Why does no deepwater form in the Pacific Ocean?
917724
Because of the volcanoes.
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Currently there are over five thousand active volcanoes underwater varying from ones larger than any on the surface to cones no larger than an automobile. The net reslut of this action is thermal heating of the oceans, at key positions, which in turn reaches the surfaceto be carried aloft into the atmosphere to become part of our surface weather pattern system. As the oceans are heated winds of a high velocity are created and driven over the land areas due to temperature differential. \n\nIn the Pacific Ocean there are ocean basins - volcanoes, of which there are estimated to be about 20,000 on the ocean bottoms of the world. Some of these form single mountains, and others join with other volcanoes to form ridges. The highest ones rise above the surface of the water as islands, which in many cases linear groups such as the Hawaiian Islands. \n\nIsland groups are simply the highest summits of ridges. The submerged part of the Hawaiian Islands is among the largest and longest of these volcanic ridges--more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) long. \n\nMany island groups of the Pacific are linear in form, with the largest and highest island of the group at one end and the lowest and smallest at the other. This feature is true of the Hawaiian Islands, explained as the result of intermittent movement of the tectonic plate over what is called a hot spot. \n\nMolten volcanic material is ejected from it and results in the formation of a large mass of material if the plate pauses for a sufficient length of time at the spot. In this way a volcanic island, or ridge, is built. The plate moves, and another part of it lies over the hot spot, receiving fresh volcanic material. Meanwhile the older material, if it has become an island, is subject to erosion and thus is worn down.
829824
If this all was true, the waters off the EAST coast would be higher, since Earth spins toward the east. \nHowever; even the ocean has areas of higher/lower elevation, according to Topex Dynamic Ocean Topography.\nhttp://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/MOVIES/Topex_Dynamic_Ocean_Topography.mpg\nBut there, around NZ, the ocean does not show higher elevation; it's at a normal  level.
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At 36,201 feet (11,034 meters) below sea level, Challenger Deep is the lowest part of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, located just east of the Philippines.\n\nThe water pressure is the equivalent of having about 50 jumbo jets piled on top of you. Yet even here life thrives, according to scientists who have pulled a plug of dirt from the seafloor.\n\nThe sample was taken from the Challenger Deep, which is nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) deep. The soil was packed with a unique community of mostly soft-walled, singled-celled organisms that are thought to resemble some of the world's earliest life forms.\n\nThe sediment core was collected with KAIKO, JAMSTEC's remotely operated vehicle. Kitazato and colleagues report the discovery in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.\n\nI doubt we will ever see the bottom!
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The concentration of salt in seawater varies with temperature.  Because the Arctic and Antarctic oceans are colder than the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, the salt is less soluble.  By the same principle, seawater near the floor of the ocean would be less salty because it's cold down there.  Throw in a few baby volcanoes, the Atlantic rift and a few dozen fumaroles, etc...  Then, you would have to know how many liters of water are in the oceans and that quantity is constantly changing.  Now, are you talking about common NaCL?  Or do you want to include all the sulfates, carbonates, phosphates, etc... which are all in the ocean?  Thanks for the easy 2 points!
45610
Yes, and the ocean floor does change shape and volume over time. One effect of tectonic activity is that the mid-ocean ridges sometimes increase in height and can cause gobal sea-level rise, or if they fall they will cause sea-level drop. Other tectonic activity may offset this rise by opening the oceans wider or making them narrower. Right now the Pacific Ocean is growing in width by about 4 centimeters per year. There are many other factors that can affect sea level though, including different types of plate tectonic movement and global temperature changes.\n\nVolume is defined as ( I quote):\n   "1. The amount of space occupied by a three-dimensional object or region of space, expressed in cubic units.\n   2. The capacity of such a region or of a specified container, expressed in cubic units." Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=volume\n\nWhen I refer to volume of the ocean basin, I am refering to the capacity (2). It does change.
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The Mariana Trench (or Marianas Trench) is the deepest known submarine trench, and the deepest location in the Earth's crust itself. It is located in the floor of the western North Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands at 11°21′N 142°12′E, which is near Guam. The trench is the boundary where two tectonic plates meet, a subduction zone where the Pacific Plate is being subducted under the Philippine Plate. The bottom of the trench is further below sea level than Mount Everest is above sea level.\n\nThe trench has a maximum depth of 10,911 m (35,798 feet) below sea level. Taking into account its latitude and the Earth's equatorial bulge, this puts it at 6,366.4 km from the centre of the Earth. The Arctic Ocean, on the other hand, is 4-4.5 km deep, which would put its floor at ~6,352.8 km from the Earth's centre, 13.6 km closer.\n\nIt was first surveyed in 1951 by the British navy vessel, Challenger II, which gave its name to the deepest part of the trench, the Challenger Deep. Using echo sounding, the Challenger II measured a depth of 5,960 fathoms (10,900 m) at 11°19′N 142°15′E. This sounding was repeatedly made using earphones to hear the return of the signal as the stylus passed across the graduated depth scale, whilst the timing of the speed of the echo-sounding machine, a necessary part of the process, was made with a hand held stopwatch. For these reasons it was considered prudent to subtract one scale division (of 20 fm) when officially reporting a new greatest depth of 5,940 fm (10,863 m).\n\nIn 1957, the Russian vessel Vityaz reported a depth of 11,034 m (36,201 ft), dubbed the Mariana Hollow; this measurement has never been replicated and is not considered accurate. In 1962 the M.V. Spencer F. Baird recorded a greatest depth of 10,915 m (35,810 ft). In 1984 the Japanese sent the Takuyo, a highly specialized survey vessel out to the Mariana Trench and collected data using a narrow, multi-beam echo sounder; they reported a maximum depth of 11,040.4 m1 (this is also reported as 10,920±10 m 2). The most accurate measurement on record was taken by another Japanese probe, Kaiko, on March 24, 1995: 10,911 m (35,798 ft) 3.\n\n \nJanuary 23, 1960: Just before the diveIn an unprecedented dive, the U.S. Navy bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom at 1:06 pm on January 23, 1960 with U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard. Iron shot was used for ballast, with gasoline for buoyancy. The onboard systems indicated a depth of 37,800 ft (11,521 m), but this was later revised to 35,813 ft (10,916 m). At the bottom Walsh and Piccard were surprised to discover soles or flounder about one foot (30 cm) long, as well as shrimp. According to Piccard, "The bottom appeared light and clear, a waste of firm diatomaceous ooze".\n\nAt the bottom of the Mariana Trench, water exerts a pressure of 1086 bar (108.6 MPa or 15,751 psi).
1033445
Because of fossils that have been found..it has been determined that at some point..the entire Arizona desert surrounding the Grand Canyon was underwater except for a few of its highest platteaus and mountians which would have appeared as islands. So indeed if the water receded quickly then the canyons would have been formed within a matter of days...not millions of years. Same thing wtih the Bad Lands canyon system in Wyoming and the Dakotas. The rock strata even resembles the layered effect of various ocean sediments as they shift and settle over and over to change the underwater landscape every day. Love in Christ, ~J~ <><
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Most of the materials in mud are at least twice as dense as water and settle out rather quickly. Very small particles stay suspended longer. The ocean currents are not nearly as turbulent as river currents since it has much less obstructions to flow around, so there is less energy to keep the particles suspended.\n\nHowever, the correct answer is "it does". The ocean does mix with the earth and form mud, as a trip to a seashore with sediments fine enough to form mud will show you. Even when the sediments settle to the bottom they are still mud. It just isn't enough to fill the entire ocean, and is often covered with clear water that the sediments have settled out of already.
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I don't think it could "fall" into the ocean.\nBut if you follow along with global warming rasing the sea level, then at some point if it stayed where it is, that location would be underwater.  I would have to think it would be moved further inland if that happened.
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There are a number of currents in the ocean in which the water temperature is different from the surrounding area.  The most famous of these is the Gulf Stream that brings warm water from the tropic areas north off the East Coast of the United States and then across the Atlantic to Europe.\n\nNote that this movement is clockwise if you look at it from space.  Of course, this also means that on the other side of the ocean, cold water will move south to complete the circuit.\n\nNow we go to California.  There is a cold current called the California current that brings water from the area off Alaska in the same manner.  This cold water is also full of nutrients which is why there are the kelp forest and abundant wildlife.  It moves in the same manner as the Atlantic Ocean example.\n\nHope this answers your question.
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OMG!!!  We would all be forced to live in the mountains because everywhere else would be underwater. Thank you Sponge Bob for keeping us high and dry.\n\nActually no difference. They are saturated in water that would have been there anyway. And the solid parts are made from the minerals and organic compounds which already existed in the ocean. I believe that any calculation or measurement for ocean depth/volume would be the same with and without sponges.
40193
WHOI (Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography) has posted some bathymetry maps showing the highest points to be around 2500 meters (8366 feet) deep. However, the East Pacific Rise is a large area, so it is difficult to answer your question with much more than just an example. The base of the features on their maps is about 3000 meters (9842 feet). You can see the maps at:
1091235
What is El Niño? In a narrow sense, it's a giant puddle of heated water that sloshes across the Pacific Ocean. From NASA satellites, we can see the big picture; a massive pool of warm seawater, half again as large as the United States, builds in the western Pacific over a period of months. This gargantuan wedge of warm sea contains 20 or 30 times as much water as all the Great Lakes put together. In one sense, it's like an iceberg; most of it is submerged, but part of it sticks out above the sea's surface, as the wedge floats in the surrounding ocean. Partly because warm water is less dense than cool water, and also partly because El Niño waters are less salty than normal seawater. (It's always raining over an El Niño, and the rainwater dilutes the sea.) Both of these conditions contribute to buoyancy. A sharp temperature and density change -- called the thermocline -- floats about 100 meters below the surface, and marks the bottom of this warm "iceberg." The top layer of water may protrude 150 or more centimeters above sea level. This isn't so hard to picture if you think about tides, which also pile water up above sea level. El Niño's energy reserve is vast, almost inconceivable. It contains more energy than has been procured from all the fossil fuels burned in the United States since the beginning of the century - that's all the gasoline in all the cars, the coal in all the power plants, the natural gas in all the furnaces. It would take more than a million large power plants, at 1,000 megawatts each, running full tilt for a year, to heat the ocean that much. Or if you want to think in more violent terms, that's all the energy produced by about half a million 20 megaton hydrogen bombs, gone into heating water.\n\nScientists are divided on what triggers the buildup. Some say it begins when strong west-blowing winds near the equator-the trade winds-push against the sea, and drive sun-warmed surface waters against Indonesia and Australia. There the waters pile up like driftwood blown into a harbor. Others say that's backwards, that the wind is an effect, not a cause; warm masses of air in the western Pacific, heated by already-feverish tropical waters, create a vacuum beneath them as they rise like enormous hot air balloons. This vacuum sucks the trade winds toward it, making them stronger. Of course, these winds then pile more warm water up as they blow against the sea's surface, in turn causing more thermal updrafts, more vacuums, more winds. At some point, something snaps. The winds can no longer hold the wall of water up, and it begins flowing back "downhill." Like a teeter-totter, what was high becomes low, and what was low becomes high. Water levels actually dip below sea level near Australia, and as the pile traverses the Pacific, waters rise in the east near South America.\n\nThere are other, more elaborate theories about what causes El Niño, but one element seems common to all of them: when you look closely, you see a dog chasing its own tail. The truth is, no one knows what really causes El Niño. It might very well be the last El Niño that starts the next one. The official scientific name for El Niño, ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) reflects an understanding of this teeter-totter nature. An oscillation is a reverberation back and forth between two states, like between summer and winter. El Niño is one extreme of a years-long oscillation in the entire pacific basin and the atmosphere above it. As the cycle unfolds, an "anti-El Niño," dubbed La Niña, appears as El Niño disappears. Like a mirror image of El Niño, it produces extreme weather and abnormal conditions in the western Pacific similar to those El Niño produces in the east. Back and forth, east and west, this cycle has run continuously for many thousands of years.\n\nTree rings displayed in slice of wood Scientists looking back through time find that El Niño has left tanta
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in some parts of the ocean it can be miles deep. the ocean covers 2/3 of the earth, and we find new species in it all the time. there are still many primitive species alive today, such as the shark and the horseshoe crab. they are species that are millions of years old. i think that there could be many more dinosaur related species yet to be discovered. it's completely possible.
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According to Wicipedia, Oceanic trenches are typically 3 to 4 kilometers deeper than the surrounding sea floor. The average overall depth of the ocean is 4 kilometers. And the Deepest part of the the ocean is the Marianas Trench in the Pacific which reaches depths of 11,000 meters.  \n\nAccording to SJWamback, Ocean trenches such as the Marianas Trench are the places where giant slabs of ocean floor actually sink back toward the mantle of the earth and melt. These trenches and subduction zones are a portion of the process of Plate Tectonics which moves Earth's continents and sea floors and recycles the entire crust of the Earth throughout its history.   Deep Eh?   \n\nSuzi from Buffalo
841947
A mid ocean ridge is an area where new sea floor is created throught the divergent (speading) motion of the tectonmic plates in that area. At mid ocean ridges, fractures from the pulling allow small amounts of magma to squeeze in and push the plates that much more.\n\nIt comes down to density. The center of the ridge is high, because it it new (just formed) and hot. The edges are low because it is old and cold. There are two main theories on the cause: slab pull and ridge push.\n\nRidge push is the classic idea that the ridge is a high point of a convection current, pushing the plates aside and allowing new mantle material to rise up and fill the hole.\n\nSlab pull is the new idea that the subducting end of the plate, that is really old and dense, pulls on the entire plate as it subducts, and thus pulls apart itself in places, causing a hole which is then filled by rising material, forming the ridge.\n\nIt's kinda a chicken/egg thing, so we may never be able to rule one or the other out.