Mariana Trench

The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world's Ocean.

Image Source : NatGeo

Image Source: Google Images

It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, an average of 200 kilometers (124 mi) to the east of the Mariana Island, in the Western Pacific East of Phillipines. 

 It is a crescent-shaped scar in the Earth's crust, and measures about 2,550 km (1,580 mi) long and 69 km (43 mi) wide on average. It reaches a maximum-known depth of 10,994 meters (36,070 ft) (± 40 meters [130 ft]) at a small slot-shaped valley in its floor known as the Challenger Deep, at its southern end, although some unrepeated measurements place the deepest portion at 11,034 meters (36,201 ft).

                                                              Image Source: Google

For comparison: if Mount Everest were dropped into the trench at this point, its peak would still be over 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) underwater. In 2009, Marianas Trench was established as a United States National Monument.

                                                        Image Source: Google



At the bottom of the trench the water column above exerts a pressure of 1,086 bars (15,750 psi), more than 1,000 times the Standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. At this pressure, the density of water is increased by 4.96%, so that 95 liters of water under the pressure of the Challenger Deep would contain the same mass as 100 liters at the surface. The temperature at the top is 1 to 4 °C (34 to 39 °F).

Image Soucre: Google

The Pacific plate is subducted beneath the Mariana Plate, creating the Mariana trench, and (further on) the arc of the Mariana islands, as water trapped in the plate is released and explodes upward to form island volcanoes and earthquakes .

The trench is not the part of the seafloor closest to the center of the Earth. This is because the Earth is not a perfect sphere; its radius is about 25 kilometers (16 mi) less at the poles than at the equator. As a result, parts of the Arctic Ocean seabed are at least 13 kilometers (8.1 mi) closer to the Earth's center than the Challenger Deep seafloor.

Xenophyophores have been found in the trench by Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers at a record depth of 10.6 kilometres (6.6 mi) below the sea surface. On 17 March 2013, researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science reported data that suggested microbial life forms thrive within the trench.

Source: Google

Motoma Louis Wolloh

DNS 20B

ALAM