How big is the Pacific Ocean compared to the rest of Earth?
The Pacific Ocean covers approximately 46 percent of Earth's water surface and about 32 percent of the planet's total surface area. It is larger than all of Earth's land combined.
Questions about Pacific Ocean
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is the deepest point in the Pacific Ocean?
The deepest known point is the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, reaching 10928 meters below the surface. It is the deepest known point in the world, and the Pacific's mean depth is 4000 meters.
How did the Pacific Ocean get its name?
Ferdinand Magellan named it Mar Pacífico, meaning peaceful sea, in 1520 after he met favorable winds on reaching the ocean. Earlier, in 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa had named it Mar del Sur, the Sea of the South.
Who were the first people to cross the open Pacific Ocean?
The Austronesian peoples, originating from the island of Taiwan around 3000 to 1500 BCE, were the first humans to reach Remote Oceania and cross vast distances of open water. Modern humans first reached the western Pacific around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago.
What is the Pacific Ring of Fire?
The Pacific Ring of Fire is the world's foremost belt of explosive volcanism, named after the several hundred active volcanoes that sit above its subduction zones. The Pacific is the only ocean mostly bounded by subduction zones.
Is the Pacific Ocean growing or shrinking?
The Pacific Ocean is shrinking by roughly 2.5 centimeters per year on three sides due to plate tectonics. By contrast, the Atlantic Ocean is increasing in size.
How polluted is the Pacific Ocean?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Japan is three times the size of France, holding an estimated 80,000 metric tons of plastic in about 1.8 trillion pieces. The quantity of small plastic in the north-east Pacific increased a hundredfold between 1972 and 2012.