To ask where is the biggest scar on earth, it is the Mariana Trench.
Don't think it's a static trench, scientists have found that the Mariana Trench is actually dynamic, it is swallowing up seawater.
According to the law of conservation of mass, this water cannot disappear for no reason, so where did the seawater swallowed up by the Mariana Trench end up?
Perhaps, the journey of these waters can reveal the material cycle of the earth.
It can even solve the mystery of the origin of Earth's oceans for us.
The world in the ocean
The deepest trench
The Mariana Trench is located in the Pacific Ocean and is formed by the violent collision of the Pacific Plate with the Eurasian Plate.
The deepest point of the trench is more than 11 kilometers, which means that the altitude here is -11 kilometers.
Because the exploration of the Mariana Trench is not yet the most comprehensive, this depth data will change in the future.
At present, there are even fewer probes that have come to the Mariana Trench than there are probes in space, and those who have reached the Mariana Trench can count it with one hand.
Why can humans fly thousands of miles in the air, but they cannot dive into the deep sea?
Deep-sea probes
This has to mention the harsh environment of the deep sea.
In the ocean, for every 100 meters of diving, the atmospheric pressure increases by a factor of 10.
Taking the data of 11,000 meters of the Mariana Trench, the deepest pressure is 110 megapascals, while our atmospheric pressure is 101 kPa, and 1 megapascal is equal to 1000 kPa, you can imagine what a terrible environment it was.
The universe is a vacuum, seen as 0 kPa, it and our atmosphere gap is only one atmosphere pressure, can be used to balance the pressure inside and outside the human body with spacesuits.
If one were to enter the Mariana Trench, it would be impossible to wear a wetsuit alone, and the people who went to the Mariana Trench were sitting in a submersible.
The probe came to the bottom of the sea
Only U.S., British, Soviet, Chinese, and Japanese probes have ever been to the Mariana Trench.
For a long time, humans knew very little about the Mariana Trench, and many people thought that it was a static trench that had taken shape.
But the latest research has found that the Mariana Trench may be deepening and that it is swallowing up seawater.
Mariana Trench
Huge devouring
According to the probe's calculations, the Mariana Trench swallows 3 billion tons of water per year, and every 1 million years is 30 quadrillion tons of seawater.
The Mariana Trench formed for about 60 million years, and the seawater swallowed by it can submerge any continent.
So why hasn't the Pacific Ocean been swallowed up by the Mariana Trench?
It remains the largest ocean in the world. Where did all this swallowed seawater go?
The Mariana Trench is swallowing up seawater
First of all, we need to understand that the vast majority of living things on the earth live on the earth's crust, and various geographical environments are also part of the earth's crust.
The Mariana Trench is above the Earth's crust, with an average thickness of 17 km, while the Mariana Trench is 11 km deep, which means that the Mariana Trench is the thinnest crust in the world, only about 6 km.
Therefore, if the Mariana Trench has the existence of swallowing seawater, then the place where the seawater goes is the next layer of the earth's crust.
The structure of the Earth
Below the crust is the earth's mantle, which is divided into the upper mantle and the lower mantle, in which the junction of the upper mantle and the earth's crust is liquid, known as the asthenosphere.
The asthenosphere is rock in a molten state, commonly known as magma, which is the material ejected from the earth's volcanoes.
The temperature of the asthenosphere is 700 to 1400 ° C, and many people think that seawater will vaporize into water vapor after flowing into the asthenosphere, but it is not.
Because the pressure of the upper mantle is very large, more than anywhere on the earth's surface, seawater will react with the asthenomorphic material at such a temperature and pressure, merge into the asthenosphere, and become a substance.
There are two ways in which the substance becomes water again.
Asthenospheres are considered the birthplace of magma
The first is to be ejected by a volcano, because the pressure of the atmosphere is much smaller than that of the upper mantle.
Seawater, which was originally asthenospheric, is reverted back to water vapor in a series of reactions and returns to the atmosphere by evaporation.
It then comes to the surface of the Earth through precipitation, and finally joins the sea, but this sea is most likely not the Pacific Ocean.
It is equivalent to these seawater moving a nest.
The second is that the asthenosphere becomes part of the Earth's crust by cooling, and these substances are also converted back to water due to low pressure and low temperature.
It is then fed into the groundwater through infiltration, and the final destination of the groundwater is also flowing to the sea.
The sea waters of the sea
This sea, too, will not be limited to the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps the Indian Ocean, or even the Arctic Ocean.
Of course, the seawater swallowed up by the Mariana Trench does not necessarily all fall into the upper mantle, and it is also possible to "bend" in the crust and go to another place in the crust.
As mentioned earlier, the depth of the crust of the Mariana Trench is about 6 km, and the main component of the crust is rock, which is not necessarily tight, and there will be cracks or gaps in it.
After being swallowed, seawater has to pass through the crust and then enter the mantle, so in the process, a part of the seawater will directly "slip away" in the form of liquid, along the gap in the crust to become groundwater.
In summary, the final destination of these three roads is the sea, that is, where to bring where to go.
Even if it swallows up 3 billion tons of seawater every year, sea levels will not drop because the Earth's water presents a dynamic equilibrium.
Water circulation on Earth
The origin of the ocean
The Mariana Trench tosses the seawater and reminds scientists of the mystery of the birth of Earth's oceans.
There are generally two hypotheses about how the Earth's oceans came about, and these two hypotheses are related to the true origin of human beings.
The first hypothesis is "extraterrestrial water", and the Earth's oceans are brought by comets.
Comets are celestial bodies in the Solar System that come from the distant Oort Nebula and are composed mainly of water, methane, hydrogen, and are all solid.
In the early days of the formation of the Earth, the solar system was full of various impacts, and the Earth was certainly not spared, and the Earth at this time was a "fireball".
Comets descend
After the comet hit the Earth, because the temperature of the Earth at this time was very high, it melted directly.
At that time, there were more than one comet that hit the earth, and some of the comets were very large, so that a few came down, and the initial ocean on the earth soon formed.
Gases such as methane and hydrogen on comets become the initial atmosphere of the Earth.
If this hypothesis holds, then the birth of life is not a matter of a ball on earth.
It is the result of a joint effort outside and inside the earth, and all living things are not native to the earth.
Changes in the Earth
The second hypothesis is that water existed when the earth was formed, but at that time it was not liquid, but existed in various parts of the earth.
The Earth at that time was a "fireball", like the Earth without the crust, exposing the mantle to the outside.
At this time, the water, like the seawater swallowed up by the Mariana Trench, exists in the form of a substance inside and outside the "fireball".
The Earth then cooled, and the material became water that seeped out, forming the original ocean.
Early Earth's surface
Subsequently, near the mouth of the hot spring on the seabed, the first organic matter was formed, and finally the early life was formed.
If this hypothesis holds, it means that all of our creatures are indigenous to earth.
The experience of the seawater in the Mariana Trench now shows that the water of the early Earth could exist on the earth in a form other than solid liquid gas, and the ocean originated on the earth itself.
Fossils of early life
Sea level rise
Scientists have analyzed that the Mariana Trench does not cause sea levels to fall by swallowing up seawater, but the Earth's sea level is rising.
This ascent, of course, has nothing to do with the Mariana Trench, but is the result of melting glaciers.
As mentioned earlier, the water of the entire Earth is dynamically balanced, but this balance is now being broken.
Glaciers in the Arctic
Originally, the amount of water swallowed and spit out by the earth every year was equal, but because of global warming, the melting rate of the two-stage glacier accelerated, and the liquid water produced by the earth every year exceeded the water swallowed by the earth every year, which led to sea level rise.
The root cause of sea level rise is an increase in carbon dioxide levels and an increase in the greenhouse effect, which is due to the use of fossil fuels by humans, which release carbon sealed up in ancient times.
Originally, this was also a carbon cycle of the earth, but humans accelerated this speed and broke the processing speed set by the earth.
Glaciers melt
Scientists fear that this will trigger Earth's sixth mass extinction.