The world's oceans cover more than 70 percent of our planet's surface, but we know even less about it than about space. Meanwhile, 80 percent of all life on Earth is in the underwater world.
The magic of numbers
Cindy Lee Van Dover, director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory, wrote in her eloquent book A New Life at the Bottom of the Ocean that the far side of the moon has been studied incomparably better than the underwater expanses. People cannot even imagine what is hidden under the water column. For example, the Mid-Ocean Ridge is more than 70 thousand kilometers long, and underwater volcanoes annually erupt so much lava that it would be enough to cover one-third of Russia's territory a meter thick. But the real secret for most people, according to Cindy Lee Van Dover, is that half of the world's oxygen is produced by single-celled algae phytoplankton.
Quadrillion dollars
More than twenty-seven million tons of gold are dissolved in the world's oceans, which is estimated at a quadrillion dollars. Humanity, in its entire history, has produced only 170 thousand tons. To be fair, the noble metal is contained in seawater in the form of gold iodide (AuI), and in microscopic proportions.
However, the American Henry Ball developed a technology for increasing the concentration of gold sediment using quicklime. An even more effective invention was made in Russia by an engineer with the sonorous name of the Russians. In other words, the day is not far off when ocean gold will be mined on an industrial scale.
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Amazing creatures
The oceanic fauna is very poorly studied, but even what we know is amazing. For example, the male squid always greets the female with a warm brown color, and scares off the male with white. His multitasking mating games are especially surprising when he meets both a "woman" and a "rival". In this case, the squid will be colored fragmentarily so as not to change the ritual. And what are the praying mantis shrimp, capable of striking with the front limbs, in power equal to the impact force of a 22-caliber bullet.
Godzilla: the right to exist
The average depth of the world's oceans is 3,720 meters, while sunlight penetrates only 100 meters into the seawater. This means that the overwhelming majority of the underwater world lives in absolute darkness. But all this is a "trifle" in comparison, for example, with the pressure of 1100 atmospheres, which takes place in the Challenger Abyss of the Mariana Trench (10,994 meters below sea level). Scientists who descended in the bathyscaphe "Trieste" (1960) saw a lot of terrible fish at its bottom. Other dives were also sensational, including the discovery of giant teeth that belonged to a prehistoric hundred-ton shark. One of the explorers of the Highfish Bathyscaphe, who also dived into the Challenger Abyss, once said that he would no longer be surprised if the giant Godzilla lizard was found.
10 million viruses
Scientists claim that the ocean environment is an ideal place for the smallest living organisms to live. So, in one milliliter of seawater in the uninhabited expanses of the Coral Sea, a special device was found a million bacteria and ten million viruses, many of which are unknown to science. Perhaps it was they who synthesized the world's most effective natural sunscreen on the Great Barrier Reef, ideally protecting UVA / UVB rays. Leading chemists of various companies are trying to figure out its formula, but so far without success. Nature knows how to keep its secrets. However, manufacturers of chemical creams deliberately reduce the properties of the coral UV protection.
Atlantis
Many historical secrets are kept in the world's oceans, as evidenced by artifacts found in the most unexpected places of the underwater world. After each such discovery, the controversy about Atlantis flares up with renewed vigor. And although science has not found confirmation of the treatises "Timaeus" and "Critias", written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato about 2500 years ago, many scientists do not undertake to assert that Atlantis did not exist.
The fact is that mankind has managed to survey only 5% of the surface of the world's oceans. “We are still destined to find evidence of civilizations that could have disappeared into the depths of the waters,” says Austrian oceanographer and underwater biologist Hans Hass. That is why the ocean is called the world's largest museum.
650 degrees Fahrenheit
Many unusual geographic features have been found in the ocean, such as pillars several stories high or ideal pipes that release sulfuric acid. For example, on the ocean floor in the vicinity of the Gulf of Mexico, there are underwater volcanoes that emit not lava, but methane. There are also hot springs that shoot batches of steam, which has a temperature of 650 degrees Fahrenheit. This is enough to melt the lead, but amazing animals live there, in particular, three-meter annelids, the appearance of which resembles foreign creatures from the novels of the most daring science fiction writers.