For your birthday, I give you the deepest hole in the world. It's called the Challenger Deep, a special place in the Marianas Trench. You can see on the map that it is kind of in the middle of nowhere. How anybody found that, I do not know.
However, it was discovered by a ship called the HMS Challenger, a British survey ship, on a cruise it took to discover things between 1872 and 1876. The current known depth is 35,827 ft, which is deeper than Mount Everest is high at 29,035 ft. In 1951, another HMS Challenger with super-cool stuff on it made the 'official' discovery. In 1960, this little boat in the picture below, called the Trieste, went all the way to the bottom of the Deep for a look around. It is called a bathyscaphe. It isn't really a submarine, it just goes up and down. The pressure at the bottom of the Deep is 1,075 times the pressure we live in on the earth. That means that if you lived in the Challenger Deep, a one pound potato would feel like it weighed over 1,000 pounds. That's a bunch of French fries.
Only three things were found at the bottom: a type of fish called a sole, that grew to about a foot in length, some small shrimp, and diatomaceous ooze. (Sounds like the stuff that goes in your swimming pool filter.) This ooze is created from the shells of small multichambered animals that have been dead for millions of years and have sunk to the bottom.
This was a surface and air warfare battlefield during World War Two. I wouldn't be surprised if there were boats and planes down there somewhere, also.
Party Hearty!
Uncle Lew
1 comment:
I know I am several days late but I just read the post and that is very interesting. That is one deep hole. I'm glad that isn't in my backyard; if I had a backyard. Thanks Lewis for all of the cool birthday postings that show how much effort and time that goes into them. It is very cool!
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