Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What is the deepest point in the Pacific Ocean?
The deepest point in the ocean is the Mariana Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean near the Northern Mariana Islands. Its maximum depth has been estimated to be (plus or minus 11 meters; see the Mariana Trench article for discussion of the various estimates of the maximum depth.) The British naval vessel "Challenger II" surveyed the trench in 1951 and named the deepest part of the trench the "Challenger Deep". In 1960, the Trieste successfully reached the bottom of the trench, manned by a crew of two men.
The Middle America Trench is a major subduction zone, an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the southwestern coast of Middle America, stretching from central Mexico to Costa Rica. The trench is 1,700 miles (2,750 km) long and is 21,880 feet (6,669 m) at its deepest point.
The trench is the boundary between the Rivera, Cocos, and Nazca plates on one side and the North American and Caribbean plates on the other. It is the 18th-deepest trench in the world. Many large earthquakes have occurred in the area of the Middle America Trench.
Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe, which with its crew of two reached a record maximum depth of about , in the deepest known part of the Earth's oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench near Guam in the Pacific. On 23 January 1960, Jacques Piccard (son of the boat's designer Auguste Piccard) and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh achieved the goal of Project Nekton.
Sea urchins are established in most seabed habitats from the intertidal downwards, at an extremely wide range of depths. Some species, such as "Cidaris abyssicola", can live at depths of several thousands metres. Many genera are only found in the abyssal zone, including many cidaroids, most of the genera in the Echinothuriidae family, and the "cactus urchins" "Dermechinus". One of the deepest-living families is the "Pourtalesiidae", strange bottle-shaped irregular sea urchins that live only in the hadal zone and have been collected as deep as 6850 metres beneath the surface in the Sunda Trench. Nevertheless, this makes sea urchin the class of echinoderms living the least deep, compared to brittle stars, starfish and crinoids that remain abundant below and sea cucumbers which have been recorded from .
The highest mountains above sea level are generally not the highest above the surrounding terrain. There is no precise definition of surrounding base, but Denali, Mount Kilimanjaro and Nanga Parbat are possible candidates for the tallest mountain on land by this measure. The bases of mountain islands are below sea level, and given this consideration Mauna Kea ( above sea level) is the world's tallest mountain and volcano, rising about from the Pacific Ocean floor. Ojos del Salado has the greatest rise on Earth— from the summit to the bottom of the Atacama Trench about away, though most of this rise is not part of the mountain.
Pascal Bernabé is a French scuba diver who in 2005 laid claim to the world best for depth on a deep dive using self-contained breathing apparatus. Bernabé claimed to have reached a maximum depth of using trimix on 5 June 2005 near Propriano, Corsica. This was actually deeper than the official deepest scuba dive recognized by Guinness World Records at the time. That mark, set by Nuno Gomes in Dahab, Egypt, was of sea water. However, Bernabé's claimed deepest dive was not included in the "Guinness Book of World Records" due to insufficient evidence of such a dive ever being performed.
Chevé Cave ( ; ) is a deep cave located in the Sierra Juárez mountain range in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca. As of 2003, its deepest point has been measured at deep, making it the second deepest known cavern in the Western Hemisphere and the world’s 12th deepest cave. The cave's deepest known point is nearly one vertical mile and seven horizontal miles from the entrance, ending in a terminal sump. The present limit of exploration in Chevé, at 9.3 kilometers from the nearest entrance, represents one of the most remote locations ever attained inside any cave on Earth. The logistics of reaching this point are enormous: more than two kilometers of rope need to be rigged and three underground camps established. Chevé is the deepest proven freshwater hydrological system in the world. Temperatures in Chevé are moderate, ranging from . It has been most thoroughly explored under the leadership of caver Bill Stone.
The summit of Mount Everest is higher above sea level, but the summit of Chimborazo is widely reported to be the farthest point on the surface from Earth's center, with Huascarán a very close second. The summit of the Chimborazo is the fixed point on Earth that has the utmost distance from the center – because of the oblate spheroid shape of the planet Earth, which is "thicker" around the Equator than measured around the poles. Chimborazo is one degree south of the Equator and the Earth's diameter at the Equator is greater than at the latitude of Everest ( above sea level), nearly 27.6° north, with sea level also elevated. Despite being lower in elevation above sea level, it is from the Earth's center, farther than the summit of Everest ( from the Earth's center). However, by height above sea level, Chimborazo is not the highest peak of the Andes.
Although plastic pollution remains under the umbrella of “marine debris”, it is one of the largest concerns affecting marine life and the most ubiquitous source of pollution across the oceans. In a 2014 study, the “first study that compares all sizes of floating plastic in the world's oceans from the largest items to small microplastics,” researchers estimated that a minimum of 5.25 trillion plastic particles exist in the ocean. Historically, the U.S. military used the ocean as a dumping ground for munitions from 1919 to 1970, and the U.S. army dumped 16,000 mustard gas bombs in deep water (south of Pearl Harbor after World War II.) Presently, floating plastic garbage from disposable consumer products accumulate in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, from debris eventually find its way onto the reefs and beaches in Hawaii. Kamilo Beach, located at the southern tip of the Big Island, has been devastated by plastic pollution from the patch and was named “The Dirtiest Beach in the World” by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Unique to this site is the abundance of both microplastic and meso-plastic, where geologists found plastic-infused rocks called"plastiglomerates”; they expect this new rock become a part of the fossil record, indicating the intensity of human influence on the environment. Plastiglomerates are formed when “melted plastic binds together sand, shells, pebbles, basalt, coral and wood, or seeps into the cavities of larger rocks to form a rock-plastic hybrid”; although they were not discovered until 2012 by Captain Charles Moore from Algalita Marine Research Institute, plastiglomerates occur in other parts of the world, in part by fire-using activities such as bonfires.
The Colca Canyon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States, is situated in the province of Caylloma. The Cotahuasi Canyon is in the La Union Province. Colca Valley provides incredible close-up views of majestic Andean condors soaring in their natural habitat. Cotahuasi, at , is thought to be the deepest canyon in the world. Both canyons offer spectacular scenery and villages as yet unaffected by the modern world.
The Abismo Guy Collet (SP-090) is the deepest cave in South America, and the deepest in the world that is formed in quartzite. Located in a tepui in northern Brazil near the border with Venezuela, this cave was first explored by cavers in 2006 to a depth of 671 meters.
The cave is the deepest known cave in Asia having been explored to a depth of from the entrance. At the lowest discovered level a water-filled siphon blocks further exploration. It is thought that the cave has the potential to be the deepest known cave in the world, with a theorised depth of making it deeper than the Veryovkina Cave. The explored length of the cave is .
Mauna Kea ( or , ) is a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii. Its peak is above sea level, making it the highest point in the state of Hawaii. Most of the mountain is under water, and when measured from its oceanic base, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world measuring over . Mauna Kea is about a million years old, and has thus passed the most active shield stage of life hundreds of thousands of years ago. In its current post-shield state, its lava is more viscous, resulting in a steeper profile. Late volcanism has also given it a much rougher appearance than its neighboring volcanoes due to construction of cinder cones, decentralization of its rift zones, glaciation on its peak, and weathering by the prevailing trade winds. Mauna Kea last erupted 6,000 to 4,000 years ago and is now considered dormant. The peak is only about higher than its more massive neighbor, Mauna Loa.
Plastic debris tends to accumulate at the centre of ocean gyres. The North Pacific Gyre, for example, has collected the so-called "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", which is now estimated to be one to twenty times the size of Texas (approximately from 700,000 to 15,000,000 square kilometers). There could be as much plastic as fish in the sea. It has a very high level of plastic particulate suspended in the upper water column. In samples taken in 1999, the mass of plastic exceeded that of zooplankton (the dominant animal life in the area) by a factor of six.
The Chilean relief consists of the central depression, which crosses the country longitudinally, flanked by two mountain ranges that make up about 80% of the territory: the Andes mountains to the east-natural border with Bolivia and Argentina in the region of Atacama and the Coastal Range west-minor height from the Andes. Chile's highest peak is the Nevado Ojos del Salado, at 6891.3 m, which is also the highest volcano in the world. The highest point of the Coastal Range is Vicuña Mackenna, at 3114 meters, located in the Sierra Vicuña Mackenna, the south of Antofagasta. Among the coastal mountains and the Pacific is a series of coastal plains, of variable length, which allow the settlement of coastal towns and big ports. Some areas of the plains territories encompass territory east of the Andes, and the Patagonian steppes and Magellan, or are high plateaus surrounded by high mountain ranges, such as the Altiplano or Puna de Atacama.
The 1990 Pacific hurricane season was a very active season which observed 21 named storms within the basin. The season also produced the fourth highest ACE index value on record. The season was officially started on May 15 in the eastern Pacific, and on June 1 in the central Pacific, and lasted until November 30. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. However, these bounds were slightly exceeded when Hurricane Alma formed on May 12.
The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon or Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon () or simply the Tsangpo Canyon, Brahmaputra Canyon or Tsangpo Gorge, along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet Autonomous Region, China, is the deepest canyon in the world, and at 504.6 km (314 miles) is slightly longer than the Grand Canyon in the United States, making it one of the world's largest. The Yarlung Tsangpo (Tibetan name for the upper course of the Brahmaputra) originates near Mount Kailash and runs east for about 1700 km, draining a northern section of the Himalayas before it enters the gorge just downstream of Pei, Tibet near the settlement of Zhibe. The canyon has a length of about 240 km (150 miles) as the gorge bends around Mount Namcha Barwa (7782 m) and cuts its way through the eastern Himalayan range. Its waters drop from about 2,900 m near Pei to about 1,500 m at the end of the Upper Gorge where the Po Tsangpo River enters. The river continues through the Lower Gorge to the Indian border at an elevation of 660 m. The river then enters Arunachal Pradesh and eventually becomes the Brahmaputra.
Lōihi Seamount (also known as Lōʻihi) is an active submarine volcano about off the southeast coast of the island of Hawaii. The top of the seamount is about below sea level. This seamount is on the flank of Mauna Loa, the largest shield volcano on Earth. Lōihi, meaning "long" in Hawaiian, is the newest volcano in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, a string of volcanoes that stretches over northwest of Lōʻihi. Unlike most active volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that make up the active plate margins on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Lōʻihi and the other volcanoes of the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain are hotspot volcanoes and formed well away from the nearest plate boundary. Volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands arise from the Hawaii hotspot, and as the youngest volcano in the chain, Lōihi is the only Hawaiian volcano in the deep submarine preshield stage of development.
Jujar is deepest cave of Asia. in 7 September 2015 Jujar cave in eastern front of the Paraw recognized as deepest cave of Iran. an Iranian caving team consist of 24 athlete has discovered 806 meter and 8 centimeter of this cave. before this event Paraw cave (also located in this mount ) was deepest cave of Iran. in August 2016 an international expedition started to discover whole of the cave. eventually they announced that they successfully achieved to more than 1000 meter depth of the cave. thus Jujar became deepest cave of Asia and Iran.
The 1960 Valdivia earthquake () or Great Chilean earthquake ("Gran terremoto de Chile") of 22 May is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. Various studies have placed it at 9.4–9.6 on the moment magnitude scale. It occurred in the afternoon (19:11 GMT, 15:11 local time), and lasted approximately 10 minutes. The resulting tsunami affected southern Chile, Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, eastern New Zealand, southeast Australia and the Aleutian Islands.
Heights of mountains are typically measured above sea level. Using this metric, Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth, at . There are at least 100 mountains with heights of over above sea level, all of which are located in central and southern Asia. The highest mountains above sea level are generally not the highest above the surrounding terrain. There is no precise definition of surrounding base, but Denali, Mount Kilimanjaro and Nanga Parbat are possible candidates for the tallest mountain on land by this measure. The bases of mountain islands are below sea level, and given this consideration Mauna Kea ( above sea level) is the world's tallest mountain and volcano, rising about from the Pacific Ocean floor.
The Puerto Rico Trench is located on the boundary between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The oceanic trench is associated with a complex transition between the Lesser Antilles subduction zone to the south and the major transform fault zone or plate boundary, which extends west between Cuba and Hispaniola through the Cayman Trough to the coast of Central America. The trench is long and has a maximum depth of or 5.20 miles in the Brownson Deep, which is the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean and the deepest point not in the Pacific Ocean. On December 19, 2018, its deepest point was identified by the DSSV Pressure Drop using a state-of-the-art Kongsberg EM124 multibeam sonar and then directly visited and its depth verified by the manned submersible DSV Limiting Factor.
The Earth's deepest trench is the Mariana Trench which extends for about across the seabed. It is near the Mariana Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the West Pacific, and though it averages just wide, its deepest point is 10.994 kilometres (nearly 7 miles) below the surface of the sea. An even longer trench runs alongside the coast of Peru and Chile, reaching a depth of and extending for approximately . It occurs where the oceanic Nazca Plate slides under the continental South American Plate and is associated with the upthrust and volcanic activity of the Andes.
The Juan Fernandez Plate is a microplate in the Pacific Ocean. With a surface area of approximately 10 km, the microplate is located between 32° and 35°S and 109° and 112°W. The plate is located at a triple junction between the Pacific Plate, Antarctic Plate, and Nazca Plate. Approximately 2000 km to the west of South America, it is, on average, 3000 meters deep with its shallowest point coming to approximately 1600 meters, and its deepest point reaching 4400 meters.
At in area (as defined with an Antarctic southern border), this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of Earth's land area combined. The centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific. Its mean depth is . The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of . The western Pacific has many peripheral seas.