Who explored the Mariana Trench. Mysteries and mysticism of the Mariana Trench

Excellent students at school firmly understood: the highest point on earth is Mount Everest (8848 m), the deepest trench is the Mariana Trench. However, if we know a lot of interesting facts about Everest, then most people know nothing about the trench in the Pacific Ocean, in addition to the fact that it is the deepest.

FIVE HOURS DOWN, THREE HOURS UP

Despite the fact that the oceans are closer to us than the mountain peaks and even more so the distant planets of the solar system, people have explored only five percent of the seabed, which still remains one of the greatest mysteries of our planet.

Average width 69 km Mariana Trench several million were formed years ago due to shifts of tectonic plates and stretches in the shape of a crescent for two and a half thousand kilometers along the Mariana Islands.

Its depth, according to recent studies, is 10,994 meters ± 40 meters (for comparison: the equatorial diameter of the Earth is 12,756 km), the water pressure at the bottom reaches 108.6 MPa - this is more than 1100 times more than normal atmospheric pressure!

The Mariana Trench, also called the Earth's fourth pole, was discovered in 1872 by the crew of the British research vessel Challenger. The crew took measurements of the bottom at various points in the Pacific Ocean.

Another measurement was made in the area of the Mariana Islands, but the kilometer-long rope was not enough, and then the captain ordered two more kilometer sections to be added to it. Then again and again...

Almost a hundred years later, the echo sounder of another English, but under the same name, scientific vessel recorded a depth of 10,863 meters in the Mariana Trench area. After this, the deepest point of the ocean floor began to be called the “Challenger Deep”.

In 1957, Soviet researchers established the presence of life at depths of more than 7,000 meters, thereby refuting the prevailing opinion at that time about the impossibility of life at depths of more than 6,000-7,000 meters, and also clarified the British data, recording a depth of 11,023 meters in the Mariana Trench .

The first human dive to the bottom of the depression took place in 1960. It was carried out on the Trieste bathyscaphe by the American Don Walsh and the Swiss oceanographer Jacques Picard.

The descent into the abyss took them almost five hours, and the ascent took about three hours; the researchers spent only 20 minutes at the bottom. But even this time was enough for them to make a sensational discovery - in the bottom waters they discovered flat fish up to 30 cm in size, similar to flounder, unknown to science.

LIFE IN utter darkness

In the course of further research using unmanned deep-sea vehicles, it turned out that at the bottom of the depression, despite the terrifying water pressure, a wide variety of species of living organisms live. Giant 10-centimeter amoebas - xenophyophores, which under normal terrestrial conditions can only be seen with a microscope; amazing two-meter worms, no less huge starfish, mutant octopuses and, naturally, fish.

The latter amaze with their terrifying appearance. Their distinctive feature is a huge mouth and many teeth. Many spread their jaws so wide that even a small predator can swallow whole an animal larger than itself.

There are also unusual creatures, reaching a two-meter size with a soft jelly-like body, which has no analogues in nature.

It would seem that at such a depth the temperature should be at Antarctic levels. However, Challenger Deep contains hydrothermal vents called “black smokers.” They constantly heat the water and thereby maintain general temperature in the trough at 1-4 degrees Celsius.

The inhabitants of the Mariana Trench live in pitch darkness, some of them are blind, others have huge telescopic eyes that catch the slightest glare of light. Some individuals have “lanterns” on their heads that emit different colors.

There are fish in whose bodies a luminous liquid accumulates. When they sense danger, they splash this liquid towards the enemy and hide behind this “curtain of light.” Appearance Such animals are very unusual for our perception and can cause disgust and even inspire a feeling of fear.

But it is obvious that not all the mysteries of the Mariana Trench have yet been solved. Some strange animals of truly incredible size live in the depths!

THE LIZARD TRIED TO CHEAT THE BATHYSCAPH LIKE A NUT

Sometimes on the shore, not far from the Mariana Trench, people find the bodies of dead 40-meter monsters. Giant teeth were also discovered in those places. Scientists have proven that they belong to a multi-ton prehistoric megalodon shark, the span of which reached two meters.

These sharks were thought to have gone extinct about three million years ago, but the teeth found are much younger. So have the ancient monsters really disappeared?

In 2003, another sensational results from studies of the Mariana Trench were published in the United States. Scientists have submerged an unmanned platform equipped with searchlights, sensitive video systems and microphones in the deepest part of the world's oceans.

The platform was lowered on 6 inch-section steel cables. At first, the technology did not provide any unusual information. But a few hours after the dive, the silhouettes of strange large objects (at least 12-16 meters) began to flash on the monitor screens in the light of powerful spotlights, and at that time the microphones transmitted sharp sounds to the recording devices - the grinding of iron and dull, uniform blows on metal.

When the platform was raised (never lowered to the bottom due to incomprehensible obstacles that prevented the descent), it was discovered that the powerful steel structures were bent, and the steel cables seemed to have been sawed off. A little more - and the platform would forever remain the “Challenger Abyss”.

Previously, something similar happened to the German device “Hayfish”. Having descended to a depth of 7 kilometers, he suddenly refused to emerge. To find out what was wrong, the researchers turned on an infrared camera.

What they saw in the next few seconds seemed to them a collective hallucination: a huge prehistoric lizard, clinging to the bathyscaphe with its teeth, tried to chew it like a nut.

Having recovered from the shock, the scientists activated the so-called electric gun, and the monster, struck by a powerful discharge, hastened to retreat.

Giant 10-centimeter xenophyophore amoeba

WHO IS THE REAL “OWNER” OF PLANET EARTH

But it's not just fantastic monsters that are captured by deep-sea cameras. In the summer of 2012, the unmanned deep-sea vehicle Titan, launched from the research vessel Rick Mesenger, was in the Mariana Trench at a depth of 10,000 meters. His main goal was to film and photograph various underwater objects.

Suddenly the cameras recorded a strange multiple shine of a material very similar to metal. And then, a few tens of meters from the device, several large objects appeared in the light of the spotlight.

Having approached these objects to the maximum allowable distance, the Titan displayed a very unusual picture on the monitors of the scientists on the Rick Mesenger. On an area of approximately a square kilometer there were about 50 large cylindrical objects, very similar to... flying saucers!

A few minutes after the “UFO airfield” was recorded, the Titan stopped communicating and never surfaced.

There are a lot of well-known facts that, if they do not confirm the possibility of the existence of intelligent creatures in the depths of the sea, then, in any case, fully explain why modern science still knows nothing about them.

Firstly, man's native habitat - the earth's surface - occupies only a little more than a quarter of the land surface. So our planet could well be called the Ocean planet rather than the Earth.

Secondly, as everyone knows, life originated in water, so marine intelligence (if it exists) is about one and a half million years older than humans.

That is why, according to some experts, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, thanks to the presence of active hydrothermal springs, not only entire colonies of prehistoric animals that have survived to this day can exist, but also an underwater civilization of intelligent creatures unknown to earthlings! The “fourth pole” of the Earth, in the opinion of scientists, is the most suitable place for them to live.

And in once again The question arises: is man the only “master” of planet Earth?

FIELD RESEARCH IS PLANNED FOR SUMMER 2015

The third person in the entire history of exploration of the Mariana Trench to descend to its bottom was James Cameron exactly three years ago.

“Almost everything on the earth’s land has been explored,” he explained his decision. - In space, bosses prefer to send people circling around the Earth, and send machine guns to other planets. For the joys of discovering the unknown, there is only one field of activity left - the ocean. Only about 3% of its water volume has been studied, and what’s next is unknown.”

On the DeepSes Challenge bathyscaphe, being in a half-bent state, since the internal diameter of the device did not exceed 109 cm, the famous film director observed everything that was happening in this place until mechanical problems forced him to rise from the surface.

Cameron managed to take samples of rocks and living organisms from the bottom, as well as film with 3D cameras. Subsequently, these frames formed the basis documentary film.

However, he never saw any of the terrible sea monsters. According to him, the very bottom of the ocean was “lunar... empty... lonely,” and he felt “complete isolation from all humanity.”

Meanwhile, in the telecommunications laboratory of Tomsk Polytechnic University, together with the Institute of Marine Technology Problems of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in full swing A domestic apparatus for deep-sea research is being developed, which will be able to descend to a depth of 12 kilometers.

Specialists working on the bathyscaphe state that there are no analogues to the equipment they are developing in the world, and “field” studies of the sample in the waters Pacific Ocean are already planned for the summer of 2015.

The famous traveler Fyodor Konyukhov also began working on the project “Diving into the Mariana Trench in a Bathyscaphe.” According to him, his goal is not just to touch the bottom of the deepest depression of the World Ocean, but also to spend two whole days there, conducting unique research.

The bathyscaphe is designed to accommodate two people and will be designed and built by an Australian company.

The most mysterious and inaccessible point on our planet, the Mariana Trench, is called the “fourth pole of the Earth.” It is located in the western part of the Pacific Ocean and extends 2926 km in length and 80 km in width. At a distance of 320 km south of the island of Guam there is the deepest point of the Mariana Trench and the entire planet - 11022 meters. In these little-explored depths hide living creatures whose appearance is as monstrous as their living conditions.

The Mariana Trench is called the "fourth pole of the Earth"

The Mariana Trench, or Mariana Trench, is an oceanic trench in the western Pacific Ocean, which is the deepest geographical feature known on Earth. Research of the Mariana Trench was initiated by the expedition ( December 1872 - May 1876) English ship "Challenger" ( HMS Challenger), which carried out the first systematic measurements of the depths of the Pacific Ocean. This military three-masted corvette with sail rigging was rebuilt as an oceanographic vessel for hydrological, geological, chemical, biological and meteorological work in 1872.

In 1960, a great event took place in the history of the conquest of the world's oceans

The bathyscaphe Trieste, piloted by French explorer Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh, reached the deepest point of the ocean floor - the Challenger Deep, located in the Mariana Trench and named after the English ship Challenger, from which the first data were obtained in 1951 about her.

Bathyscaphe "Trieste" before diving, January 23, 1960

The dive lasted 4 hours 48 minutes and ended at 10911 m relative to sea level. On this terrible depths, where the monstrous pressure is 108.6 MPa ( which is more than 1100 times more than normal atmospheric) flattens all living things, the researchers made a major oceanological discovery: they saw two 30-centimeter flounder-like fish swimming past the porthole. Before this, it was believed that no life existed at depths exceeding 6000 m.

Thus it was installed absolute record depth of immersion, which is impossible to surpass even theoretically. Picard and Walsh were the only people who visited the bottom of the Challenger Deep. All subsequent dives to the deepest point of the world's oceans, for research purposes, were made by unmanned robotic bathyscaphes. But there were not so many of them, since “visiting” the Challenger Abyss is both labor-intensive and expensive.

One of the achievements of this immersion, which had a beneficial effect on the ecological future of the planet, was the refusal nuclear powers from burial radioactive waste at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The fact is that Jacques Picard experimentally refuted the prevailing opinion at that time that at depths above 6000 m there is no upward movement of water masses.

In the 90s, three dives were made by the Japanese Kaiko device, controlled remotely from the “mother” ship via a fiber-optic cable. However, in 2003, while exploring another part of the ocean, the towing steel cable broke during a storm and the robot was lost. The underwater catamaran Nereus became the third deep-sea vehicle to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

In 2009, humanity again reached the deepest point of the world's oceans.

On May 31, 2009, humanity again reached the deepest point of the Pacific, and indeed the entire world ocean - the American deep-sea vehicle Nereus sank into the Challenger failure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The device took soil samples and took underwater photos and videos at maximum depth, illuminated only by its LED spotlight. During the current dive, Nereus' instruments recorded a depth of 10,902 meters. The indicator was 10,911 meters, and Picard and Walsh measured a value of 10,912 meters. On many Russian maps, the value of 11,022 meters obtained by the Soviet oceanographic vessel Vityaz during the 1957 expedition is still given. All this indicates the inaccuracy of the measurements, and not a real change in depth: no one carried out cross-calibration of the measuring equipment that gave the given values.

The Mariana Trench is formed by the boundaries of two tectonic plates: the colossal Pacific plate goes under the not so large Philippine plate. This is an extremely high zone seismic activity, part of the so-called Pacific volcanic ring of fire, stretching for 40 thousand km, an area with the most frequent eruptions and earthquakes in the world. The deepest point of the trench is the Challenger Deep, named after the English ship.

The inexplicable and incomprehensible have always attracted people, which is why scientists around the world want to answer the question: “ What does the Mariana Trench hide in its depths??»

The inexplicable and incomprehensible have always attracted people

For a long time, oceanographers considered the hypothesis that life could exist at depths of more than 6,000 m in impenetrable darkness, under tremendous pressure and at temperatures close to zero, to be crazy. However, the results of research by scientists in the Pacific Ocean have shown that even in these depths, much below the 6000-meter mark, there are huge colonies of living organisms, pogonophora, a type of marine invertebrate animals that live in long chitinous tubes open at both ends.

IN lately The veil of secrecy was lifted by manned and automatic underwater vehicles made of heavy-duty materials, equipped with video cameras. The result was the discovery of a rich animal community consisting of both familiar and less familiar marine groups.

Thus, at depths of 6000 - 11000 km, the following were discovered:

- barophilic bacteria (developing only when high blood pressure);

- from protozoa - foraminifera (an order of protozoa of the subclass of rhizomes with a cytoplasmic body covered with a shell) and xenophyophores (barophilic bacteria from protozoa);

- from multicellular organisms - polychaete worms, isopods, amphipods, sea cucumbers, bivalves and gastropods.

At the depths no sunlight, there are no algae, constant salinity, low temperatures, an abundance of carbon dioxide, enormous hydrostatic pressure (increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters). What do the inhabitants of the abyss eat?

Research has shown that there is life at depths of over 6,000 meters

The food sources of deep animals are bacteria, as well as the rain of “corpses” and organic detritus coming from above; deep animals are either blind, or with very developed eyes, often telescopic; many fish and cephalopods with photofluoride; in other forms the surface of the body or parts of it glow. Therefore, the appearance of these animals is as terrible and incredible as the conditions in which they live. Among them are frightening-looking worms 1.5 meters long, without a mouth or anus, mutant octopuses, unusual starfish and some soft-bodied creatures two meters long, which have not yet been identified at all.

Despite the fact that scientists have made a huge step in researching the Mariana Trench, the questions have not decreased, and new mysteries have appeared that have yet to be solved. And the ocean abyss knows how to keep its secrets. Will people be able to reveal them in the near future? We will follow the news.

Excellent students at school firmly learned: the highest point on earth is Mount Everest (8848 m), the deepest depression is Mariana. However, if we know a lot of interesting facts about Everest, then most people know nothing about the trench in the Pacific Ocean, in addition to the fact that it is the deepest.

FIVE HOURS DOWN, THREE HOURS UP

With an average width of 69 km, the Mariana Trench was formed several million years ago due to shifts of tectonic plates and stretches in the shape of a crescent for two and a half thousand kilometers along the Mariana Islands.

The first human dive to the bottom of the depression took place in 1960. It was carried out on the Trieste bathyscaphe by the American Don Walsh and the Swiss oceanographer Jacques Picard.

The descent into the abyss took them almost five hours, and the ascent took about three hours; the researchers spent only 20 minutes at the bottom. But this time was enough for them to make a sensational discovery - in the bottom waters they discovered flat fish up to 30 cm in size, similar to flounder, unknown to science.

LIFE IN utter darkness

In the course of further research using unmanned deep-sea vehicles, it turned out that at the bottom of the depression, despite the terrifying water pressure, a wide variety of species of living organisms live. Giant 10-centimeter amoebas - xenophyophores, which under normal terrestrial conditions can only be seen with a microscope, amazing two-meter worms, no less huge starfish, mutant octopuses and, naturally, fish.

There are also quite unusual creatures, reaching two meters in size with a soft jelly-like body, which have no analogues in nature.

It would seem that at such a depth the temperature should be at Antarctic levels. However, Challenger Deep contains hydrothermal vents called “black smokers.” They constantly heat the water and thereby maintain the overall temperature in the depression at 1-4 degrees Celsius.

There are fish in whose bodies a luminous liquid accumulates. When they sense danger, they splash this liquid towards the enemy and hide behind this “curtain of light.” The appearance of such animals is very unusual for our perception and can cause disgust and even inspire a feeling of fear.

But it is obvious that not all the mysteries of the Mariana Trench have yet been solved. Some strange animals of truly incredible size live in the depths!

THE LIZARD TRIED TO CHEAT THE BATHYSCAPH LIKE A NUT

These sharks were thought to have gone extinct about three million years ago, but the teeth found are much younger. So have the ancient monsters really disappeared?

When the platform was raised (never lowered to the bottom due to incomprehensible interference that prevented the descent), it was discovered that the powerful steel structures were bent, and the steel cables seemed to have been sawed off. A little more - and the platform would forever remain the Challenger Deep.

What they saw in the next few seconds seemed to them a collective hallucination: a huge prehistoric lizard, clinging to the bathyscaphe with its teeth, tried to chew it like a nut.

Having recovered from the shock, the scientists activated the so-called electric gun, and the monster, struck by a powerful discharge, hastened to retreat.

Giant 10-centimeter amoeba - xenophyophora

WHO IS THE REAL “OWNER” OF PLANET EARTH

But it's not just fantastic monsters that are captured by deep-sea cameras. In the summer of 2012, the unmanned deep-sea vehicle Titan, launched from the research vessel Rick Mesenger, was in the Mariana Trench at a depth of 10,000 meters. His main goal There was video filming and photographing of various underwater objects.

A few minutes after the “UFO airfield” was recorded, the Titan stopped communicating and never surfaced.

Firstly, man's native habitat - the earth's surface - occupies only a little more than a quarter of the land surface. So our planet could well be called the Ocean planet rather than the Earth.

Secondly, as everyone knows, life originated in water, so marine intelligence (if it exists) is about one and a half million years older than humans.

And once again the question arises: is man the only “master” of planet Earth?

FIELD RESEARCH IS PLANNED FOR SUMMER 2015

The third person in the entire history of exploration of the Mariana Trench to descend to its bottom was exactly three years ago. James Cameron.

“Almost everything on the earth’s land has been explored,” he explained his decision. — In space, bosses prefer to send people circling around the Earth, and send machine guns to other planets. For the joys of discovering the unknown, there is only one field of activity left - the ocean. Only about 3% of its water volume has been studied, and what’s next is unknown.”

Cameron managed to take samples of rocks and living organisms from the bottom, as well as film with 3D cameras. Subsequently, these shots formed the basis of a documentary film.

However, he never saw any of the terrible sea monsters. According to him, the very bottom of the ocean was “lunar... empty... lonely,” and he felt “complete isolation from all humanity.”

Meanwhile, in the telecommunications laboratory of Tomsk Polytechnic University, together with the Institute of Marine Technologies of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the development of a domestic device for deep-sea research, which can descend to a depth of 12 kilometers, is in full swing.

Specialists working on the bathyscaphe declare that there are no analogues to the equipment they are developing in the world, and “field” studies of the sample in the waters of the Pacific Ocean are planned for the summer of 2015.

Started working on the project “Diving into the Mariana Trench in a bathyscaphe” and famous traveler Fedor Konyukhov. According to him, his goal is not just to touch the bottom of the deepest depression of the World Ocean, but also to spend two whole days there, conducting unique research.

The bathyscaphe is designed to accommodate two people and will be designed and built by an Australian company.

As children, we all read many legends about incredible sea monsters ah, inhabiting the ocean floor, always knowing that these are just fairy tales. But we were wrong! These incredible creatures can be found even today if you dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth. What does the Mariana Trench hide and who is it? mysterious inhabitants- read our article.

The deepest place on the planet is the Mariana Trench or Mariana Trench- is located in the western Pacific Ocean near Guam, east of the Mariana Islands, from which its name comes. The shape of the trench resembles a crescent, about 2,550 km long and an average width of 69 km.

According to the latest data, the depth Mariana Trench is 10,994 meters ± 40 meters, which even exceeds the highest point on the planet - Everest (8,848 meters). So this mountain could easily be placed at the bottom of the depression; moreover, there would still be about 2,000 meters of water above the top of the mountain. The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench reaches 108.6 MPa - this is more than 1,100 times higher than normal atmospheric pressure.

Man only fell to the bottom twice Mariana Trench. The first dive was made on January 23, 1960 by US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and explorer Jacques Piccard in the bathyscaphe Trieste. They stayed at the bottom for only 12 minutes, but during this time they managed to meet flat fish, although according to all possible assumptions there should have been no life at such a depth.

The second human dive took place on March 26, 2012. The third person who touched the secrets Mariana Trench, became a film director James Cameron. He dived on the single-person Deepsea Challenger and spent enough time there to take samples, take pictures and film 3D video. Later, the footage he shot formed the basis of a documentary film for the National Geographic Channel.

Due to the strong pressure, the bottom of the depression is covered not with ordinary sand, but with viscous mucus. For many years, the remains of plankton and crushed shells accumulated there, which formed the bottom. And again, due to pressure, almost everything is at the bottom Mariana Trench turns into fine grayish-yellow thick mud.

Sunlight has never reached the bottom of the depression, and we expect the water there to be icy. But its temperature varies from 1 to 4 degrees Celsius. IN Mariana Trench at a depth of approximately 1.6 km are the so-called “black smokers”, hydrothermal vents that shoot water up to 450 degrees Celsius.

Thanks to this water Mariana Trench life is supported as it is rich in minerals. By the way, despite the fact that the temperature is significantly higher than the boiling point, water does not boil due to very strong pressure.

At approximately a depth of 414 meters is the Daikoku volcano, which is the source of one of the rarest phenomena on the planet - a lake of pure molten sulfur. IN solar system this phenomenon can only be found on Io, a satellite of Jupiter. So, in this "cauldron" the bubbling black emulsion boils at 187 degrees Celsius. So far, scientists have not been able to study it in detail, but if in the future they can advance in their research, they may be able to explain how life appeared on Earth.

But the most interesting thing about Mariana Trench- these are its inhabitants. After it was established that there was life in the depression, many expected to find incredible sea monsters there. For the first time, the expedition of the research vessel Glomar Challenger encountered something unidentified. They lowered a device into the depression, the so-called “hedgehog” with a diameter of about 9 m, made in a NASA laboratory from beams of ultra-strong titanium-cobalt steel.

Some time after the descent of the apparatus began, the device recording sounds began to transmit to the surface some kind of metallic grinding sound, reminiscent of the grinding of saw teeth on metal. And unclear shadows appeared on the monitors, reminiscent of dragons with several heads and tails. Soon, scientists became worried that the valuable apparatus might remain forever in the depths of the Mariana Trench and decided to lift it onto the ship. But when they removed the hedgehog from the water, their surprise only intensified: the strongest steel beams of the structure were deformed, and the 20-centimeter steel cable on which it was lowered into the water was half sawn through.

However, perhaps this story was too embellished by the newspapers, since later researchers discovered very unusual creatures there, but not dragons.

Xenophyophores are giant, 10-centimeter amoebas that live at the very bottom Mariana Trench. Most likely due to strong pressure, lack of light and relatively low temperatures these amoebas acquired enormous sizes for their species. But in addition to their impressive size, these creatures are also resistant to many chemical elements and substances, including uranium, mercury and lead, which are lethal to other living organisms.

Pressure in M ariana trench turns glass and wood into powder, so only creatures without bones or shells can live here. But in 2012, scientists discovered a mollusk. How he preserved his shell is still not known. In addition, hydrothermal springs emit hydrogen sulfide, which is fatal to shellfish. However, they learned to bind the sulfur compound into a safe protein, which allowed the population of these mollusks to survive.

And that's not all. Below you can see some of the inhabitants Mariana Trench, which scientists managed to capture.

Mariana Trench and its inhabitants

While our gaze is directed to the sky towards the unsolved mysteries of space, our planet remains unsolved mystery- ocean. To date, only 5% of the world's oceans and secrets have been studied Mariana Trench This is only a small part of the secrets that are hidden under the water.

The Mariana Trench (or Mariana Trench) became known in 1875, when the British survey ship Challenger first explored the depth of this place using a deep-sea survey.

The ship's crew was probably very surprised when they reeled off kilometers of rope so that the boat could finally reach the bottom. Based on the results of the study, it was determined that at the deepest point the bottom is located at a distance of 8,367 meters from the surface of the ocean.

In 1951, a new British expedition on the Challenger 2 ship, using an echo sounder, determined the depth of the depression at 10,863 ± 100 meters. The depth of the bottom varies depending on its topography. Since then, the deepest point on the planet has been called the Challenger Deep.

Progress moved forward, and people began to think about visiting the bottom of the Mariana Trench using a manned deep-sea vehicle.

The first human dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Project "Nekton"

The first two people in history to reach their deepest point globe— Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh.

The device, which made it possible to dive under extreme pressure conditions, was named “Trieste” and was originally built by two Swiss scientist-enthusiasts - Auguste Picard and his son Jacques Picard. After a series of successful dives in the Mediterranean Sea, Trieste was purchased by the US Navy, which was interested in studying ocean depths. After upgrading the bathyscaphe, installing a heavy-duty gondola and modern navigation and electronic systems, "Trieste" was ready to conquer new depths.

The target for the dive was chosen to be no less than the deepest point on the globe. The project, called "Necron", planned to deliver two people to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench and conduct it on site scientific research. On January 23, 1960, at 08:23 local time, the Trieste, with Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh on board, began its slow descent into darkness. After 4 hours 43 minutes, the submersible touched the bottom at a distance of 10,919 meters from the ocean surface.

For the first time, a person found himself at the bottom of the deepest place on the planet. Pressure 1072 times higher than normal, with terrible force crushed the nacelle of the bathyscaphe.

The researchers stayed at the bottom for 20 minutes, during which they conducted a series of scientific experiments by measuring radiation, measured the water temperature, which was 3.3 ° C (the air temperature in the gondola was 4.5 ° C), made large number photos ocean floor and even saw small fish, similar to flounder.

After dropping the ballast, the bathyscaphe began its ascent, which lasted 3 hours 27 minutes.

For 52 long years, no one else conquered the Mariana Trench, limiting themselves only to the descent of automatic robots into the Challenger Abyss.

Conquest of the Mariana Trench by James Cameron

Who would have thought that next person, who for the first time for many years If he decides to visit the bottom of the Mariana Trench, it will be not just any ocean scientist, but the famous Hollywood director James Cameron! On March 26, 2012, Cameron dived to a depth of 10,908 meters on the Deepsea Challenger submersible.

Bathyscaphe Deepsea Challenger |

The Deepsea Challenger bathyscaphe, containing the latest scientific equipment and 3D cameras, implies the presence of only one pilot in the cockpit, but allows you to stay under water for up to 56 hours and freely maneuver on the ocean floor using 12 electric motors. Its creation, taking into account the design stage, took almost 7 years, and construction was carried out by a private Australian company.

During the study of the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the director conducted video and photography, and also, using manipulators, took samples of ocean soil, where, as it turned out later, microorganisms previously unknown to science were present.

Currently James Cameron is the third and last person, who visited the deepest point of the planet - the Challenger Deep at the very bottom of the Mariana Trench. In total, only two underwater vehicles with people on board sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Illustration: depositphotos.com | tolokonov

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