The lowest point on earth is the Mariana Trench. Mariana Trench: monsters, facts, secrets, riddles and legends

The Mariana Trench is considered the most mysterious and mysterious place on our planet. Located in the Pacific Ocean, this deep-sea trench is unsuccessfully "attacked" by scientists from around the world, but detailed information there is still no exact map of the depression and its inhabitants.

Where is the Mariana Trench

In the southwestern environs Pacific Ocean, the Mariana Islands group is located. Some of them were formed due to volcanic processes in the bowels of our earth, the second part is the eastern edge of the Philippine lithospheric plate, which, colliding with the more massive Pacific, partially rose above the water. It is in this place that the Mariana Trench is located.

Initially, no one knew about the depth of the gutter, and, as was the case in the Middle Ages, less developed communal formations became colonies of the countries of Western Europe:

• 1521 - Spanish expedition landed on the islands. Due to conflict with local tribes, geographical discovery for a long time it was called the Ladron Islands (translated from Spanish - land of thieves);
• 1668 - property of the Spanish crown received a new name - Mariana Islands(in honor of Queen Marianne of Austria).

After the Spanish-American War, part of the skeletons are passed by the United States. In 1875, the British ship Challenger, whose crew included scientists from America and England, set a record trough depth of more than 8,000 meters by means of a hydrographic lot. It was decided to name the depression Mariana.

Bottom of the Mariana Trench

The Mariana Trench has a V-shape, and the width of the base (bottom) of the trench does not exceed 3-5 km. Such a discrepancy in the data, and this applies not only to the width, but also to the depth of the depression itself, which is associated with extreme pressure - at the extreme point it reaches 108 MPa, which gives the echo sounder measurements a certain error:

• 1875 - British corvette "Defying" sets a depth of 8.3 km;
• 1951 - another expedition of the British, supplements the information with new data - 10.86 km;
• 1957 - Soviet research expedition updates previously obtained results: length - 11.03 km, bottom width - 3.57 km;
• 1995 - length 10.92 km, width of the base - 4.12 km.

The most recent studies of the bottom of the Mariana Trench were made by oceanographers from the University of New Hampshire in 2016:

• Width- 4.41 km;
• Square- 403701 square meters;
• Shelf- rocky, 4 mountain ranges from 1.8 to 2.51 km high were found;
• Flora and fauna- plants, oilfish, jellyfish and fish.

With the help of a submersible launched from the research ship Okeanos Explorer, the whole world learned about previously unknown organisms whose habitat exceeds a depth of 6000 meters.

Life in the bottomless darkness

For an accurate picture of the distribution of pressure, let's walk along the vertical of the Mariana Trench from the surface of the ocean to the very bottom, and learn about its inhabitants:

• 100 - 120 meters: pressure exceeds 10 atmospheres. Depth is the extreme diving point of the blue whale;
• 1000 meters: maximum daylight penetration point. Here you can find:
  • sperm whale;
  • Luminous octopus;
  • Predator from the chordate family.
• 4000 meters: the abyssal zone is characterized by low water temperature (about 2-3 C˚), and is a habitat for:
  • Deep sea octopus;
  • Known for the animated film "Finding Nemo" terrible (monkfish).
• 5000 - 11000 meters: despite the complete darkness and high pressure, even at the bottom of the depression, scientists recorded previously unknown, giant amoebas and.

Animal world that inhabits the Mariana Trench is truly unique. For example, some species of fish accumulate a luminous liquid, and in case of danger they “spit” it on a predator, thus blinding their offender for a while.

Mariana lizards: true or fake?

An incident in the Marianas Abyss in 2003 introduced the world to a real-life rival to the Loch Ness monster known as "Nessie":

• 2001 - German expedition, using the deep-sea apparatus "Heyfish", explored the water area of ​​the trench at a depth exceeding 7500 meters. Hearing sharp sounds, the crew turned on the infrared camera and became dumb for a few seconds - everyone saw a huge prehistoric lizard;
• 2003 - American scientists lowered an unmanned vehicle into the water. Powerful spotlights and a video system made it possible to capture huge monsters with a body length of 14-16 meters. After the bathyscaphe was taken aboard the ship, the researchers noticed an interesting fact - the steel cable on which the apparatus was held was worn or bitten off by more than half.

Three years later, the journalists of the New York Times newspaper conducted an investigation, which nevertheless cast doubt on the authenticity of the pictures.

Mariana Trench: 5 interesting facts

Do you know that:

1. The bottom of the trough is covered with ("black smokers"), which, under pressure, release liquid carbon dioxide into the ocean. This allows you to keep the water temperature within 2-4 C˚;
2. Most fish that live at depths of 4000 meters and below are devoid of organs of vision or see very poorly;
3. Only three people in the world were present at the bottom of the Mariana Trench: the American Don Walsh (1954), the Frenchman Jacques Picard (1960) and the famous Hollywood film director James Cameron (2012);
4. The bottom of the gutter is covered with thick viscous silt, the layer reaches 1 km, according to scientists;
5. The hollow is national natural monument, protected by the United States.

Everyone probably heard about the Mother's Hollow, which is also called the "bottom of the Earth", from the school curriculum. deep groove, the depth of which, according to various sources, varies from 10950 to 11037 meters, is nothing more than a tectonic fault formed at the westernmost point of the Pacific Ocean. Despite the high pressure, which in some places exceeds 100 MPa, there is life in the dark abyss, the diversity of which we will most likely learn in the very near future.

Video: Incredible Mysteries of the Deep Sea Trench

In this video, Fedor Miroshnikov will talk about the mysteries of the Mariana Trench, which is known to science on this moment:

Excellent students at school firmly learned: the most high point land - Mount Everest (8848 m), the deepest depression - Mariana. However, if we know a lot about Everest interesting facts, then about the depression in the Pacific Ocean, in addition to being the deepest, most people do not know anything.

FIVE HOURS DOWN, THREE HOURS UP

Even though the oceans are closer to us than Mountain peaks and even more so the 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.

An average width of 69 km, the Mariana Trench was formed several million years ago due to shifts in tectonic plates and stretches in the shape of a crescent for two and a half thousand kilometers along the Mariana Islands.

Its depth, according to recent studies, is 10,994 meters ± 40 meters (for comparison: the Earth's equatorial diameter is 12,756 km), the water pressure at the bottom reaches 108.6 MPa - this is more than 1,100 times more than normal atmospheric pressure!

The Mariana Trench, which is also called the fourth pole of the Earth, was discovered in 1872 by the crew of the British research ship Challenger. The crew measured the bottom at various points in the Pacific Ocean.

In the area of ​​the Mariana Islands, another measurement was made, but a one-kilometer rope was not enough, and then the captain ordered to add two more kilometer segments to it. Then more and more...

Almost a hundred years later, the echo sounder of another English, but under the same name, scientific vessel recorded a depth of 10,863 meters in the Mariana Trench. After that, the deepest point of the ocean floor began to be called the "Challenger Abyss".

In 1957, Soviet researchers already established the existence of life at depths of more than 7,000 meters, thereby refuting the opinion that existed at that time about the impossibility of life at depths of more than 6,000-7,000 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 trench took place in 1960. It was carried out on the Trieste bathyscaphe by the American Don Walsh and the Swiss oceanologist Jacques Picard.

The descent into the abyss took them almost five hours, and the rise - about three hours, at the bottom the researchers stayed only 20 minutes. But even this time was enough for them to make a sensational discovery - in the bottom waters they found flat fish up to 30 cm in size, unknown to science, similar to flounder.

LIFE IN PUT DARKNESS

In the course of further research with the help of unmanned deep-sea vehicles, it turned out that at the bottom of the depression, despite the terrifying water pressure, a wide variety of species of living organisms live. Giant 10-centimeter amoebas are xenophyophores, which under normal, terrestrial conditions can only be seen with a microscope, amazing two-meter 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 swallow an animal larger than itself whole.

There are also completely unusual creatures that reach a two-meter 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 level of the Antarctic. However, the Challenger Deep contains hydrothermal vents called "black smokers". They constantly heat the water and thereby maintain the overall temperature in the cavity 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 "lanterns" on their heads, emitting a different color.

There are fish in the body of which a luminous liquid accumulates. When they feel danger, they splash this liquid towards the enemy and hide behind this "curtain of light." Appearance such animals is very unusual for our perception, can cause disgust and even inspire a sense of fear.

But it is obvious that not all the mysteries of the Mariana Trench have yet been solved. Some strange animals of truly incredible sizes live in the depths!

THE LIZARD TRIED TO BUTTON THE BATHISCAFE LIKE A NUT

Sometimes on the shore, not far from the Mariana Trench, people find bodies of the dead 40 meter monsters. Giant teeth were also found in those places. Scientists have proven that they belong to a multi-ton prehistoric megalodon shark, whose mouth span reached two meters.

These sharks were thought to have died out about three million years ago, but the teeth found are much younger. So did the ancient monsters really disappear?

In 2003, another sensational study of the Mariana Trench was published in the United States. Scientists have loaded 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 steel cables of an inch section. At first, the technique did not give any unusual information. But a few hours after the dive, silhouettes of strange large objects (at least 12-16 meters high) began to flicker on the monitor screens in the light of powerful searchlights, and at that time the microphones transmitted sharp sounds to the recording devices - the grinding of iron and dull, uniform blows on metal.

When the platform was raised (never lowered to the bottom due to incomprehensible interference that prevented the descent), it was found that the powerful steel structures were bent, and the steel cables seemed to be sawn. A little more - and the platform would forever remain the "Challenger Abyss".

Earlier, something similar happened to the German apparatus "Hyfish". Having descended to a depth of 7 kilometers, he suddenly refused to emerge. To find out what the problem was, 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, clinging its teeth to a bathyscaphe, tried to crack it like a nut.

Recovering from the shock, the scientists activated the so-called electric gun, and the monster, struck by a powerful discharge, hastened to retreat.

Giant 10 cm amoeba - xenophyophora

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 submersible Titan, launched from the research vessel Rick Mesenger, was in the Mariana Trench at a depth of 10,000 meters. His main goal was to film and photograph various underwater objects.

Suddenly, the cameras recorded a strange multiple brilliance of a material very similar to metal. And then, a few dozen meters from the device, several large objects lit up in the spotlight.

Approaching these objects at the maximum allowable distance, the Titan gave a very unusual picture to the monitors of the scientists on the Rick Mesenger. On the site, about a square kilometer, there were about 50 large cylindrical objects, very similar to ... flying saucers!

A few minutes after the recorded “UFO airfield”, the Titan stopped communicating and never surfaced.

There are a lot of well-known facts, which, 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 habitat native to 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 marine mind (if it exists) is older than the human one by about one and a half million years.

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 beings unknown to earthlings! The "fourth pole" of the Earth, in the opinion of scientists, is the most suitable place for their habitat.

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 study of the Mariana Trench to descend to its bottom was exactly three years ago James Cameron.

“Practically everything on the earth’s land has been explored,” he explained his decision. - In space, the bosses prefer to send people circling the Earth, and send machine guns 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 explored, and what’s next is unknown.”

On the DeepSes Challenge bathyscaphe, being in a half-bent state, since the internal diameter of the device did not exceed 109 cm, the famous film director watched everything that happened in this place until mechanical problems forced him to rise to the surface.

Cameron managed to take samples of rocks and living organisms from the bottom, as well as filming with 3D cameras. Subsequently, these shots formed the basis of a documentary film.

However, he never saw any of the terrible sea monsters. According to him, the very bottom of the ocean was "lunar ... empty ... lonely", and he felt "total isolation from all mankind."

Meanwhile, in the laboratory of telecommunications of Tomsk Polytechnic University, together with the Institute of Marine Technology Problems of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the development of a domestic apparatus for deep-sea research, which can descend to a depth of 12 kilometers, is in full swing.

Specialists working on the bathyscaphe declare that there are no analogues of the equipment they develop in the world, and “field” studies of the sample in the waters of the Pacific Ocean are planned for the summer of 2015.

Started work on the project "Diving into the Mariana Trench in a bathyscaphe" and famous traveler Fedor Konyukhov. According to him, his goal is not just to touch the bottom deepest depression of the World Ocean, but also to spend two whole days there, conducting unique research.

The bathyscaphe is designed for two people and will be designed and built by one of the Australian companies.

You can read other news on this topic:

Incredible Facts

The earth is still full of secrets despite the fact that many of them have been revealed. scientists and researchersfor many years.

About several unusual places created by people, but mostly by nature, you can find out here.

Plunge into the depths of our planet and imagine how many undiscovered secrets our planet keeps in itself.

The deepest well in the world (the deepest well in the USSR)

In the Murmansk region, in 1970, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny, there is the Kola super-deep well SG-Z, the depth of which is 12,262 meters, which makes it the deepest well in the world. The cost of drilling is equal to the cost of the project to fly to the moon. In 1989, the Guinness Book of Records registered the well as the deepest on Earth. It was drilled in order to study the boundaries of the lithosphere of our planet.

The deepest subway

Kyiv metro station "Arsenalnaya" ("Arsenalna") is the deepest in the world. It is located on the Sviatoshynsko-Brovary line and was opened on November 6, 1960. The "English type" station has a short middle hall, and its depth is 105.5 meters.

deepest ocean

The Pacific Ocean is not only the largest ocean in terms of area on our planet, but also the deepest.

Deepest trench (deepest place in the ocean, deepest trench)

The Mariana Trench (or Mariana Trench) is an oceanic deep-sea trench. Its name comes from the nearby Mariana Islands. Most deep place The hollow is called the "Challenger Deep" and it goes deep into 11,035 meters.

The deepest lake in the world

Lake Baikal, which many Russians call the sea, is a lake of tectonic origin and is located in the southern part of Eastern Siberia. In addition to being the deepest lake in the world - 1642 meters, Baikal is also the largest natural reservoir fresh water. There is a unique variety of flora and fauna here - more than 1,700 varieties of plants and animals, 2/3 of which are not found anywhere else on the planet. In addition, the lake is considered the oldest on Earth - its age is about 25 million years.

deepest sea

The Philippine Sea, located near the Philippine archipelago, has an average depth of 4,108 meters, and is considered the deepest due to the Philippine Trench, the deepest point of which is 10,540 meters.

The deepest river

The length of the Congo River is 4344-4700 kilometers, the basin area is 3,680,000 square kilometers, and the maximum depth is more than 230 meters, which makes it the deepest in the world. It is also worth noting that this is the second river in terms of water content on Earth after the Amazon and the only major river that crosses the equator 2 times. Since in downstream The Congo begins to break through the South Guinean Uplands in a deep gorge, it forms the Livingston Falls, and it is here that the river reaches its greatest depths.

The deepest mine

At the moment, the deepest mine in the world can be called the Tau Tona mine, which is located 70 kilometers from Johannesburg (South Africa). The name of the mine can be translated from one African language as "great lion". Gold is mined here, and so far this deposit has a depth of about 4 km, but mining is carried out at a depth of 2.3 to 3.595 kilometers.

The deepest cave

The Krubera-Voronya cave, located in Abkhazia, can be called the deepest in the world (at least among the studied caves). The entrance to the cave is located at an altitude of approximately 2,256 meters in the Orto-Balagan tract. It is worth noting that the cave of Krubera-Voronya was discovered by Georgian speleologists in 1960. At the moment, it has been explored to a depth of 95 meters.

A half-century-old black and white photograph shows the legendary Trieste bathyscaphe in preparation for a dive. The crew of two was in a spherical steel gondola. It was attached to a float filled with gasoline to provide positive buoyancy.

The deepest depression

Mariana Trench ( Mariana Trench) is an oceanic trench, the deepest in the oceans. According to the 2011 measurements, the bottom of the trough drops to a maximum elevation of 10920 m. This is the data of organizations associated with UNESCO, and it approximately corresponds to the measurements made by the landers, which showed maximum depth 10916 m. This place is called the Challenger Abyss - in honor of the English ship that discovered the depression in the 19th century.

The depression is a tectonic fault.

In 2012, an American oceanographic expedition discovered four ridges up to 2.5 km high at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. According to the University of New Hampshire, they formed about 180 million years ago in the process of constant movement of lithospheric plates. The marginal part of the Pacific plate is gradually "leaving" under the Philippine one. And then folding is formed in the form of mountains near the boundary of the lithospheric plates.

In section, the Mariana Trench has a characteristic V-shaped profile with very steep slopes. The bottom is flat, several tens of kilometers wide, divided by ridges into several almost closed sections. The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is more than 1100 times higher than normal atmospheric pressure, reaching 3150 kg / cm 2.

The temperature at the bottom of the Mariana Trench (Marian Trench) is surprisingly high thanks to hydrothermal vents, nicknamed "black smokers". They constantly heat the water and maintain the overall temperature in the cavity at around 3°C.

The first attempt to measure the depth of the Mariana Trench (Marian Trench) was made in 1875 by the crew of the English oceanographic vessel Challenger during a scientific expedition across the World Ocean. The British discovered the Mariana Trench quite by accident, during the duty sounding of the bottom with the help of a lot (Italian hemp rope and lead weight). Despite the inaccuracy of such a measurement, the result was amazing: 8367 m. In 1877, a map was published in Germany, on which this place was marked as the Challenger Abyss.

A measurement made in 1899 from the board of the American collier Nero showed already a great depth: 9636 m.

In 1951, the bottom of the depression was measured by the English hydrographic vessel Challenger, named after its predecessor, unofficially referred to as the Challenger II. Now, with the help of an echo sounder, a depth of 10899 m was recorded.

The maximum depth indicator was obtained in 1957 by the Soviet research vessel "Vityaz": 11,034 ± 50 m. However, when taking readings, the change in environmental conditions at different depths was not taken into account. This erroneous figure is still present on many physical and geographical maps published in the USSR and Russia.

In 1959, the American research ship Stranger measured the depth of the trench in a rather unusual way for science - using depth charges. Result: 10915 m.

The last known measurements were made in 2010 by the American ship Sumner, they showed a depth of 10994 ± 40 m.

It is not yet possible to obtain absolutely accurate readings even with the help of the most modern equipment. The work of the echo sounder is hindered by the fact that the speed of sound in water depends on its properties, which manifest themselves differently depending on depth.

Dive into the Mariana Trench

The existence of the Mariana Trench has been known for quite some time, and there are technical possibilities for descending to the bottom, but in the last 60 years only three people have been able to do this: a scientist, a military man and a film director.

For the entire time of the study of the Mariana Trench (Marian Trench), vehicles with people on board fell to its bottom twice and automatic vehicles fell four times (as of April 2017).

On January 23, 1960, the bathyscaphe Trieste sank to the bottom of the abyss of the Mariana Trench (Marian Trench). On board were the Swiss oceanographer Jacques Picard (1922-2008) and the US Navy lieutenant, explorer Don Walsh (born in 1931). The bathyscaphe was designed by the father of Jacques Picard - physicist, inventor of the stratospheric balloon and bathyscaphe Auguste Picard (1884-1962).

The descent of the Trieste lasted 4 hours 48 minutes, the crew periodically interrupted it. At a depth of 9 km, the plexiglass cracked, but the descent continued until the Trieste sank to the bottom, where the crew saw a 30-centimeter flat fish and some kind of crustacean creature. Having stayed at a depth of 10912 m for about 20 minutes, the crew began the ascent, which took 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Man made another attempt to descend to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (Marian Trench) in 2012, when American film director James Cameron (born 1954) became the third to reach the bottom of the Challenger Abyss. Previously, he repeatedly dived on Russian Mir submersibles in Atlantic Ocean to a depth of more than 4 km during the filming of the movie "Titanic". Now, on the Dipsy Challenger bathyscaphe, he descended into the abyss in 2 hours and 37 minutes - almost a widow faster than the Trieste - and spent 2 hours and 36 minutes at a depth of 10898 m. After which he rose to the surface in just an hour and a half. At the bottom, Cameron saw only creatures that looked like shrimp.

The fauna and flora of the Mariana Trench are poorly studied.

In the 1950s Soviet scientists during the expedition of the ship "Vityaz" discovered life at depths of more than 7 thousand meters. Before that, it was believed that there was nothing alive there. Pogonophores were discovered - a new family of marine invertebrates that live in chitinous tubes. Disputes about their scientific classification are still going on.

The main inhabitants of the Mariana Trench (Marian Trench), living at the very bottom, are barophilic (developing only at high pressure) bacteria, the simplest foraminifera creatures - unicellular in shells and xenophyophores - amoeba, reaching 20 cm in diameter and living by shoveling silt.

Foraminifera managed to get the Japanese automatic deep-sea probe "Kaiko" in 1995, plunged to 10911.4 m and took soil samples.

Larger inhabitants of the gutter live throughout its thickness. Life at depth has made them either blind or with highly developed eyes, often telescopic. Many have photophores - organs of luminescence, a kind of bait for prey: some have long shoots, like an angler fish, while others have it all right in their mouths. Some accumulate a luminous liquid and, in case of danger, douse it with the enemy in the manner of a "light curtain".

Since 2009, the territory of the depression has been part of the American conservation area Marine National Monument Mariana Trench with an area of ​​246,608 km2. The zone includes only the underwater part of the trench and the water area. The reason for this action was the fact that the Northern Mariana Islands and the island of Guam - in fact, American territory - are the island boundaries of the water area. The Challenger Deep is not included in this zone, as it is located on the oceanic territory of the Federated States of Micronesia.

general information

Location: West Pacific.
Origin: tectonic.
Administrative affiliation :

Numbers

Length: 2550 km.
Width: 69 km.
Challenger Abyss : depth - about 11 km, width - 1.6 km.
deepest point : 10 920 ± 10 m (Challenger Deep, 340 km southwest of Guam Island (USA), 2011).
Average steepness of the slope : 7-9°.
bottom pressure: 106.6 megapascals (MPa).
Nearest islands : 287 km SW of Fais Island (Yap Islands, Federated States of Micronesia); 304 km. northeast of the island of Guam (unincorporated organized territory of the United States).
Average water temperature at the bottom : +3.3°С.

Curious facts

• To emphasize the dimensions of the depression, its depth is often compared with the high mountain Earth - Everest (8848 m). It is proposed to imagine that if Everest were at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, there would still be more than two kilometers from the top of the mountain to the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
• The research vessel "Vityaz" is a 109-meter single-screw double-deck motor ship with a displacement of 5710 tons. It was launched in 1939 at the German shipyard "Schihau" in Bremerhaven (Germany). Initially, it was a cargo-passenger ship called "Mars". During the Second World War, it was a military transport, took out more than 20 thousand refugees from East Prussia. After the war, on reparations, he first ended up in England, then in the USSR. Since 1949 - a research vessel of the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, named "Vityaz" in memory of the famous Russian corvettes of the 19th century. Depicted on postage stamps of the USSR. Since 1994, it has been permanently moored at the pier of the Museum of the World Ocean in the very center of Kaliningrad. Design feature: winches for anchoring, trawling the bottom and taking soil samples at a depth of 11 thousand meters.
• To date, only 5% of the ocean floor has been studied in relatively detail.
• In 1951, after the members of the Challenger expedition measured the depth of the chute with an echo sounder (10,899 m), it was decided - just in case - to measure it with a good old rope lot. The measurement showed a slight deviation: 10,863 m.
• British writer Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), describing sinking to the bottom in his novel The Maracot Abyss deep sea basin, predicted future exploration of the Mariana Trench using controlled vehicles. His predictions turned out to be much more realistic than the description given earlier by the French science fiction writer Jules Verne (1828-1905) in the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, where the Nautilus submarine descends to a depth of 16 thousand meters and rises to the surface, “ emerging from the water like a flying fish”, in just 4 minutes.
• ■ After descending into the Mariana Trench, Trieste was used more than once for deep-sea diving. In 1963, with its help, the US Navy found the wreckage of the sunken nuclear submarine Thresher, lying at a depth of 2560 m, along with a crew of 129 people. As a result of numerous modifications, almost nothing from the original apparatus has been preserved. Currently, the bathyscaphe is on display in the hall National Museum US Navy in Washington DC.
• Pogonophora underwater creatures are very difficult to explore. These are the thinnest filamentous worms, often only one tenth of a millimeter thick with a length of up to two to three tens of centimeters, moreover, they are enclosed in fairly strong tubes.