Railway
The deepest known point on the Earth, located in the Mariana Trench, is called the:
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Answer: Option D — Challenger Deep
Detailed Solution
The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point of the Earth's oceans. It lies at the southern end of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, south-west of Guam, and is about 10,900 to 11,000 metres (nearly 11 km) deep.
How deep is it?
If Mount Everest (8,849 metres) were placed in it, its peak would still be more than 2 km below the sea surface.
The water pressure at the bottom is more than 1,000 times the air pressure at sea level.
Origin of the name:
- It is named after the British Royal Navy ship HMS Challenger, whose expedition of 1872 to 1876 made the first soundings of the trench.
- The present Challenger Deep was surveyed in detail by a later ship of the same name, HMS Challenger II, in 1951.
The Mariana Trench:
- It is a crescent-shaped trench about 2,550 km long and about 69 km wide on average.
- It was formed by subduction, as the Pacific Plate sinks beneath the smaller Mariana Plate.
- It is protected as part of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument of the USA.
Human visits to the Challenger Deep:
- 1960: Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh reached the bottom in the bathyscaphe Trieste.
- 2012: Film director James Cameron made the first solo dive, in the Deepsea Challenger.
- 2019 onwards: Victor Vescovo and others made several dives in the submersible Limiting Factor.
India's Samudrayaan project:
Under the Deep Ocean Mission, India is developing the crewed submersible Matsya 6000, designed to carry three people to a depth of 6,000 metres in the Indian Ocean.
Life in the trench:
Despite the darkness, cold and extreme pressure, life exists there, including small crustaceans (amphipods), sea cucumbers and microbes.
Why not the other options?
- ✗The Tonga Deep (Horizon Deep) is in the Tonga Trench, the second deepest place in the oceans.
- ✗The Milwaukee Deep is in another ocean's trench, covered in a separate question.
- ✗The Emden Deep is in the Philippine Trench.
Quick tip
Remember: Challenger Deep (Mariana Trench, Pacific) = deepest point on Earth (about 11 km); first reached by Trieste in 1960.
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Oceans & Hydrosphere — Preparation
This question tests your understanding of Oceans & Hydrosphere, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.
This topic covers the hydrosphere: the oceans and seas of the world, ocean relief features such as trenches and ridges, ocean currents, tides, waves, salinity, and the world's major lakes, straits, gulfs and islands. Questions commonly ask about the largest and deepest ocean (the Pacific, with the Mariana Trench), warm and cold ocean currents, the causes of tides, and which water bodies a strait connects. For example, the Palk Strait separates India and Sri Lanka, and the Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Practise the oceans and hydrosphere questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.