In March 2012, we shared the news that James Cameron had descended to the Challenger Deep. With a drop of approximately 10,916 meters (approx.), it is the deepest point known on Earth, and I say "so far" because we have only managed to explore about 5 percent of the seafloor. Believe it or not, those nearly eleven kilometers don't really help us visualize how deep the ocean is. What if we compared it with some things on the surface...?
The news of James Cameron going down to the Challenger Deep may have traveled the world, but history tells us he wasn't the first. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh visited it aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste in January 1960. More than half a century separates the two expeditions, and that forces us to wonder how much remains to be discovered and learned down there. Besides being deep, the ocean is vast and dark. And as expected, the human mind forms a wrong idea when it combines (or rather, tries to combine) these three factors. The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point to date, which leaves the door open to even deeper places on our fabulous planet. That said, here is this video:
Eleven kilometers down. The US Seawolf-class submarines (only three were built) have a "test depth" ranging between 490 and 500 meters, while their theoretical collapse depth has been calculated at 730 meters. The Burj Khalifa, with its impressive 829.8 meters, is a flea turned upside down. Near a thousand meters of depth, sunlight surrenders, and from that point on everything is darkness. We still haven't reached 10 percent! 1,828 meters is the deepest point of the famous Grand Canyon. Beyond the hostility of that environment (especially regarding pressure), life finds a way, and even at two thousand meters we find species like the famous black dragon, seemingly straight out of an H.R. Giger work. The sperm whale can reach 2,250 meters, and one of its favorite foods, the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), isn't far behind.
If we talk about an average depth for the ocean, that value would be about 4,267 meters, but you would need to go down 500 more meters to visit the wreck of the famous German battleship Bismarck. We haven't even reached halfway. With a bit of fast-forward, if we turn Mount Everest upside down, we'd still be more than two thousand meters short of the Challenger Deep. According to the video, the only equivalent to visualize the depth of the abyss would be to board a commercial flight and wait for it to reach a standard altitude of 11,000 meters. Of course, we'd be dealing with two completely different spectacles. A plane at that level becomes a window to the world. The ocean at 10,916 meters only offers darkness.
