The Deepest Place-Lowest Point on Earth the Challenger Deep

Challenger Deep: The Lowest Point on Earth

Do you know where to find the lowest or deepest location on earth? Although many of us may know the answer to this or may have learned at one time or another, when asked if we know where the lowest point on earth is, we think of the this as being at a location somewhere on land that we are able to visit and see for ourselves, usually a desert. In fact, it is not anywhere near a desert.

Many people are amazed to learn or realize that the deepest point in the world is not even located on land and that no human has ever even stood or set foot there and it is likely they never will. In fact, there has only been a few people to ever see it in person due to its remote location.

The reason for this is because lowest point on earth is also the deepest part of the ocean and is located nearly seven miles beneath the sea or about 36,000 feet below sea level in an enormous underwater canyon called the Mariana or Marianas Trench.

I have included some videos I found on YouTube of the Mariana Trench and Challenger Deep.

The deepest point on earth, Challenger Deep, lays below the surface of the ocean and is a valley within the Marianas Trench. It is the where the trench sinks the lowest, to about 36,000 feet beneath the sea.

This picture to the right illustrates just how abysmal the Challenger Deep is. As you can see, Mount Everest would fit into the Challenger Deep without a problem and would even have over a mile of water above it.

The Marianas Trench runs just off a chain of 14 islands which make up the Marianas Islands.  The Marianas Islands are in the Pacific Ocean near Japan and the coordinates are 11"21' North latitude and 142" 12' East longitude.

Challenger Deep got its name from Challenger II, a British survey ship whose crew was able to pinpoint the deep water in 1951.

In 1960, the United States Navy sent a submersible (a miniature submarine that is designed to go to great depths) down into the Marianas Trench to see how far it could reach.  It  was able to touch bottom at about 36,000 feet.

The trench was created during a process that occurs during plate techtonics called subduction. Subduction occurs when the granitic crusted continental plate is basically sucked down underneath a basaltic crusted oceanic plate.

The location is illustrated on the map to the right which isn't that great of a picture.  I found it by doing a google image search.

January 23, 2010, marked the 50th anniversary of the historic dive in the bathyscape Trieste by John Walsh and Jacques Piccard.

In May of 2009, an unmanned vessel reached the Challenger Deep, but the voyage in 1960 remains the only manned trip to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.