The earth swallows hundreds of millions of tons of water every year. What's going on? Where does this water end up going?

do you know? Our earth is constantly absorbing seawater, which can reach hundreds of millions of tons every year. What is going on? If this continues, will our water resources disappear completely? Where will the swallowed water go?

The ocean occupies three-quarters of the earth's surface area. From the current point of view, human exploration of the ocean is only 5%, and 95% of the ocean is still in an unknown state. The water we can cite now only accounts for the total amount of water. 2%, and this "drinking" place is under the ground of the Mariana Trench .

The Mariana Trench can be said to be the closest place to the center of the earth. Its deepest point is about 11,000 meters down from sea level. What kind of concept is this? That is to say, if the highest Mount Everest in the world and Mount Tai, the head of the Five Sacred Mountains, are overlapped and thrown into the sea, they will not emerge from the sea, and the new submarine "Dragon" independently developed by China can only dive to a depth of more than 6,500 meters. It has only reached half of this trench, so people also named this place as Feichaci Haiyuan, which has been formed for 60 million years.

Darkness and fear are people's descriptions of it, just like the "return to the ruins" described in the "Shan Hai Jing", this is the abyss of the sea, and all the water in the world flows here, and it will never be able to fill it up. Even more impossible.

Human exploration of the ocean is endless, even the dangerous Mariana Trench is no exception.

A research team from the University of Washington in the United States published an article in the journal, which pointed out that the Mariana Trench is continuously swallowing seawater, which is 4.5 times faster than previously estimated by humans. This speed is directly beyond their prediction.

In 2015, when the scientific research team conducted data research on the Mariana Trench, in addition to detecting tens of thousands of natural sounds, they also detected a very low-frequency sound in the depths of the trench. Strangely, the miserable roars and swallowing sounds blended together, and the rhythm had a certain regularity. At first, they thought it was from the creatures under the trench, but this possibility was quickly ruled out.

At present , the largest marine creature is the blue whale, which weighs more than 180 tons. It is also the largest mammal in the world. Its tongue alone weighs 2 tons. Such a huge creature can only reach a water depth of about 300 meters. In the Mariana Trench with a depth of 10,000 meters, there will be no living creatures in any case. In addition, there is no sunlight here all year round. Food alone cannot meet the living conditions of living creatures.

Later, after a long period of research and detection, from the seismograph data under the Mariana Trench, scientists believe that there is a relatively high possibility that there is a huge gap in the depth of the trench that is swallowing water.

We know that the earth is composed of multiple plates, and these plates are in motion every day, so that there will be cracks between the plates, and at this time, the seawater is also constantly following the plate movement. When the seawater is poured into the gap When it collided with a strong air pressure, it caused friction, so the strange sound detected by the scientists was produced in this process.

Judging from the current data, the global sea level has not declined, but has a rising trend. This shows that the swallowing of sea water will not change the current ocean system. All this is due to the rise of the subduction zone in the ocean. to the cycle effect.

Most of these swallowed seawater will flow into the interior of the earth, they will not be sealed here forever, but appear on the earth in another way.

The structure of the earth can be divided into the crust, the mantle and the core, and they all move with each other. When the plates collide, the resulting subduction zone will transport seawater into the interior of the earth, and then return the water to the earth through geological movement. Earth.

That is to say, it is actually the earth itself that has been swallowing seawater, and some scientists believe that these swallowed seawater will also be released with each volcanic eruption, thus continuing to participate in the water cycle system.

That is to say, even if hundreds of millions of tons of seawater are swallowed up every year, the earth will maintain the balance of water resources through geological movements, and then give back to nature in various ways, which is why the sea level does not drop but rises On the contrary, if there is no seawater that is not swallowed and kept in the interior of the earth, the rate of sea level rise will be greater than it is now.

However, some scientists have also raised objections. They feel that the seawater that flows into the earth will be evaporated by the high temperature inside and will not return to the surface of the earth, but all this is in the stage of speculation. As for these swallowed seawater will eventually flow into There is still a need to continue research, the only thing that is certain is that the earth's crazy "drinking water" is real .

The phenomenon of seawater being swallowed up like this is not uncommon. There are more than 20 large trenches like the Mariana Trench. They run through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the amount of seawater absorbed is also unimaginable. It can be seen from this that every Every ocean has infinite mysteries.