The Deepest Point in the Ocean Could Swallow Mount Everest

The crushing pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is almost impossible to comprehend. In its deepest part, the Challenger Deep, the water (Review) exerts a force of over 16,000 pounds per square inch. This is more than 1,000 times the atmospheric pressure we experience at sea level, equivalent to the weight of 50 jumbo jets stacked on a single person. This immense chasm in the western Pacific Ocean is so profound that it could easily swallow the world's tallest mountain, leaving its summit shrouded in over a mile of dark, cold water.

This incredible depth is the result of a geological process called subduction, where the dense Pacific tectonic plate slides beneath the smaller, lighter Mariana plate, creating a deep scar in the Earth's crust. The trench was first sounded by the HMS *Challenger* expedition in the 1870s, but humanity's first visit didn't occur until 1960, when the bathyscaphe *Trieste* made its historic crewed descent. Despite the eternal darkness and near-freezing temperatures, subsequent robotic and crewed missions, including one by filmmaker James Cameron, have revealed that life tenaciously persists here, with unique species of amphipods and other creatures adapted to one of the most extreme environments on the planet.