Discovery of scientists: the oceans flow through the Mariana Trench somewhere into the bowels.
Drain hole of our planet
The results of a study conducted by scientists from the University of Washington (Washington University in St. Louis) shocked themselves. It turned out that the Mariana Trench - the deepest place on Earth - works as a kind of drain hole. Water flows there in cubic kilometers.
The Mariana Trench, or the Mariana Trench, as it is also called, was formed by tectonic plates - the Pacific and Philippine. One seems to dive under the other. And carries water with it.
The Mariana Trench stretches for 1,500 kilometers.
The existence of "leaks" in the so-called subduction zones was not a secret. According to Chen Cai, who led the research, what was unknown was the volume of water seeping into the bowels.
Scientists used the data collected with the help of seismographs, several dozen of which are installed around the Mariana Trench. The nature of the passage of seismic waves generated by earthquakes was analyzed. And they came to the conclusion that at great depths they are impeded by layers saturated with water - the one that flows through the "leaky" depression.
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Kai and colleagues (Douglas A. Wiens, Weisen Shen, and Melody Eimer) have published the results of their research in the journal Nature. In an article titled Water input into the Mariana subduction zone estimated from ocean-bottom seismic data, they emphasized that 4.3 times more water seeps into the bowels than one could imagine.
Kai told Live Science that over a million years, three billion teragrams of water every million years flow out through the Mariana Trench alone.
Knowing that a teragram is a million tons, it is not difficult to calculate that 3 cubic kilometers per year seep through. And there may be several such leaks.
The way the water flows out in the Mariana Trench is not visible on the surface. The whirlpool, fortunately, has not yet formed.
Where does the water drain? It is likely that it replenishes the underground oceans. The fact that they exist was recently announced by scientists of the same University of Washington - Michael Wysession, professor of seismology at the University of Washington (St. Louis), and his graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now working at University of California, San Diego. And they made their discovery thanks to seismic observations.
Michael and Jesse studied 600,000 seismograms. The results of their processing have shown: at least in two places - under the eastern part of the continent of Eurasia and under North America, there are huge reservoirs of water. This was evidenced by the pattern of attenuation of longitudinal seismic waves, which was characteristic of water.
Areas of abnormal attenuation of seismic waves are marked in red on the map. It is under them that the underground oceans are located.
Scientists have compiled a three-dimensional model of the probed bowels. And they assure: the water accumulated there no less than in the Arctic Ocean. So does she come to the surface at times? Like the last time the Great Flood happened, which is described in the Bible.
Roundtrip
Many scholars believe that the biblical flood actually took place. They say that there are numerous traces of flooding on the continents. And lakes with salty seawater, scattered over land and thousands of kilometers from the coastline, are generally believed to be the remains of that flood.
But where did the water for global flooding come from on Earth? So catastrophic that old Noah moored on his ark to the top of Mount Ararat?
Water for the Flood had to come from somewhere.
An asteroid or comet could fall into the ocean, which caused a colossal tsunami. Or it got colder so that the ice blocked the rivers, displaced the water remaining in the oceans, the level of which rose catastrophically. And some even argue that the axis of the planet shifted, and from this a water shaft several kilometers high passed over the land.
Against the background of such fantastic hypotheses, the version that the water for the Flood came from the bowels of the Earth looks the most plausible. Moreover, she was actually found there.
Perhaps tectonic processes and other movements in the crust and mantle of the planet periodically squeeze out the deep oceans. They pour out onto the surface and thereby, in scientific terms, increase the volume of the earth's hydrosphere.
In addition, water accumulated in the heated bowels can escape by itself - under pressure, turning into steam. As if from a burst boiler. Hot water vapor can erupt and some super-volcano.
It is not at all excluded that two monstrous processes converged in the biblical flood: the water that poured out from the depths from the bottom raised the level of the world ocean, and the one that erupted in the form of steam entered the atmosphere, condensed and gushed like a downpour for 40 days and 40 nights. So it turned out to be the Flood. And then the water was sucked back inside. Yes, at least through the same Mariana Trench. And other subduction zones.
The existence of deep water suggests that the flood could recur. And so that even Ararat will not be seen. Weissen frightens that below the oceans he discovered - in those areas of the earth's mantle that have not yet been explored, there is also water. Lots of water. Its volume, according to the professor, may be five times the capacity of all outer oceans.
But so far, the "drain hole" is working for our good. Part of the melt water from the glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland, formed as a result of global warming, goes into the bowels. As a result, sea levels are not rising as quickly.
Does the earth spare us? Does it save you from flooding? Or does he save water to drown?
The flood could be repeated.
REFERENCE
The Mariana Trench is a crack in the earth's crust, formed during incomplete docking of the Pacific plate with the Philippine plate. It is located in the west of the Pacific Ocean, 320 km southwest of the island of Guam. It stretches along the Mariana Islands for 1500 kilometers. It has a V-shaped profile, steep - 7-9 degrees - slopes, a flat bottom with a width of 1 to 5 kilometers.
The deepest place of the depression is the Challenger Abyss. From the Abyss to the surface of 10994 meters, or even all 11022 meters. It is not known exactly. But Everest will easily hide there.
If Everest is placed at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, then it will not be visible.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY