Throw a brick into the Marianas Trench
The ocean is the cradle of life on earth
Mankind's exploration of the unknown is not simultaneous but must be a comprehensive exploration. When humans buy into space, they also think about "catching turtles in five oceans", especially on the earth where 70% of the earth is the ocean.
The ocean is the cradle of life on Earth, but also another existence that threatens life on Earth. Because the sea floor is difficult to be penetrated by the sun's rays, and its pressure gradually increases with the depth of the water, so that even though human spacecraft have approached the periphery of the solar system, spanning a distance of more than 20 billion, but in the ocean more than 10,000 meters deep progress is slow, and this is according to the deepest part of the ocean to calculate.
The deepest place in the ocean: the Marianas Trench
The deepest place in the world is located in the western Pacific Ocean, northeast of the Philippines, named the Mariana Trench. The Mariana Trench is 11 km deep, 70 km wide on average, and 2,550 km in its entirety. Compared with its length and width, the depth can be said to be worthless, but for the ocean, a few meters of depth will be able to easily take the lives of land creatures.
It is widely believed that the formation of the Marianas Trench is related to plate movement. When the continental plate collides with the ocean plate, the ocean plate will be low, rocky, and dense characteristics of the subduction to the continental plate below. The subducted marine plate will break through the barrier between the crust and the mantle and come to the mantle. Since the average temperature of the mantle is more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, the part of the oceanic plate subducted will be melted and disappear quickly, which leads to the formation of the trench.
In 1951, the British Challenger II came to the Marianas Trench for the first time to explore its depth, by capturing acoustic echoes to calculate this, and finally measured its depth of 10,900 meters.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. Trieste dived into the Marianas Trench at a depth of 10,916 meters. China's "Sea Dou" submersible also successfully dived 10,767 meters in 2016, completing the challenge of 10,000 meters in the deep sea.
In addition to the exploration of the Marianas Trench by unmanned submersible, humans have also tried to go to the deepest part of the seafloor. 2012, American director James Cameron took the Deepsea Challenge to the trench at a depth of 10,898 meters and collected biogeological samples there.
Although the Marianas Trench is a high-pressure, dark and cold existence, humans have overcome many difficulties to come to it, but also found a flounder and a small red shrimp in the 10,000 meters deep water, which makes the struggle to customer service difficult of human not only feel the magic of life.
Compared to the self-evolution and selection of marine life, the human dive into the deep sea is much more difficult. So other than humans, something else can travel to the Marianas Trench Trench?
A brick's vision: the "new thing" at the bottom of the sea
When we were kids, we liked to use small rocks to drift in the river and watch them sink to the bottom. So if you replace those rocks with bricks, can they sink to the bottom of the water? If the bricks are thrown into the Marianas Trench will also sink to the bottom?
First, we have to consider whether bricks can sink to the bottom or not. A leaf will only float on the surface of the water, while a very small stone can sink into the water, which affects factors is density.
When the density of an object is greater than the seawater density, it will sink.
Under normal pressure, the density of water is 1000 kg per cubic kilometer. And with the increase in the depth of seawater, its density will gradually increase, if it is replaced by the Marianas Trench, the density of its 11 km depth increased by about five percent.
The density of bricks, on the other hand, is 1800 kilograms per cubic meter, which means that bricks will not only sink into the water but also sink to the bottom of the sea.
Although the bricks do not need to overcome the difficulties of low temperature and darkness like humans, but also face another problem: pressure.
Every 10 meters of seawater depth, its air pressure rose one standard unit, and by the time it reached the depths of the Marianas Trench, its water pressure was equivalent to 1,100 atmospheres. High pressure means that the brick may not reach the bottom of the trench, it has been completely shattered because of the pressure of seawater. But from the calculation results, the bricks will not shatter.
If the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench is converted to gravity, the weight per cubic meter at the bottom of its trench should be 112 kg. Our brick can withstand the gravity of about 3 kg if it is on land, and has long been crushed.
However, when the brick sinks to the bottom of the sea, it is subjected to forces not only from the top of the brick but also from all aspects of the sea, which are more balanced because they are at the same depth. What's more, although the brick is solid, but has the characteristics of water absorption. Therefore, when it sinks to the bottom of the sea, it is not crushed by the pressure of the sea floor.
Since we have ensured that the brick can dive safely to the bottom of the sea, how much time does it take?
The time it takes for a brick to fall into the water needs to be discussed in two ways. If it is a vertical fall into the water because its cross-section is smaller, the resistance is less, in such a case, the brick falls into the water by gravity, buoyancy, and resistance to the three forces, the final sinking time of the sea floor is about 67 minutes.
And if the largest cross-section into the water, its resistance will be greater, and the final arrival time will be longer, maybe close to two and a half hours to enter the sea floor.
The reality is that not only bricks can visit the depths of the Marianas Trench, but even many other things can reach it. In human studies of the Marianas Trench, it was found that the trench is so deep at 5,000 meters to 10,908 meters that microplastics are so abundant that they are found even at the bottom of the trench. This then suggests that it is much less difficult for anything other than humans to come to the depths of the trench, and also suggests that even the depths of the trench cannot defeat the plight of ocean pollution.
There are still many parts of the ocean today that are beyond human detection, and legends about holding sea monsters abound. But before these legends are confirmed, we have first confirmed the possibility that man-made creatures can come to the bottom of the sea, and that they play a destructive role in the environment of the ocean depths.
Both land and sea are part of the Earth, and the protection of the natural environment should be done in all aspects. Even if the oceans today are full of unknowns, we must not pollute them with loans.
About the Creator
Karen Gillanah
The aggravation that can be told is not aggravation; the lover that can be snatched away is not a lover.
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