A strange sound just echoed up from Earth’s deepest abyss, and scientists are scrambling for an answer. More than 35,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, the Mariana Trench hides an environment so extreme that almost nothing survives.
In October 2014, a research vessel carrying a team from Oregon State University traveled to the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. The group lowered an underwater drone equipped with sensitive listening equipment roughly seven miles into the trench, into a region known as the hadal zone, named after Hades, the ancient Greek underworld.The drone took about three hours to reach the bottom….
Descending 11,000 meters into the Mariana Trench, explorers expected a lifeless abyss, but they discovered a hidden world thriving in total darkness. That alien landscape holds creatures unlike anything on Earth, along with a deeply unsettling secret about human impact.
A popular claim repeated in documentaries for decades holds that more people have walked on the moon than have visited the bottom of the ocean. Researchers who study deep-sea exploration say this comparison is not accurate.Only 12 people have set foot on the moon, and 24 traveled there in total. By early 2023, researchers tracking crewed descents estimated that at least 27 people, possibly more th…