Frontiers and potential directions of international deep Earth exploration

Significance Deep Earth exploration is a multidisciplinary scientific endeavor aimed at uncovering the structure, dynamics, and evolution of continents and their margins. Understanding the Earth's interior is crucial for advancing scientific knowledge and comprehending the fundamental processes that shape our planet. Over the past half-century, many countries worldwide have implemented various deep Earth exploration programs, accumulating valuable experience and achieving significant breakthroughs in technology and methods. These advancements provide important references for deep Earth exploration in China. Progress This paper analyzes the technical approaches and achievements of representative deep Earth exploration programs in the United States, Europe, and Australia since the 21st century, summarizing the latest progress of these programs. Conclusions and Prospects Six frontiers and key potential directions of deep Earth exploration are summarized, including seismic tomography for deep Earth structure detection, magnetotellurics for mineral resource exploration, GNSS monitoring for Earth's motion and state changes, coupled surface-to-deep Earth processes, advanced data processing, analysis, and modeling capabilities, and open data sharing. These are expected to provide information support and references for the "SinoProbe-Ⅱ" deep exploration program, the "Earth CT" international cooperative research program, and the National Science and Technology Major Projects focused on deep Earth and mineral resources exploration in China.