Where is it located? And how deep is it anyway? Around , the HMS Challenger, a British Navy ship began to sail with a mission to find out many things about the ocean, including its depth. The simplest way to measure the depth of a body of water is to take a weight, tie a long rope to it and lower it into the water. When the weight hits the bottom, you measure the length of the wet rope, and you get the depth of the body of water. Thanks to the work done by the HMS Challenger, and other expeditions since then, we now know that on an average the ocean is about metres of 3.
However, there are several deep trenches and long narrow chasms on the ocean bed, that go much deeper. The Marianas or Mariana Trench is a crescent-shaped trench located east of the Philippines, and about kilometres off the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
This underwater depression is almost 2, kilometres in length and has an average width of about 69 kilometres. The bottom of the Marianas Trench is home to the Challenger Deep, which is known as the deepest spot on Earth. Located off the US territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, the Challenger Deep has a depth of 10, to 10, metres, or almost 11 kilometres. To give you an idea of how deep it is, consider this : If you could place Mount Everest, the highest spot on the planet from the mean sea level, at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, its peak would still be more than 2 kilometres away from the surface of the ocean!
The Marianas Trench was formed more than million years ago when the Philippine tectonic plate and the Pacific plate collided with each other. Moreover, the landmass near the region is disconnected from the rest of the Pacific plate due to several underwater fault lines.
Point out that Guam is a territory of the U. Have students identify how researchers can access the Trench. Ask students to share their ideas about how researchers might access an area this deep. Ask students to identify the challenges of exploring the deepest location on Earth. Scientists use a variety of technologies to overcome the challenges of deep-sea exploration and explore the Trench. A country has the right to explore and exploit the living and nonliving things in its EEZ.
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Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Students read about the establishment of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument and discuss why it is important to preserve the Mariana Trench and surrounding area. Ocean trenches are long, narrow depressions on the seafloor. He made the dive 60 years after his father created history in doing so.
It means Kelly is the 12th person to visit the trench floor - the same as the number of Apollo moonwalkers. The hour dive on Saturday saw him reach a depth of approximately 10,m. Kelly described it as "a hugely emotional journey" after returning to the surface. The descent was piloted by the financier and adventurer Victor Vescovo. The Texan is conducting a series of dives into the lowest point of the Mariana Trench known as the Challenger Deep.
Mr Vescovo has acquired a support ship and human-rated submersible that he is using to survey several of the most extreme places on the ocean floor. Recent passengers who've gone down with him to the Challenger Deep include the first women to make the journey - the former Nasa astronaut Kathy Sullivan and the British-American mountaineer Vanessa O'Brien.
But Kelly Walsh's descent is particularly noteworthy because of his father, Don. On 23 January, , the then US Navy officer, accompanied by Swiss national Jacques Piccard, made the first crewed dive to the floor of Earth's deepest ocean trench using the bathyscaphe Trieste.
It was an astonishing achievement given the precarious nature of the expedition. The trench is so deep, it would be possible to fit Mount Everest 8,m inside it and still have more than 2km of water above the peak.
The pressure at the trench floor is crushing - some million pascals, almost 16, pounds per square inch.
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