The excellent students at school have firmly learned: the highest point on earth is Mount Everest (8848 m), the deepest depression is the Mariana. However, if we know a lot of interesting facts about Everest, then most people know nothing about the depression in the Pacific Ocean, besides being the deepest.
FIVE HOURS DOWN, THREE HOURS UP
Despite the fact that the oceans are closer to us than the mountain peaks and even more distant planets of the solar system, people have explored only five percent of the seabed, which still remains one of the greatest mysteries of our planet.
With an average width of 69 km, the Mariana Trench was formed several million years ago due to tectonic plate shifts and stretches in the shape of a crescent for two and a half thousand kilometers along the Mariana Islands.
Its depth, according to the latest research, is 10,994 meters ± 40 meters (for comparison: the equatorial diameter of the Earth is 12,756 km), the water pressure at the bottom reaches 108.6 MPa, which is more than 1100 times higher than the usual atmospheric pressure!
The Mariana Trench, also called the fourth pole of the Earth, was discovered in 1872 by the crew of the British research ship Challenger. The crew carried out bottom measurements at various points in the Pacific Ocean.
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In the area of the Mariana Islands, another measurement was made, but the kilometer rope was not enough, and then the captain ordered to add two more kilometer sections to it. Then more and more …
Almost a hundred years later, the echo sounder of another English, but under the same name, a scientific vessel recorded a depth of 10 863 meters in the Mariana Trench. After that, the deepest point on the ocean floor was called the "Challenger Abyss".
In 1957, already Soviet researchers established the existence of life at depths of more than 7000 meters, thereby refuting the then prevailing opinion about the impossibility of life at depths of more than 6000-7000 meters, and also clarified the data of the British, fixing a depth of 11,023 meters in the Mariana Trench. …
The first human dive to the bottom of the depression took place in 1960. It was carried out at the Trieste bathyscaphe by the American Don Walsh and the Swiss oceanographer Jacques Picard.
The descent into the abyss took them almost five hours, and the ascent took about three hours; the researchers stayed at the bottom for only 20 minutes. But even this time was enough for them to make a sensational discovery - in the near-bottom water area they found flat fish unknown to science, up to 30 cm in size, similar to a flounder.
LIFE IN ROOM DARKNESS
In the course of further research using unmanned deep-sea vehicles, it turned out that a wide variety of living organisms live at the bottom of the depression, despite the terrifying water pressure. Giant 10-centimeter amoebas are xenophyophores, which in ordinary terrestrial conditions can only be seen with a microscope, amazing two-meter-long worms, no less huge starfish, mutant octopuses and, of course, fish.
The latter amaze with their terrifying appearance. Their distinctive feature is a huge mouth and many teeth. Many open their jaws so wide that even a small predator can completely swallow an animal larger than itself.
There are also completely unusual creatures, reaching two meters in size with a soft jelly-like body, which have no analogues in nature.
It would seem that at such a depth the temperature should be at the Antarctic level. However, the Chel-Langer Abyss contains hydrothermal vents called black smokers. They constantly heat the water and thereby maintain the overall temperature in the basin at 1-4 degrees Celsius.
The inhabitants of the Mariana Trench live in pitch darkness, some of them are blind, others have huge telescopic eyes that catch the slightest glare of light. Some individuals have "lights" on their heads, emitting different colors.
There are fish in the body of which a luminous liquid accumulates. When they sense danger, they throw this liquid towards the enemy and hide behind this "curtain of light". The appearance of such animals is very unusual for our perception, can cause disgust and even inspire a feeling of fear.
But it is obvious that not all the mysteries of the Mariana Trench have been solved yet. In the depths there are some strange animals of truly incredible size!
THE LIZARD TRIED TO UNLOAD THE BATISCAF AS A WALNUT
Sometimes on the coast, not far from the Mariana Trench, people find the bodies of dead 40-meter monsters. Giant teeth were also found in those places. Scientists have proven that they belong to the multi-ton prehistoric megalodon shark, whose mouth span reached two meters.
It was assumed that these sharks became extinct about three million years ago, but the teeth found are much younger. So did the ancient monsters really disappear?
In 2003, the United States published yet another sensational research results of the Mariana Trench. Scientists submerged an unmanned platform equipped with searchlights, sensitive video systems and microphones in the deepest part of the world's oceans.
The platform descended on 6 inch steel cables. At first, the technique did not provide any unusual information. But a few hours after the immersion, silhouettes of strange large objects (at least 12-16 meters) began to flicker on the monitor screens in the light of powerful searchlights, and the microphones at that time transmitted sharp sounds to the recording devices - the grinding of iron and dull uniform blows on metal.
When the platform was raised (and never lowered to the bottom due to incomprehensible obstacles that impeded the descent), it was found that the powerful steel structures were bent, and the steel cables seemed to be sawn off. A little more - and the platform would forever remain "Challenger Abyss".
Earlier, something similar happened to the German machine "Highfish". Having descended to a depth of 7 kilometers, he suddenly refused to surface. To find out what was wrong, the researchers turned on the infrared camera.
What they saw in the next few seconds seemed to them a collective hallucination: a huge prehistoric lizard, gripping its teeth in the bathyscaphe, tried to gnaw it like a nut.
Recovering from the shock, the scientists activated the so-called electric cannon, and the monster, struck by a powerful discharge, hurried to retreat.
Giant 10 cm amoeba-xenophiophora
WHO IS THE REAL "OWNER" OF PLANET EARTH
But not only fantastic monsters fall into the field of view of deep-sea cameras. In the summer of 2012, the unmanned deep-sea vehicle Titan, launched from the research vessel Rick Mesenger, was in the Mariana Trench at a depth of 10,000 meters. Its main goal was to video and photograph various underwater objects.
Suddenly, the cameras recorded a strange multiple shine of a material very similar to metal. And then in a few tens of meters from the apparatus several large objects were lit up in the light of the searchlight.
Having approached these objects at the maximum allowable distance, "Titan" gave a very unusual picture to the monitors of the scientists on board the "Rick Mesenger". There were about 50 large cylindrical objects, very similar to … flying saucers, on a site about a square kilometer!
A few minutes after the recorded "UFO airfield" "Titan" stopped communicating and never surfaced.
There are a lot of well-known facts that, if they do not confirm the possibility of the existence of intelligent beings in the depths of the sea, then, in any case, fully explain why modern science still does not know anything about them.
Firstly, the natural habitat for humans - the earth's firmament - occupies only a little more than a quarter of the land surface. So our planet could well be called the Ocean planet rather than the Earth.
Secondly, as everyone knows, life originated in water, so the sea mind (if it exists) is about one and a half million years older than the human mind.
That is why, according to some experts, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, due to the presence of active hydrothermal springs, not only entire colonies of prehistoric animals that have survived to this day can exist, but also an underwater civilization of intelligent creatures unknown to earthlings! The "fourth pole" of the Earth, in the opinion of scientists, is the most suitable place for their habitation.
And once again the question arises: is man the only "owner" of the planet Earth?
"FIELD" STUDIES PLANNED FOR SUMMER 2015
The third person in the entire history of the exploration of the Mariana Trench to descend to its bottom was exactly three years ago, James Cameron.
“Almost everything has been investigated on earth's land,” he explained his decision. - In space, the chiefs prefer to send people to circle around the Earth, and to send machines to other planets. For the joys of discovering the unknown, one field of activity remains - the ocean. Only about 3% of its water volume has been investigated, and what is next there is unknown."
On the DeepSes Challenge bathyscaphe, being in a bent state, since the inner diameter of the apparatus did not exceed 109 cm, the famous filmmaker watched everything that happened in this place until mechanical failures forced it to rise from the surface.
Cameron managed to take samples of rocks and living organisms from the bottom, as well as to film with 3D cameras. Subsequently, these shots formed the basis of the documentary.
However, he never saw any of the fearsome sea monsters. According to him, the very bottom of the ocean was "lunar … empty … lonely," and he felt "complete isolation from all of humanity."
Meanwhile, in the telecommunications laboratory of the Tomsk Polytechnic University, together with the Institute for Problems of Marine Technologies of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the development of a domestic apparatus for deep-sea research is in full swing, which can descend to a depth of 12 kilometers.
Experts working on the bathyscaphe say that there are no analogues to the equipment they are developing in the world, and "field" studies of the sample in the waters of the Pacific Ocean are planned for the summer of 2015.
Famous traveler Fyodor Konyukhov also started work on the project "Diving into the Mariana Trench in a Bathyscaphe". According to him, he aims not only to touch the bottom of the deepest depression in the World Ocean, but also to spend two whole days there, conducting unique research.
The Bathyscaphe is being built for two people and will be designed and built by an Australian company.