Scientists FINALLY Reveal What’s Lurking in the Depths of the Mariana Trench!
Something is lurking in the deepest, darkest place on Earth—and scientists have finally uncovered its terrifying secrets. The Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, has long been a mystery, hiding creatures that defy imagination and forces powerful enough to reshape the planet itself. Tune in as we reveal what scientists found in the depths of the Mariana Trench... and why it might be the most terrifying discovery yet.
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00:00The bottom of the Pacific, a place known as the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep,
00:05some 300 miles southwest of Guam.
00:07Something is lurking in the deepest, darkest place on Earth,
00:10and scientists have finally uncovered its terrifying secrets.
00:14The Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, has long been a mystery,
00:19hiding creatures that defy imagination and forces powerful enough to reshape the planet itself.
00:25Tune in as we reveal what scientists found in the depths of the Mariana Trench.
00:29And why it might be the most terrifying discovery yet.
00:33The Mariana Trench's Hidden Depths.
00:35Diving into the Mariana Trench is like stepping into another world,
00:39a place where the ocean stretches down so far that sunlight has never even touched it.
00:43This isn't just some deep pit in the ocean floor.
00:47It's a place full of mystery, with creatures that seem straight out of science fiction
00:51and forces powerful enough to shape the entire planet.
00:55Scientists have spent years trying to figure out what's really down there.
00:59But the journey hasn't been easy.
01:01The deeper they go, the more bizarre and unbelievable things get.
01:05Then the instruments detected something.
01:08Something that was never meant to be found.
01:10The Mariana Trench sits in the western Pacific, holding the record as the deepest spot on Earth's surface.
01:17It's like a massive scar carved into the planet's crust, stretching for over 1,500 miles and plunging nearly 7 miles down.
01:25For centuries, people thought the ocean floor was just a vast, empty wasteland.
01:30But that all changed in the late 1800s, when a British expedition set sail on a ship called the HMS Challenger.
01:38They wanted to map the sea floor, and what they found blew everyone's minds.
01:43The Challenger's crew spent four years sailing around the world,
01:46dropping long ropes with heavy weights to measure the ocean's depth.
01:49They traveled nearly 70,000 miles, about a third of the way to the moon, and discovered something no one expected.
01:57When they reached a certain spot near the island of Guam, their measuring rope just kept going and going.
02:03It finally hit bottom nearly five miles down, shocking everyone.
02:07No one thought the ocean could be that deep.
02:10This discovery was just the beginning of a centuries-long obsession with uncovering the secrets of the trench.
02:15Fast forward to the early 1900s, and technology was finally catching up.
02:21Scientists developed sonar, a system that uses sound waves to map the ocean floor.
02:26Instead of dropping ropes, they could send out sound pulses, which bounced off the seabed and came back up.
02:32The time it took for the sound to return told them exactly how deep the water was.
02:36This made exploring the ocean way easier, and a lot less exhausting than pulling up miles of rope by hand.
02:41In 1951, a British naval ship returned to the Mariana Trench, armed with this new sonar technology.
02:49What they found was beyond anything they had imagined.
02:53This wasn't just a hole in the ocean floor.
02:55It was a massive trench stretching across the Pacific, with depths over seven miles at its lowest point.
03:02To put that in perspective, if you drop Mount Everest into the trench,
03:06its peak would still be buried under more than a mile of water.
03:09Scientists named the deepest part Challenger Deep, in honor of the ship that first discovered it.
03:15The real mystery, though, was how this trench even formed.
03:18The answer lies in powerful forces beneath the Earth's crust.
03:22The trench is part of a system where tectonic plates, the giant slabs of rock that make up the Earth's surface, collide.
03:29One plate gets forced under another in a process called subduction, creating deep trenches like this one.
03:35It's a slow but unstoppable process that has been reshaping the planet for millions of years.
03:41But scientists weren't satisfied with just looking at maps.
03:44They wanted to go down there themselves.
03:47The problem?
03:48The pressure at the bottom of the trench is crushing.
03:51It's like having the weight of 50 jumbo jets pressing down on every inch of your body.
03:55That's why, for decades, no one even attempted to reach the bottom.
03:59Then in the 1960s, a daring team of explorers decided to take the risk.
04:04They built a special deep-sea submersible, designed to withstand the extreme pressure, and took the plunge into the abyss.
04:12What they saw down there was incredible.
04:15Strange, alien-like creatures, deep-sea volcanoes, and landscapes unlike anything on the surface.
04:21Their journey proved that even in the harshest conditions, life finds a way to survive.
04:27Since then, scientists have sent robotic explorers and high-tech submarines down into the trench, each time uncovering new surprises.
04:35They've found creatures with see-through bodies, fish that glow in the dark, and even bacteria that can break down some of the toughest materials on Earth.
04:43Every discovery raises new questions.
04:46What else could be lurking in the depths just waiting to be found?
04:48The Mariana Trench is more than just a deep hole in the ocean.
04:51It's a hidden world, full of secrets that could change everything we know about life on Earth.
04:57And as technology improves, scientists are determined to keep exploring, pushing deeper and deeper into the unknown.
05:04Uncovering the ocean's hidden depths.
05:07Exploring the Mariana Trench is like diving into the deepest parts of our planet's oceans.
05:12This place is not just deep, it's fascinatingly complex, with scientists facing extreme challenges as they descend into these dark waters.
05:21They're like detectives, trying to figure out what powerful natural forces have shaped this underwater world.
05:27Down there, they found incredible sights like erupting underwater mountains, strange mud volcanoes, and the Earth's largest geological feature.
05:37The things they learned from this unique underwater area could really change our understanding of how the Earth itself is formed and reshaped over time.
05:46Amazing dive. I think almost exactly 12 hours.
05:51Tucked away in the western Pacific, the Mariana Trench is the deepest spot in all the world's oceans.
05:57The quest to understand how this deep scar in the Earth's crust came to be, and how it keeps affecting our planet, started way back in 1872.
06:07That's when a British ship, the HMS Challenger, embarked on a groundbreaking mission to map the ocean floor.
06:14Before this, people thought that once you went deep enough, the ocean was just a flat, boring, lifeless place.
06:22They really didn't expect to find anything interesting.
06:25The Challenger and its crew spent four years sailing about 70,000 miles.
06:30That's nearly a third of the way to the moon.
06:32Every 140 miles, they would measure the depth using a massive amount of rope.
06:38249 miles of it, and lots of lead weights.
06:41It was tough, grueling work.
06:44But back then, that was the only way to figure out how deep the ocean was.
06:49Nobody thought the ocean was this deep.
06:51So, all of a sudden, we've got scientists saying, why is that?
06:55When they reached a spot in the western Pacific, 200 miles from the island of Guam,
07:00they kept lowering their measuring rope, expecting it to hit the bottom soon.
07:04But to their surprise, it just kept going and going.
07:08It was a huge shock.
07:10No one had thought the ocean could be this deep.
07:12When the weight finally hit the bottom at 4,475 fathoms, nearly five miles down, it opened up a ton of questions.
07:21What had they found?
07:22Was it a small dip?
07:24A huge hole?
07:25Or something else?
07:26Finding this spot made everyone really curious about what else was down there.
07:30This trip by the Challenger is considered the start of modern oceanography.
07:35It gave us the first rough map of the ocean floor, showing how it slopes away from the land and then drops off into vast flat plains.
07:43But the western Pacific was different.
07:46Here, the floor takes a sudden dive into a five-mile deep trench,
07:50completely upending the old idea that the ocean floor was flat and uneventful.
07:55It would be another 75 years before we'd start to get some answers.
08:00That's when a new gadget called sonar came into play, taking our exploration to a whole new level.
08:06Sonar started as a way to find submarines during the early 1900s and got really good by the 1940s.
08:13It works by sending out sound waves underwater.
08:16These waves bounce off things and come back.
08:18And by timing these echoes, scientists can get a clear picture of what's beneath the surface.
08:24Using sonar turned out to be a lot easier and cheaper than having a bunch of sailors pull on ropes.
08:31The world's major navy spent a lot of time and effort developing submarine hunting technology.
08:36In 1951, a British naval ship with this fancy new sonar gear went back to that deep spot the Challenger had found.
08:44The results were amazing.
08:46They made detailed maps with sonar and discovered that what they thought was a hole was actually part of a massive trench,
08:5330 times deeper than the Empire State Building is tall.
08:56This trench stretches over 1,500 miles, about twice the length of California,
09:03from southeast of Guam to northwest of the Mariana Islands.
09:07People were probably amazed by what they saw.
09:10The ocean floor wasn't just flat.
09:12It was full of mountains and valleys.
09:14To a geologist, this was super exciting.
09:17The trench itself had so many differences.
09:20At its southern end, it drops down another two miles to its lowest point,
09:24a mind blowing seven miles below the ocean's surface.
09:29Scientists have found the deepest spot in the ocean,
09:31which is still the lowest known point on Earth today.
09:34They named this deep spot the Challenger Deep,
09:37in honor of the ship that first discovered it.
09:40To really grasp how deep this part of the trench is,
09:42imagine if you placed Mount Everest down there.
09:45You'd still have about a mile of water above you,
09:48before you even start to see the surface of the ocean.
09:50However, how exactly the Mariana Trench came to be was unclear.
09:56Researchers figured the best way to learn more
09:59was to go down and check out the Challenger Deep themselves.
10:02But this wasn't going to be easy.
10:05At the bottom of the trench, the pressure is so immense,
10:08it's like having the weight of 50 large airplanes
10:10pressing down on you from every side.
10:12Next, we explore a historic and daring mission
10:15that marked a milestone in underwater exploration.
10:18Extreme pressure of the deep sea.
10:22To show what this kind of pressure does,
10:24scientists did a test with a styrofoam head.
10:27They're planning to put one of these heads,
10:29which are usually used for displaying wigs,
10:31into a pressure chamber to simulate the deep ocean conditions
10:35of the Mariana Trench.
10:37This is about 16,000 pounds per square inch.
10:40Wow, that's smaller.
10:42And here's what the original size was, just for comparison.
10:48If it were a real human head, it would be totally crushed.
10:51Instead, the styrofoam head compresses, shrinking significantly.
10:56It's quite a sight.
10:57To give you an idea, they compare it to the original size,
11:00and it's a huge difference.
11:02It really shows how extreme the pressure is down there,
11:05and it's a good thing humans aren't subjected to that environment.
11:09Protecting humans from such extreme conditions
11:11posed a real challenge to the engineers.
11:15Back in 1953, a Swiss scientist named Auguste Piccard
11:18designed the Trieste,
11:21a deep-sea submersible capable of withstanding those crushing depths.
11:26The Trieste had a long, 50-foot hole
11:28filled with light aviation gasoline and lead weights
11:31to help it stay balanced underwater.
11:33Beneath this, there was a small, round cabin,
11:38just six feet across, with thick steel walls,
11:41designed to keep the intense pressure out.
11:45After seven years of tweaking and testing,
11:48including several manned dives
11:50that went no deeper than three and a half miles,
11:53the Trieste was finally ready to make the full,
11:55seven-mile descent to the bottom of the trench.
11:58The man in charge of this daring feat
12:00was a U.S. Navy lieutenant named Don Walsh.
12:03An experienced deep-sea explorer.
12:06This mission was kept under wraps
12:08because only a few top officials knew about it.
12:11It kicked off in January 1960 from the island of Guam,
12:15which was pretty isolated back then.
12:17Just the right spot for a low-key,
12:19but risky project like this,
12:21as the Navy really didn't want any public embarrassment
12:23if things didn't go as planned.
12:26Accompanying Walsh on this historic descent
12:28was Jacques Piccard,
12:30the son of the Trieste designer.
12:33The two of them were crammed into a tiny, cold sphere,
12:36not much bigger inside than a large household fridge,
12:39for about nine hours.
12:41They were setting off to explore
12:43one of the most remote and tough places on the planet,
12:46the Mariana Trench.
12:48Their slow descent into the deep
12:50began at a pace of just three miles per hour.
12:53As they went deeper,
12:54around 3,000 feet down,
12:56they were enveloped in complete darkness,
12:59the sun's light unable to reach them.
13:01The only sources of light
13:03were the Trieste's powerful lamps,
13:05and occasionally,
13:06flashes of light from sea creatures
13:08that produced their own glow,
13:10like underwater fireflies.
13:11This trip was more than a technical challenge.
13:15It was an epic plunge
13:16into one of Earth's final frontiers.
13:18Inside their solid steel sphere,
13:21Walsh and Piccard sailed past
13:22their previous deepest dive
13:24of 18,000 feet without a hitch.
13:26It seemed everything was going according to plan.
13:29They were well protected
13:30at the back of their cabin
13:31by two layers of glass.
13:33But around two hours into their dive,
13:35a sudden loud bang startled them.
13:38The outer glass layer had just cracked.
13:40Now they were around 20,000 feet underwater
13:43and quickly checking over their gear in the cabin.
13:46Their small capsule,
13:47designed to support life under extreme conditions,
13:50was now under even more stress,
13:52facing a massive 8 tons of pressure per square inch.
13:56With the outer glass gone,
13:57only one layer stood between them
13:59and a fatal ocean crush.
14:01The situation was critical.
14:03A breach in the inner glass
14:04would mean immediate death.
14:06Miraculously, it held,
14:08and the two decided to brave the depths further,
14:11as they continued their descent
14:12for almost five more hours.
14:14Tense and alert in the cramped space of their cabin,
14:17they neared the very bottom of the trench.
14:20Just when they thought they'd seen it all,
14:22something moved on the ocean floor.
14:24A flatfish,
14:25about a foot long.
14:26Seeing a fish at this incredible depth
14:29was unexpected and fascinating.
14:31It confirmed they had reached their destination,
14:34the lowest part of the Mariana Trench.
14:37The depth gauge read 35,800 feet,
14:41nearly seven miles beneath the sea's surface,
14:44aligning perfectly with the sonar data.
14:47Now,
14:48we uncover the formation of this massive trench
14:50and the geologic forces at play.
14:52The record-breaking deep-sea dive.
14:56Here,
14:56so far from the Earth's surface,
14:58they took a moment to capture a self-portrait,
15:01commemorating their historic achievement.
15:03Yet,
15:04their mission was not just to reach this point,
15:06but to study and document the trench's unique features.
15:10Unfortunately,
15:11their submersible
15:12kicked up a cloud of fine sediment,
15:14making it nearly impossible to see anything.
15:17It felt like being inside a bowl of milk.
15:20Visibility was that poor.
15:22Realizing they could not complete their observational goals,
15:25they made the decision to head back to the surface.
15:28After a grueling nine-hour stint under the sea,
15:31the Trieste emerged off the coast of Guam on January 23, 1960.
15:37Walsh and Picard had not only survived,
15:40but also set a record for the deepest man to dive,
15:43a record that remains unbeaten.
15:45This dive was an incredible feat of human courage
15:48and technological prowess,
15:51marking a significant milestone in oceanic exploration.
15:55However,
15:56their successful dive left many questions
15:58about how such a massive trench had formed.
16:00If they couldn't find the answers deep within the trench itself,
16:04they'd need to look elsewhere.
16:06During the 1950s and 60s,
16:08under the guidance of Princeton's Harry Hess,
16:10a team of geologists began to gather and analyze sonar data
16:14from oceans around the world.
16:16They meticulously mapped the ocean floor,
16:19revealing that the Mariana Trench
16:21was part of an extensive network of underwater canyons
16:24that spanned the globe.
16:26Alongside this,
16:28they discovered something equally impressive,
16:30the East Pacific Ridge.
16:32This underwater mountain range,
16:34running parallel to the trench,
16:36but on the opposite side of the Pacific,
16:38was part of a 40,000-mile-long chain of mountain ranges,
16:42making it the largest geological feature on the planet.
16:45This discovery was a major breakthrough.
16:48It suggested a possible link between the trench
16:50and the East Pacific Ridge,
16:52which needed further exploration.
16:54The answer came from an unexpected source.
16:56During the Cold War,
16:59the U.S. had installed a vast network
17:00of underground seismometers
17:02to monitor atomic bomb tests around the globe.
17:05These instruments ended up detecting
17:07natural earthquakes as well.
17:09When these earthquake locations were mapped,
17:12geologists noticed they were concentrated
17:14along the ocean ridges and trenches.
17:17This pattern was revolutionary.
17:19It changed our understanding of the Earth completely.
17:22It showed that the movements causing these earthquakes
17:25were happening deep beneath the ridges and trenches.
17:29Thanks to this extensive network of seismometers,
17:32geologists could now precisely locate
17:34where these earthquakes were occurring,
17:36their depth, and their nature.
17:38This precise data provided crucial insights
17:41into the dynamics of plate tectonics,
17:44fundamentally altering our understanding
17:46of geological processes.
17:49A groundbreaking idea started to shift
17:51our understanding of the Earth.
17:53The surface of our planet is not one solid piece,
17:57but is instead made up of large sections
17:59called tectonic plates.
18:02These plates are always moving,
18:04sliding past each other,
18:05and sometimes colliding.
18:08This movement is what causes earthquakes.
18:11At the places where these plates meet,
18:13you'll find deep trenches
18:14and high ridges underwater.
18:17Two significant features
18:18are the East Pacific Ridge
18:19and the Mariana Trench,
18:21which sit on different sides of the Pacific Plate.
18:24The quest to understand
18:26how the Mariana Trench came about
18:28has been gathering more clues and information.
18:31The submarine named Trieste
18:33dove all the way to the trench's lowest point,
18:35proving it's the deepest spot on Earth.
18:37After this,
18:39sonar technology helped map
18:40the nearby East Pacific Ocean Ridge.
18:43Understanding the trench's origin
18:44meant studying what was happening at this ridge,
18:47which involved exploring
18:48the massive underwater mountains,
18:50some 8,000 feet beneath the ocean's surface.
18:53We know more about the Mariana Trench now
18:55that we've identified it
18:57along the western edge
18:58of the Pacific Tectonic Plate.
19:00Opposite this trench,
19:02on the other side of the plate,
19:03is the East Pacific Ocean Ridge.
19:05This ridge is part of a global chain
19:07of underwater mountains,
19:09the largest geological feature on our planet.
19:12Scientists suspected that this massive ridge
19:14could help explain how the trench was formed.
19:17They found a critical piece of evidence far away,
19:20where the ridge stretches
19:21under the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
19:23Next, we find crucial clues
19:25that reveal how the Earth's crust is created
19:28and moves.
19:30Strange magnetic patterns under the sea.
19:32During the Cold War,
19:35the U.S. Navy developed a way
19:36to find Soviet submarines
19:38using a tool
19:39called a magnetic anomaly detector.
19:43This tool could find metal submarine hulls
19:45deep in the ocean,
19:47but they discovered something unexpected.
19:50Along the ridge,
19:51there were strange lines of magnetic rocks,
19:54forming patterns that alternated
19:55between positive and negative.
19:57These are often described
19:58as looking like zebra stripes.
20:00Geologists know that Earth acts
20:03like a big magnet
20:04with a north and south pole,
20:06but these poles don't stay put.
20:08About every 300,000 years,
20:10the magnetic field flips completely.
20:13This means a compass
20:14that used to point north
20:15would start pointing south.
20:17This flipping of Earth's magnetic field
20:19is a fascinating topic
20:21and quite hard to explain.
20:24Scientists believe
20:25this is why we see
20:26those striped magnetic patterns
20:27on the ocean floor near the ridges.
20:30In the 1960s,
20:32it was discovered
20:32that molten rock,
20:34or magma,
20:35comes up from deep underground
20:36and creates these ridges
20:38in both the Atlantic
20:39and Pacific oceans.
20:41When this magma comes up
20:42between the tectonic plates,
20:44it pushes the ocean floor up,
20:46forming these massive mid-ocean ridges.
20:49While the magma is still hot and liquid,
20:51its magnetic particles line up
20:53according to the Earth's
20:54magnetic field direction at the time.
20:55Once the magma cools,
20:58these particles get locked in place,
21:00effectively recording the position
21:01of the magnetic poles
21:03at the time the rock solidified.
21:05As more magma rises,
21:07it pushes the older crust
21:08away from the ridge,
21:09which also captures the reversals
21:11in Earth's magnetic field.
21:13This pattern of magnetic reversals
21:15is like a natural tape recorder
21:17that captures these shifts
21:19in magnetization.
21:20The pattern of magnetic stripes
21:22allows scientists to figure out
21:24how quickly the tectonic plates
21:26are moving apart.
21:27The zebra stripes confirm
21:29that the ocean floor
21:30in both the Atlantic and Pacific
21:32is spreading from these ridges
21:33at a rate of more than
21:35two inches a year.
21:36However, geologists needed more proof
21:39that magma was indeed shaping the ridge.
21:42If hot, molten rock
21:43was forming this giant mountain range
21:45in the Pacific,
21:46then the surrounding water
21:48should be warm.
21:48In 1977,
21:51a team of scientists
21:52set out to find out
21:53if this was true.
21:55Dudley Foster piloted
21:56these groundbreaking dives.
21:58It's always thrilling
21:59to be at the forefront of science,
22:01making new discoveries
22:02every time you go out to sea.
22:04Each trip brings a new set
22:06of scientists and new goals,
22:07and it's the excitement
22:08of exploration
22:09and finding new things
22:11that really makes the job exciting.
22:14For many weeks,
22:15a team of explorers
22:16searched the ocean's deep ridges,
22:19without finding anything significant.
22:21Then, unexpectedly,
22:23they discovered
22:24something extraordinary,
22:26a towering rock spire
22:28releasing a stream
22:28of hot, toxic gases
22:30into the water.
22:31When they observed
22:32the surrounding water,
22:34it appeared to shimmer and bubble,
22:36much like when you heat water
22:37in a clear kettle.
22:39Curious,
22:39they measured the temperature
22:40and found it to be
22:42around 38 to 39 degrees Fahrenheit,
22:45remarkably warm
22:46for deep ocean water,
22:47which usually acts
22:48like a giant cooler,
22:50evening out the temperatures.
22:52This intriguing rock formation,
22:54known as a hydrothermal vent,
22:56was a critical find.
22:57It showed that heat from magma
22:59deep inside the earth
23:00was seeping up
23:01to the ocean floor.
23:03However,
23:04this heat wasn't just
23:05spreading out evenly
23:06across the ridge,
23:07it was shooting up
23:08through these strange vents,
23:10creating pockets
23:11of unusually warm water.
23:13When discoveries like this happen,
23:15it's not always clear right away
23:17how important they are.
23:18It can take years
23:19to really understand
23:20the full significance
23:21of such a find,
23:22and this was definitely
23:23one of those moments.
23:25These hydrothermal vents
23:26turned out to be key
23:27in piecing together
23:28the bigger picture
23:29about the Mariana Trench.
23:31They provided proof
23:32that magma
23:33was continually pushing up
23:34new crust
23:35at the Pacific Ocean Ridge.
23:37The discovery
23:38of magnetic zebra stripes,
23:40patterns of magnetic rocks
23:41on the seafloor,
23:42showed that the old crust
23:44was being pushed away
23:45from the ridge,
23:46moving toward the Mariana Trench
23:48on the other side
23:49of the Pacific Plate.
23:50This raised a big question
23:52for the scientists.
23:53If the ocean floor
23:54is continuously being made
23:55at the ridge,
23:56and the earth isn't expanding,
23:58then where's the old crust going?
23:59They realized
24:01that as new seafloor
24:03spreads out,
24:04an equal amount
24:05must be getting
24:05swallowed up somewhere else,
24:07and the big clue
24:08pointed towards
24:09the Mariana Trench.
24:10Is the Mariana Trench
24:12just an underwater canyon,
24:13or could it hide things
24:15that challenge
24:15our understanding of earth?
24:17Share your thoughts,
24:18and don't forget to like
24:19and subscribe for more.