This Is the Deepest Place in the Ocean

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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This Is the Deepest Place in the Ocean

© AndrisBarbans / iStock via Getty Images

About 70% of the world’s surface is covered by water, most of which is the salt water in the oceans. Although there has been debate about the number of oceans that world largest bodies of water should be divided into, the figure is usually fixed at five.

The largest of the oceans is the Pacific. It is just under half of the surface of all oceans and measures 186 square kilometers. It covers virtually all the coastal areas of Asia and the western edges of North America and South America.
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The second largest is the Atlantic, which covers 85 million kilometers from the eastern edges of North and South America to the west of all of Europe and down the west coast of Africa.

The third largest is the Indian Ocean, which covers 71 million square miles between India to Australia. The Southern Ocean rings Antarctica and covers 22 million square kilometers. And the Arctic Ocean covers 16 square kilometers.
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Another measure of oceans is how deep they are.

The deepest part of the oceans is the Mariana Trench. It runs south of Japan and just east of Guam. Its greatest depth is 11 kilometers below the surface, which translates into 6.8 miles. Most commercial jets fly about six miles above the Earth’s surface. If Mount Everest was put into the trench, its peak would be under water.
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The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is nearly five times more than it is at the surface, which makes it almost impossible for humans to explore. The U.S. Navy’s bathyscaphe Trieste did reach the bottom on January 23, 1960.
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Nearly all of the deepest parts of the oceans are in the Pacific, with the exception of an area near Puerto Rico and another near Peru and Chile.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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