remains. Four skulls. Several long bones are arranged along three sides of the structure. One skull has a fragment of the spine attached. The head was severed together with part of the neck, not cut off cleanly. This isn't a random burial or undisturbed bones. It's a deliberate arrangement. The remains are laid out in a pattern around the central stone. Nearby there is pottery, obsidian, bone tools. An artifact made of shells, spindles, and awls. It's a mix of ceremonial and everyday items. This suggests that the altar stood in the inner courtyard of someone's house. According to field director Emmanuel Hernandez Zapata, such places were traditionally associated with the elite. The nobility lived here, while common townspeople lived on the outskirts. Picture a wealthy Toltec house with an inner courtyard and a central altar. And around it are the remains of ritual sacrifices. Who were these people? Prisoners? War captives? Volunteers who were considered messengers of the gods? Criminals? We don't know. Anthropologists are now analyzing the bones. Age? Health condition? Marks on the bones? All of this will tell us exactly how they died. And the site is being filmed with drones. They're building a three meter one because there are more layers below. Tula was built atop Tula. There may be other altars beneath this one, as the project coordinator noted. This discovery expands our understanding of the city. It turns out that the ritual life of the Toltecs wasn't limited to the main square. It reached into every elite house. The gods lived nearby, literally in the courtyard. A golden helmet that was buried for the gods. April 7, 1976. Galicia, northwest Spain. The village of Lero. Jose Maria Vicente is digging the ground for a shed. His shovel hits something hard. He thinks it's a stone. He pulls it out and it shines. A neighbor was passing by and saw a golden gleam. The rumor spread around the area before Vicente even realized what he had found. The golden helmet of Lero. That's what this object is now called. The Bronze Age. Around 1800 BC weight. 270 grams thin. With detailed engraving all over its surface. It's called a helmet. But it was physically impossible to wear it in battle. The metal was too thin. Any blow and that's it. It was a ceremonial item. Ritual. Made not for protecting the body, but for something else. The proof is in how it was found. The helmet was inside a ceramic vessel. Carefully packed. Deliberately buried. This wasn't a loss. It was an offering. A gift to gods or spirits that have not been in our world for 3,000 years. It seems similar items were found in Ireland and Britain. This means that along the entire Atlantic coast, there was a single symbolic tradition. People who had never met in their lives made identical ritual objects and buried them in the same way. A common language. Without words. Vicente neither sold nor melted down the find, but gave it to authorities. He got a small inadequate compensation. The helmet stayed in Spain, was placed in a museum and became a regional symbol. A time capsule was recently buried at the discovery site. 3,000 years ago, gold was buried there for the gods. Today, a message is placed in the ground for future generations. The same gesture after 3,000 years. The Lady of Baza. We stay in Spain but move 6 centuries earlier. The 4th century BC. The Iberian Peninsula. Somewhere in the south in the area of the modern city of Baza, a woman lies in the ground. To be precise, her image. A limestone sculpture just over 1 meter 20 centimeters tall. A woman sitting on a throne with wings. Dressed richly with an embroidered cloak, jewelry and an elaborate hairstyle. There are traces of pink paint on her cheeks and red stripes along the edges of her cloak. She has been in the ground for 2,400 years. The paint has partially survived. This is the Lady of Baza. One of the most mysterious artifacts of the Iberian Peninsula. But here is what makes her truly strange. When archaeologists unearthed the statue in 1971, they found cremated human remains to the right of it. Not next to it, but inside it. There is a niche in the right side of the sculpture. Small and neat. That is exactly where the burned bones were placed. The statue was not a monument. Not a tombstone. It was an urn. A throne in which the dead woman sat. Dead. Literally inside her own statue. Who this woman was is unknown. The Iberians left no written sources that could explain this to us. Given the work's quality, the rich clothing and the manner of burial, this was clearly no ordinary person. Likely a priestess, queen or high-ranking noble. The winged throne adds another layer. In Iberian culture, wings were associated with the transition between worlds. The one who sits on the winged throne is not just dead. They are already on their way. Or have already arrived. It creates an unsettling image. A woman sits calmly with dignity. Her wings folded. And inside her, she herself is burned. Crushed. Placed in stone. The body is inside. The ashes are inside. Two versions of one person in a single object. The Iberians came up with a way to preserve a person in two states at once. And they did it in such a way that, 24 centuries later, we stand before this sculpture and still can't fully understand what exactly we are seeing. Now, the Lady of Baza is kept in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. And every year, the same debate around her starts up again. Catalonia wants to return her to the place where she was found. But Madrid won't give her up. Even in death, she continues to cause conflicts. Some women are like that. A sarcophagus sealed with lead. Budapest. Obuda district. Ordinary construction work. The excavator's bucket hits a stone. A limestone sarcophagus, Roman, has been lying here since the 3rd century AD. Almost 1,700 years. Most Roman tombs found in this area have been looted. Opened back in ancient times. Turned over. Emptied. This one hasn't. The lid is sealed with metal clamps and sealed with molten lead. Now stop here for a second. Molten lead is not just a lid. To do this, you need fire, tools, time, and intention. Someone deliberately stood over this coffin and thought, let it never be opened. This is a decision. A conscious one. Why? Protection from robbers is the obvious explanation. But lead seals are extremely rare. So there was something inside that the family considered important to preserve. Or important not to let out. When archaeologists from the Budapest Historical Museum finally opened the sarcophagus, they found a complete skeleton. A young woman. And next to her, two intact glass vessels and bronze figurines. About 140 coins, an amber ornament, a bone hairpin, and traces of fabric embroidered with gold thread. Imagine the fabric completely decayed over 17 centuries. But the gold remained. The fine threads woven into the clothing she was buried in outlasted the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and two world wars. And they waited for the excavators in Budapest. This is a rich burial. In the late Roman era, sarcophagi were often reused. An old coffin. A new occupant. Everything was simple. This one was made especially for her. For a specific person. Who she is remains unknown. There is no name. No inscription. 17 centuries ago, someone sealed the lid of her coffin with lead, wanting her to remain untouched forever. They almost succeeded. But here's the question that won't let you rest. If the family sealed the coffin so carefully, what were they more afraid of? That someone would get in. Or that someone would get out. A monastery in Egypt in Bahira province. A desert lowland in Wadi el Natrun. About an hour and a half drive from Cairo, west of the Nile. Now there are several active Coptic monasteries here. Salt flats and emptiness. But in the 4th to 6th centuries AD, this place was the center of the world. At least for people who decided to renounce the world. It was here, according to most historians, that organized monastic life began. Not just individual hermits in caves, but the first structured communities where dozens of people lived. They lived, prayed, worked and died together according to common rules. Everything that later became monasticism in the Christian world began here. A few months ago, Egyptian archaeologists excavated one of these monasteries. Right out in the open. Covering 2,000 square meters. In some areas, the clay brick walls remain over 2 meters high. Inside is an open central courtyard. Around it are monastic cells. Utility rooms. Kitchens. Ovens. Storage rooms. And domed ceilings adapted to the heat. The architecture is both simple and clever at the same time. Everything is designed for the climate, community and life. The white plastered walls feature frescoes, crosses, palm trees and geometric patterns. And Coptic inscriptions with the names of monks and prayers. This is an important detail. They left their names. These people who voluntarily left the world gave up their possessions, their families and their future. Wrote their names on the wall. As if they wanted someone, someday to read them. We read them after one and a half thousand years. Inside the monastery we found burials. The monks buried their own right here in the living space. The deceased remained part of the community. They were not taken outside the walls. Not sent to a separate cemetery. But stayed among the living. For a modern person this sounds wild. But the logic is clear. In a world where death is not the end but a transition. The boundary between the living and the dead is not so harsh. They simply lived side by side. Here's what's interesting about this find. We know about monasticism from texts, rules and theological treatises. They all tell us how monks were supposed to live. But here we see how they actually lived. Kitchens, stoves and storerooms shared by everyone. Small rooms in a courtyard where they likely gathered each morning. The forgotten pharaoh. Everyone knows Tutankhamun. The golden mask. The curse. Billions of views on YouTube. But there is a pharaoh almost no one knows about. And yet his tomb is richer. Susanizai ruled Egypt from about 1047 to 998 BC. A period historians politely call late. When the great empire was collapsing. And power split between pharaohs and priests. Only memories remained of its former glory. And this pharaoh of the era of decline lay in a sarcophagus made of silver. Not gold. But silver. For a modern person the difference isn't obvious. But in ancient Egypt it was the other way around. Gold was abundant in Nubia due to mining. While silver was entirely absent in Egypt. It was brought from afar through trade routes that stretched across the entire Middle East. Silver was a rarity. Silver was a luxury that was more expensive than gold. Susanizai's silver sarcophagus is not just beautiful. But magnificent. Displaying wealth that, for its time, exceeds Tutankhamun's golden mask. The tomb was discovered in 1940 in Tannis. The French archaeologist Pierre Montay opened an untouched burial. Untouched is the key word. Most Egyptian tombs were looted back in ancient times. This one was not. Everything remained in place. Jewelry. Vessels. Burial equipment. Why does no one know about it? Partly bad luck with the timing. Montay announced the discovery in May 1940 on the same day German troops began their offensive against France. The world's newspapers were writing about something else. The sensation drowned in war reports and never resurfaced. That's how history works. Tutankhamun was discovered in peacetime and became an icon. Susanizai was discovered at the beginning of World War II and remains unknown. His silver sarcophagus is now kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In the same building as Tutankhamun's golden mask. There are lines for Tutankhamun but almost no one for Susanizai. Sometimes being richer is not enough. You also need to choose the right moment. Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Everyone knows that. What not everyone knows is that he hated the man who made him famous. The story goes like this. November 1922. Valley of the Kings. Carter breaks open the sealed door and puts a candle through the gap. Lord Carnarvon stands next to him and asks, Do you see anything? Carter replies, Yes, wonderful things. This is one of the most quoted moments in the history of archaeology. And standing behind them is another man. One person. Arthur Weigel. Egyptologist? Journalist? A man with a nose for sensation. He watches as Lord Carnarvon enters the tomb in high spirits and says out loud, Loudly enough to be remembered. If he comes out in the same mood, he will have no more than six weeks to live. A few weeks later, Carnarvon dies. A mosquito bite. Blood poisoning. A common cause of death in Egypt at that time. But Weigel had already written an article. Then another one. And then a book about the curse of Tutankhamun. It became his product. His brand. Every subsequent death among people connected to the expedition became new evidence. Journalists all over the world picked it up. The story became bigger than the tomb itself. Carter remained silent in public all this time. He only said that it was nonsense. That superstition was a threat to science. That it was all made up. And what he really thought was revealed in 2024. A handwritten three-page letter surfaced at an auction in Boston, written in January 1934, five years before Carter's own death. It was addressed to a certain Helen Lowe. Lowe Nides. On a letterhead with the address of Kurnah, Luxor, Egypt. Carter writes about Weigel's death. He died shortly before the letter. And calls it a real blessing. Literally. A clever writer. But cunny. His fabrications had no basis whatsoever and posed a threat to archaeology. Some of them were probably made up for temporary excitement and entertainment at someone else's expense. Carter does not mourn. He is glad. The letter was auctioned off for $16,643, several times higher than the starting price. For 92 years, it remained hidden. The letter was kept somewhere in private hands, unknown to anyone. And then it surfaced and revealed what Carter could not say publicly during his lifetime. Here's what's interesting. The curse of Tutankhamun still lives on. Movies, books, and articles come out every year. But Weigel, who invented it, is forgotten. Carter, who spent his whole life disproving it, is remembered in history textbooks. Sometimes the truth wins. Just slowly. The Second Sphinx The Great Sphinx has stood in Giza for 4,500 years. During this time, it has been studied by thousands of scholars, hundreds of explorers, and many traditions. Every centimeter has been photographed, measured, and described. You'd think what else could be found there? Between the front paws of the Sphinx stands a stone slab. It's called the Dream Stele. It was installed by Pharaoh Thutmose IV around 1400 BC. There's a legend of a young prince who slept at the Sphinx's feet and dreamed the Sphinx asked him to clear away the sand, promising he'd become pharaoh. Thutmose did so and became pharaoh. Standard propaganda. A standard political move to legitimize power. But on this stele, two Sphinxes are depicted. Italian researcher Filippo Biondi asked a simple question. What if this isn't symbolism? What if it's a plan? His team conducted a geometric analysis of the Giza Plateau, drew a line from the center of the Khafre Pyramid through the existing Sphinx, and extended it further across the plateau. The line ended at a hill 30 meters of hardened sand. It had never been excavated and no one had ever been interested in it. Satellite radar scanning showed that under the hill, there is a structure similar in size and shape to the first Sphinx. And there's more. Scans of the first Sphinx revealed seven shaft chambers below it. So, under the hill, a similar network can be seen. Vertical shafts. Horizontal passages going deep inside. Almost mirror reflections. Biondi speaks cautiously. This scan is not proof. Excavations with geologists are needed. Actual test pits are needed. And time is needed. But the symmetry between the two objects is becoming harder and harder to ignore. And that's not all. The same scan showed that there might be a vast underground complex beneath the Giza Plateau as a whole. Biondi calls it an underground megastructure. A system of passages and chambers that no one has seen. Perhaps not since the time of those who built it. What's there? Tombs? A ritual space? A library of texts that could change everything we know about Egypt. No one knows. Not a single person on Earth. But here's what's important to understand. Giza is the most studied place on the planet. The greatest minds of the last two centuries have worked here. And still, under 30 meters of ordinary sand, there could be a second Sphinx. That doesn't mean archaeologists did a poor job. It means that the planet knows how to hide things. To hide them well and patiently for thousands of years. China is drilling down to the Earth's mantle. In 2026, the ship Mingxiang set out from the port of Guangzhou. The cost is 470 million dollars. The goal is to drill through the Earth's crust and reach the mantle for the first time. Let me give you a second to realize the scale. We've launched probes beyond the solar system. Photographed a black hole. And set foot on the moon. But at the same time, no one, not a single person, has ever held a real piece of the Earth's mantle in their hands. All our knowledge about what lies deeper than a few kilometers down is mathematics, seismic waves, models, indirect data. A simple comparison. An apple. The skin is the Earth's crust. The flesh is the mantle. The seeds are the core. In all of human history, we've never even bitten through the skin. Why do it on a ship and not on land? Under the continents, the crust is 30 to 50 kilometers thick. Unreachable. Under the ocean, it's only 5 to 7 kilometers. That's exactly where the Mohorovicic discontinuity is. The moho is the boundary between the crust and the mantle. Mingsheng is aiming for 11 kilometers beneath the ocean floor at 300 degrees and a pressure of 2,000 atmospheres. The USSR already tried. The Kola Superdeep Borehole in 1970 on the Kola Peninsula, 12,262 meters deep. It's still a world record. But they didn't reach the mantle. At 7 kilometers, they expected basalt. But found granite, saturated with hot water, which shouldn't have been there. The temperature turned out to be twice as high as calculated. The drill bits were melting. The pipe column, weighing 200 tons, broke under its own weight. In 1992, everything was shut down. But the most unexpected lesson came from the Kola Project. At depths where life shouldn't have existed, they found living microorganisms. This overturned everything we knew about the boundaries of the biosphere. Mingsheng is going where the Kola Project couldn't reach. Taking into account everything that Thanos has taught, it's 180 meters long, 33 meters wide, and has nine laboratories on board. The main innovation is the RMR system, which returns the drilling fluid back on board instead of dumping it on the seabed. Without it, the well walls at such depths simply can't be kept stable. Why spend half a billion, first, to finally see instead of guess? 99% of what we know about Earth's interior comes from indirect data. A direct core sample from the mantle. A pristine untouched specimen for the first time ever. Plus, core samples hold a climate record spanning tens of millions of years. The longest weather diary on the planet. Secondly, life. The Kola borehole found microorganisms where they shouldn't have existed. Many biologists today believe that life didn't originate in the surface ocean at all, but rather in conditions like these, in hydrothermal systems deep within the crust. If confirmed, this would answer biology's main question. And support the possibility of life in the subsurface oceans of Jupiter's moon, Europa, or Enceladus' geysers. Thirdly, money. Minsheng combines scientific drilling with the exploration of gas hydrates, also known as combustible ice, which is frozen methane on the ocean floor. The world's reserves amount to 20,000 trillion cubic meters. In the South China Sea alone, there are 84 trillion plus. There are rare earth elements on the ocean floor, without which electric car batteries and military electronics won't work. The market is worth trillions of dollars. China wants to be first, but won't we puncture the earth? No, wells with a diameter of less than 30 centimeters do not destabilize a lithospheric plate that is thousands of kilometers wide. It's like a needle in a concrete wall. The plan is to finish by 2030. The Kola well once found water where it shouldn't have been. It found life where it shouldn't have been. Minsheng is going three kilometers deeper than the basalt ocean floor. By 2030, we might have answers that will change several scientific disciplines at once, or new questions, which, to be honest, is even more interesting. Susan, compared with wealthy Tutankhamun, was simply unlucky with the date of discovery. How many such stories do we still not know, simply because something more important happened on that day? Write in the comments which story impressed you the most. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. Thank you for watching. Goodbye, everyone.