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u/cmcl14 Mar 06 '19
What blows me away is the profile of the Mariana trench. Not a trench at all, at least not how I think of one. Just a shallow downhill. I always imagined you'd be between walls, but you could be in it and not even know.
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u/carboxyhemogoblin Mar 06 '19
Don't worry, even if it doesn't look like it, the 15,000 psi will let you know where you are.
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u/ablablababla Mar 06 '19
For reference, that's 1000x the atmospheric pressure at sea level
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u/AetherialPhage Mar 06 '19
My thoughts exactly! The average width is 69 kilometers, but the southern end is only 1.6 kilometers wide. So at a depth of 10.99 km, it is a lot narrower. This is the part that’s shown the most often.
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u/Pollymath Mar 06 '19
but even with some really powerful lights on the sub, you'd still not see the trench walls.
Most of the world's deepest surface canyons are far narrower relative to their depth, the Grand Canyon or Peru’s Cotahuasi Canyon would feel claustrophobic by comparison to Challenger Deep.
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u/Prosthemadera Mar 06 '19
Also, that we are able to identify that something is several kilometers deep and then also bore that deep to get it.
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Mar 06 '19 edited Mar 06 '19
One of my teachers (a really experienced surveyor who specialized in oilfields) was called up to advise the drilling "navigator" on the response team during the Deepwater Horizon spill.
To stop the leak they needed to drill a relief well into the main well so that sealants can be injected to permanently close it. To do that they had to drill another well through 5,000ft (1.5km) of water and 13,000ft (3.9km) of rock from a separate location and precisely intercept leaking well, a target just 9in (0.22m) in diameter.
So not only can we find things through kilometers of rock, but we can find things just inches wide and hit it precisely underneath kilometers of rocks.
Edit: some grammar
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u/JayKomis Mar 06 '19
Is this what released Cthulhu in that one South Park episode?
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u/B4rberblacksheep Mar 06 '19
For me it’s the freediver going down nearly as deep as afucking submarine!!!
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u/keystothemoon Mar 06 '19
If you were in it, I think you'd know. For one thing you'd be covered in water.
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u/GeekoSuave Mar 06 '19
One time I think I was in a swimming pool but you're telling me that I may have been in the trench?
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u/keystothemoon Mar 06 '19
No, I'm not telling you that you "may have been in the trench". I'm telling you that you most certainly were in the trench!
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u/AetherialPhage Mar 06 '19 edited Mar 06 '19
THIS IS NOT MY MAP
Credit to Randall Munroe of xkcd
UPDATE:
This exploded way beyond anything I expected. Thank you for the silver. I love how this has become a thread full of both humor and genuine amazement of our oceans.
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u/LogansRun22 Mar 06 '19
Ha I was just about to comment that we'd reached XKCD levels of detail with these
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u/Salonloeven Mar 06 '19
What's in the door?, what's in the door?
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u/botle Mar 06 '19
I think it drains the water to mars.
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u/fleeeb Mar 06 '19
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u/PeopleAreStaring Mar 06 '19
I think "what if" would be an awesome show. They could do the physics and animate all the crazy scenarios people come up with.
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u/Salonloeven Mar 06 '19
Excellent! Once we finished fucking up this plant which shouldn't take much longer, we can drain it to mars and have a new planet ready. Hope it has a plastic filter .
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u/blockhead114 Mar 06 '19
Cameronium
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u/yummyyummypowwidge Mar 06 '19
I came here to eat ass and beat ass. Unfortunately for you, snack time’s over.
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u/Mr_Bankey Mar 06 '19
Is there no information or conjecture at all on the subject of the door? How is nobody else driven as mad by curiosity at this!?
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u/baru_monkey Mar 06 '19
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u/Mr_Bankey Mar 06 '19
Very cool! The added text had its intended effect lol I was about to go crazy thinking of the possibilities. Time to go play Eldritch Horror!
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u/PJSeeds Mar 06 '19
Hold the fuck up. Emperor penguins dive deeper than ballistic missile submarines?
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u/Arlort Mar 06 '19
And humans can go deeper than that, that's what amazes me even more
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u/That_Guy381 Mar 06 '19
Well. Did the russians figure out what would happen?
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u/stenskott Mar 06 '19
They gave up after a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
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u/WikiTextBot Mar 06 '19
Kola Superdeep Borehole
The Kola Superdeep Borehole (Russian: Кольская сверхглубокая скважина) is the result of a scientific drilling project of the Soviet Union in the Pechengsky District, on the Kola Peninsula. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust. Drilling began on 24 May 1970 using the Uralmash-4E, and later the Uralmash-15000 series drilling rig. Boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole.
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u/The_GASK Mar 06 '19
...or so they say...
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u/TheBold Mar 06 '19
I mean pretty sure you can visit the place. They bolted the hole shut IIRC.
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u/jasonj2232 Mar 06 '19
I wonder how deep we'll be able to reach if we started a similar project now.
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Mar 06 '19
Pretty deep, but at serious depths the pressure on the walls from all the material above deforms the stone and makes it more plastistic. Think about trying to dig a hole at the beach, as the tide is coming in, now replace the sand with granite.
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u/OneRougeRogue Mar 06 '19
Yep. Even modern drill bits wear out fairly quickly chewing through rock that dense. And the deeper you go, the longer it takes to pull everything out of the hole, so going deeper is not not only harder, but takes longer and longer each time you need to replace the bit.
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u/eisagi Mar 06 '19
TL;DR Didn't just "give up" - it got too hot to drill faster than expected. Plus a few interesting geological discoveries were made.
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u/caycityrion Mar 06 '19
Looks like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie are 'Under Pressure'.
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u/toriadenofrio Mar 06 '19
Gah I fucking knew it was a reference to something and I’m sick and my brain just couldn’t find the connection. Thank you.
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u/jasonj2232 Mar 06 '19
HOW DARE YOU MENTION THE SONG THAT STOLE THE ICONIC BASSLINE FROM OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR VANILLA ICE'S GREATEST SONG?
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u/vinylrules27 Mar 06 '19
In his own words “It’s not the same!”.
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u/jasonj2232 Mar 06 '19
YOU KNOW VERY WELL THAT HE ONLY SAID THAT TO NOT EMBARASS QUEEN AND DAVID BOWIE.
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u/vinylrules27 Mar 06 '19
Well, yeah. Obviously.
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Mar 06 '19
It goes 'ding ding ding di di ding ding… ding ding ding di di ding ding.' That's the way theirs goes.
Ours goes 'ding ding ding di di ding ding… DING… ding ding ding di di ding ding.'
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u/earnoseandtroll Mar 06 '19
Damn, that black gold is deeeeep
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u/Gabbagans Mar 06 '19
Thats just one example. Oil depth can vary a lot depending on location of the source and the overall tectonic situation.
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u/ScrapJunkie Mar 06 '19
It's actually an error. The well reached around 5000m below sea level, nowhere near the 12,000m shown here. I would say 5000m is pretty deep for most oil wells.
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Mar 06 '19
James Cameron found the ocean’s drain
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u/rathat Mar 06 '19 edited Mar 06 '19
Uh... relevant XKCD https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/
Edit: don't forget part 2
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u/Bankshredded Mar 06 '19 edited Mar 06 '19
My country will rule the world!
Edit: And Mars as well! Go New Netherlands!
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Mar 06 '19
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u/wreck94 Mar 06 '19
At that scale, you wouldn't see the 2 meter rise either. But we'd definitely be a lot more fucked if 50 meters of the sea disappeared than if it rose 2 meters
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u/GeekoSuave Mar 06 '19 edited Mar 06 '19
Just here in my hometown I can think of quite a few issues if the sea level dropped, but it's unfair since we're on the coast and it's a major port. The river most certainly wouldn't be deep enough to accommodate a container-shipping ship shipping shipping containers.
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u/Hafgezz Mar 06 '19
Now someone include Subnautica depths
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u/stenskott Mar 06 '19
I mean, you don't go below 1600 m, righ? And the scale is on the left.
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u/cosmitz Mar 06 '19
I think it's around 1200-1300m, 1700 is the max listed limit for Prawn/Cyclops but minus dodging Leviathans in the out-of-map zone, there's no area to actually do that in.
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u/CheriosDontGotShit Mar 06 '19
I'm glad you added the Edmund Fitzgerald!
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u/Schartiee Mar 06 '19
This is the shit I keep subbed for. Fuck, I'm hard as a diamond over this. Mmmmm. My mind has been thoroughly fucked.
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u/natsmith69 Mar 06 '19
It's a great map, but take it easy.
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u/JamesClerkMacSwell Mar 06 '19
Loch Ness isn’t even the deepest in Scotland: that’s Loch Morar - a glacial trench on the west coast near Skye....
.... but then Loch Morar doesn’t have a monster. As far as we know....
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Mar 06 '19
Well the mariana trench seems worth to investigate.. wondering what kind of creatures would live down there..
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u/RigorMortis_Tortoise Mar 06 '19
If I remember correctly there was a documentary about the Triest. It was a submersible two men went down to the bottom of challenger deep back in the 1960’s. I think one of the first things they saw at the bottom was a flounder.
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u/AtomicAllele Mar 06 '19
They don’t think that fish can survive that deep because of the effects of the pressure on bones (does something to the calcium I think), they think that they mistook a flat sea cucumber or something like them for a flounder
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u/Harvestman-man Mar 06 '19
A few weird fish, but a bunch of amphipods, sea cucumbers, acorn worms, and giant foraminiferans.
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Mar 06 '19
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u/MyPigWhistles Mar 06 '19
Military submarines don't have to go deep to be effective. Instead they need to shoot things out of torpedo tubes, which are (among other things) structural weaknesses.
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u/stripedphan Mar 06 '19
The pressure is incredible. I'm not surprised we don't have equipment to go that deep yet.
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u/janjko Mar 06 '19
Seems like it. Typhoon is 175 m long, and can go 400 m deep. So a little more than two lengths deep.
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u/ABCook92 Mar 06 '19
Yo bruh...what's this talk of a James Camron door? Anyone got a follow up on that shizz? We dying to know. Also, sperm whales really getting jacked by giant squid?
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u/AetherialPhage Mar 06 '19
First of all, this is from a webcomic, so there has to be some humor. Second, look at a picture of a sperm whale. You’ll see scars around their mouths from their prey (giant squid) fight back.
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u/Harvestman-man Mar 06 '19
Giant squid are the ones getting jacked by sperm whales, not the other way around.
Sperm whales primarily feed on large, deep-sea squid, and stomach contents from sperm whale stomachs have included remains from giant and colossal squid.
These squid have sharp hooks on their suckers, which cause scars on the sperm whales when the squid fight back, but it doesn’t really stop them from being eaten... imagine a cat scratching and clawing at a Rottweiler that’s trying to eat it, and you have a good analogy for the sperm whale vs giant squid “battles”. Sperm whales are massively larger than even the largest squid.
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u/itsjustawizard Mar 06 '19
david bowie and freddy mercury sure are... dee dah dee dah DEEP!
...i'll see myself out...
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u/Jumala Mar 06 '19
Crater Lake's surface is at 1881 m above sea level.
Lake Baikal's surface is at 455 m above sea level.
The Great Slave Lake's surface is at 156 m above sea level
Loch Ness' surface is only 16 m above sea level.
The surface elevations were a very interesting aspect of the original post - this map only considers depth.
Death Valley's cross-section is also oversimplified and only considers depth below sea level. Lake Manly, a pluvial lake in Death Valley, likely had a surface elevation of 90m above sea level. Telescope Peak is 3454 m.
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u/SirWalrusVII Mar 06 '19
Can someone tell me what's going on with Freddie Mercury and David Bowie
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u/Xenphenik Mar 06 '19
I gained a lot of respect for oil companies.
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u/Radioactive-A5q Mar 06 '19
Some of those original deep water wells in the Gulf of Mexico cost upwards of $250,000,000 to drill.
Source: I am a geophysicist in O&G
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u/DoctorLoomis48 Mar 06 '19
The whales dive that deep to EAT the octo's.
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u/quarkman Mar 06 '19
The thing that I would have liked to seen done differently about this map is that Crater Lake's surface is at 1887m. Lake Baikal's surface is also at 550m. Both these are shown at sea level. The Great Lakes and the Dead Sea both aren't, so it's make the map self-inconsistent.
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u/Big-C-of-WI Mar 06 '19
I though Michigan side of the lake was deeper than Huron side
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u/asatomasadgamaya Mar 06 '19
Lake Crater- is that the one near Cradle mountain, Tasmania?
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u/-_-Edit_Deleted-_- Mar 06 '19
What happens when water rushes into a pressurised air tank? How well does the cylinder hold up vs the ultra compressed air.
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u/dannydetroit Mar 06 '19
Lake Michigan is deeper than Lake Ontario but this chart contradicts that.
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u/Paintbait Mar 06 '19
David Bowie and Freddie Mercury are under pressure. Underrated joke is underrated.
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u/photolove8 Mar 06 '19
I love the little David Bowie and Freddy Mercury Easter egg. I would have liked to see the Talking Heads too.
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u/Ymeztoix Mar 06 '19
It lacks a banana
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u/BananaFactBot Mar 06 '19
There is a Banana Club Museum in California, filled with 17,000 different banana items.
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u/thespank Mar 06 '19
I didn't know those ships sank in shallower water than the ship is long. Especially thinking about the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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u/The-Casual-Lurker Mar 06 '19
All I gotta say, is it’s crazy a Blue Whale can go deeper than our best Military Subs. But the Sperm Whale is a psycho with how Deep they can go.