The oceanic depression called the Mariana Trench reaches 11,000 meters below sea level, surpassed only by an artificial well in Russia of 12,262 meters
What is the deepest place on Earth? It’s a question you could ask yourself if you are passionate about geology, or simply want to make a good impression with your friends. Well, the deepest oceanic depression never measured is the Mariana Trenchwhich is located in the Pacific Ocean and reaches almost 11 thousand meters below sea level.
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The Mariana Trench
The pit owes its name to the nearby Mariana Islands and the deepest point is called Challenger Abyss. This includes depression between 10,898 meters and 10,994 meters below sea level first measured in 1872 by the oceanographic vessel HMS Challenger. It is the deepest point on Earth and from above the pit has the shape of an arc about 2500 km long. It is located at and more precisely where the Pacific plate meets the Philippine plate. As in other underwater trenches, there are also many underwater volcanoes here.
The first measurements were carried out at the end of the 19th century, but it was only in the second half of the twentieth century that over 10 thousand meters of depth were measured thanks to sonars. These measurements were performed by measuring the return of the signal to the receiver with a stopwatch. At the time these measurements were taken by hand and it was necessary to apply a correction of about 40 meters to determine the depth. The last measurement of the depth of the Mariana Trench dates back to 2011when a hydrographic vessel calculated the 10,994 meters below sea level of the Challenger abyss. Among other things, in the 1960s the depth of the pit was reached with the bathyscaphe Triestewhile the director of “Titanic”, James Cameron he became the third man to make a solo descent in March 2012.
The Kola Well
In Russia there is a real access to the center of the Earth. It is the Kola artificial well, in Murmansk, not far from the border with Norway. It is the deepest hole ever dug by man and reaches approx 12,262 meters below the earth’s surface. It took over twenty years to complete its construction. Initially designed “to go as deep as possible,” it was used to study the temperature and composition of rocks 2.7 billion years old. Just think that scientists gave up on going beyond 12 thousand meters because the earth reaches that depth a temperature of approximately 180 degrees Celsius. Almost double the heat the researchers expected to find.
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