The deepest known point in Earth's oceans, plunging nearly 11 kilometers below the surface, lies in which trench?
- The Mariana Trench
- The Puerto Rico Trench
- The Tonga Trench
- The Java Trench
Why A? And why not the others?
Correct answer: A. The Mariana Trench
The Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, measures about 10,935 meters (35,876 feet) deep according to NOAA. That is so deep that if Mount Everest were dropped in, its summit would still sit roughly two kilometers underwater. The Tonga Trench is the great near-miss: its deepest point, Horizon Deep, is only on the order of a hundred meters shallower, making it a genuinely tempting pick. The Puerto Rico Trench is merely the deepest point of the Atlantic, and the Java Trench the deepest of the Indian Ocean, so each is a record-holder in its own basin without coming close to the Mariana's crushing bottom, where the water pressure exceeds a thousand times that at the surface.
Source: NOAA Ocean Service: 'How deep is the ocean?' (oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceandepth.html)