For the first time, scientists have drilled into an underwater mountain to collect a record-breaking chunk of Earth's mantle — a core of rock that's more than 3,280 feet (1 kilometer) long.
The stunning feat was achieved by drilling into Atlantis Massif, an underwater mountain located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge deep beneath the North Atlantic Ocean. By aligning a drill at this location, geologists punched a hole as deep as 4,156 feet (1,267 meters) into the mountain and extracted a "staggering" amount of serpentinite rocks — metamorphic rocks that form at deep tectonic-plate boundaries — from Earth's interior.
