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….