Is ocean exploration really that difficult?

With the continuous development of science and technology, people can already go to the sky and into the sea. But have you ever thought about which one is more difficult, “going to the sky” or “going to the sea”?

In recent years, we always see news about the successful launch of space probes. Through the detection of probes, humans have begun to have a clear understanding of space. The farthest probe, Voyager 1, has already sailed into space 22.2 billion kilometers away from the earth. However, as for the ocean, there seems to be no new progress.

However, people have known the ocean for longer than space.

Vikings measured the depth of the sea as early as the 8th century AD.

In 1930, William Beebe and Otis Barton, the pioneers of deep-sea exploration, conducted a real deep-sea dive and set a historical record of 923 meters in 1934.

In 1960, the famous Swiss deep-sea explorer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh boarded the Trieste bathyscaphe and successfully dived into the world's deepest trench, the Mariana Trench, to a depth of 10,916 meters to conduct research.

In 1872, large-scale ocean expeditions began to appear.

As we all know, the total area of ​​the Earth's oceans is about 360 million square kilometers, accounting for about 71% of the Earth's surface area. However, looking at the current situation, facing such a large ocean, the deepest trench explored by humans is still the Mariana Trench. It can be said that human civilization has only developed 5% of the ocean so far.

Is ocean exploration really that difficult?

Have you heard of the “fear of the deep sea”? The ocean is always unpredictable. In the ocean, there are many unknown creatures. Moreover, for “landlubbers”, the deep sea is more like a terrifying abyss. Because the deep sea always makes people feel cold, depressed, and unable to breathe.

We all know that in the ocean, every 100 meters you dive, the pressure increases by 10 atmospheres, and every 10,000 meters you descend, the pressure increases by 1,000 atmospheres. For a professional diver, 400 meters is already the limit, and if a submarine wants to go deeper, it has to break through layers of resistance such as high pressure and water temperature. The deepest point that humans can explore at present, the Mariana Trench, has reached 100 atmospheres of pressure. What does that mean? This is equivalent to putting a nearly 70-ton crane on our fingers.

In addition to high pressure, the low temperature of the deep sea is also a big problem. Wherever the sun shines, it is warm. The sun can shine on the sea surface, but not in the deep sea, so the deep sea is a low temperature environment.

According to experts, the water temperature at a depth of 1,000 meters is about 7 degrees Celsius, while above 1,000 meters, the water temperature is about 0-4 degrees Celsius. Although it is close to the freezing point, it will not freeze due to pressure and undercurrents. Moreover, the deep sea is pitch black. How terrible must the creatures that can be raised in a place where light and temperature cannot reach must be.

The places we cannot explore are unknown, and we are usually afraid of unknown things. But humans will never stop exploring the unknown, and we will definitely explore and mine marine resources.

However, the reason why scientists do not study the deep sea too much, but focus more on outer space, may be that they realize that humans cannot survive on the seabed, but can migrate to the planet. What do you think about this? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area.