The Ocean Is Deep Enough to Bury Mount Everest
The bottom is nearly 11 kilometers down, about as far below the waves as airliners fly above them.
RealLifeLore · The Ocean is Way Deeper Than You ThinkThe deepest known spot in the ocean is 10,994 meters down, nearly 11 kilometers straight down.
At 8,848 meters you pass the height of Mount Everest turned upside down, and you still have more than two kilometers to go. At 10,972 meters you are as far below the surface as the average commercial airliner flies above it. Look out an airplane window at the ground, and you are seeing that distance in reverse.
Two early crewed trips went near the bottom. In 1960, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, the two men who made the first dive, rode the Trieste submarine to 10,916 meters after a five-hour descent and stayed only 20 minutes at depth, then began to resurface when a window cracked. Filmmaker James Cameron followed to 10,898 meters in 2012.
The bottom, called the Challenger Deep, sits about 300 kilometers southwest of Guam.
Questions people ask
How crushing is the pressure at the bottom?
About 1,100 times the pressure at sea level, or roughly 16,000 pounds per square inch. Without a specially built submersible, a person would be killed instantly. Animals that live there survive with soft, flexible bodies and no air-filled spaces to collapse.
Where exactly is the Challenger Deep?
It is the southern end of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, about 300 kilometers southwest of Guam. The trench formed where one tectonic plate slides beneath another, creating a deep, crescent shaped scar in the seafloor.
Has anyone been deeper since the 1960 dive?
Yes. After Walsh and Piccard in 1960 and Cameron in 2012, several more crewed descents have reached the Challenger Deep, including Victor Vescovo's dives in 2019 and later expeditions. Uncrewed probes have also gone there, but visits remain rare because of the cost and engineering challenge.