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Formation of The Mariana Trench
Ridges and Trenches
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is a north to south mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
This ridge is made of many layers of cooled, pushed-up rock from inner crustal depths that have been broken and lifted to form a 16,000km seam that stretches from Greenland to Antarctica.
Similarly, the East Pacific Ridge contains peaks or seamounts of flattened, dead volcanoes called guyouts. These ancient volcanoes were 3660m above the water level originally, but were eroded down over time by waves crashing against them. Now they are found 1500m below the waves of the Pacific.
The oceans also contain deep, narrow cuts known as trenches that stretch for thousands of miles. Trenches are formed when layers of the crust slam into each other and instead of pushing up like the ridges, they fold at a seam and slide further downward into the layer below. The largest of these trenches, the Mariana, is found in the eastern Pacific.
The Mariana Trench is the deepest trench of this kind on Earth. Located in a north/south line east of the Philippines, it descends over 11,000m downward and slowly gets deeper. Compared to the height of Mount Everest, the tallest peak on the Earth at 8850 m, the Mariana Trench is gigantic. All of Mount Everest could fit into the Trench with nearly 2200m of ocean above it to the waves on the surface.
It is 2 times deeper than the Grand Canyon which is an average of 5000m deep. It is no wonder the Mariana Trench has been the subject of several science fiction films. It excites the imagination to think about what amazing mysteries of nature might still be discovered at such tremendous depths.
