The deepest point in the ocean could swallow Mount Everest
Challenger Deep plunges nearly 11 kilometres down — far enough to bury Earth's tallest mountain with room to spare.
At the southern end of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific lies Challenger Deep, the lowest known point on Earth’s surface. It bottoms out at roughly 10,935 metres (35,876 feet) below sea level — almost 7 miles straight down.
That’s deeper than Mount Everest is tall. Drop the 8,849-metre mountain into the trench and its summit would still sit more than 2 kilometres underwater.
The feature is named after HMS Challenger, whose crew first sounded the trench in 1875. Humans have reached the bottom only a handful of times — first by Trieste in 1960, then by James Cameron’s solo dive in 2012.
The pressure down here is over 1,000 times that at the surface — more than a tonne pressing on every square centimetre.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
