Mariana's Trench

300 Words2 Pages
Located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the world’s oceans, and has lowest elevation of the surface of the Earth’s crust. The Trench is 2, 542 km (1,580 miles) long and 69 km (43 miles) at the widest point. The Mariana Trench is created by the shifting between two tectonic plates: the Pacific Plate and the Mariana Plate. The Trench is 11,033 metres (36,201 feet), (6033.5) fathoms deep, which causes the pressure of the deepest part of the Mariana Trench over 8 imperial tons per square inch. The deepest Point of the Mariana Trench is called the Challenger Point, named after an exploration vessel, HMS Challenger II. The Mariana Trench is formed when two tectonic plates collide. At the collision point, one of the plates dives beneath the other into the Earth’s mantle, creating an ocean trench. In scientific term it is a phenomena, in which a plate topped by oceanic crust is subducted beneath another plate topped by oceanic crust. A tectonic plate is a huge hunk of rock, 60 miles (97 kilometers) or thicker, In order for this to sink back into the earth, it has to bend downward, and these are very gentle bends. One reason the Mariana Trench is so deep is because the western Pacific is home to some of the oldest seafloor in the world—about 180 million years old. Seafloor is formed as lava at mid-ocean ridges. When it's fresh, lava is comparatively warm and buoyant, riding high on the underlying mantle. But as lava ages and spreads away from its source, it slowly cools and becomes increasingly dense, causing it to settle ever lower—as is the case with the Mariana
Open Document