earth-science

About Video

From the surface of the sea down to the deepest part of the ocean is only 7 miles, but the extreme pressure down here means that more people have walked on the moon than have ever travelled to the bottom of the ocean. Yet, if you could drain the oceans you would encounter an incredible world. It's home to violent volcanoes, temperatures hot enough to melt lead, the oldest living animals on the planet, and earthquakes so powerful, they create giant tsunamis.

In a quest to discover what lies on the sea floor, Naked Science takes you on a journey to the last great frontier on our planet - the deep. Our first stop is the continental shelf where we encounter a strange that creates craters on the sea floor, could possibly sink ships, and may provide our energy supply for generations to come.

Diving further down, we explore the mid-ocean ridge, the longest mountain range on the planet. It's 4 times longer than the Andes, Rockies, and Himalaya mountain chains combined. Here we find black smokers, chimneys higher than the Statue of Liberty, pumping out water hot enough to melt lead.

Deeper still, we plunge past the Titanic to reach the abyssal plain - a vast expanse of sea floor that is a whale graveyard. It is also on the move. In the next 200 million years, all the sea floor will be swallowed up and disappear into the deep ocean trenches. It will carry with it, everything now resting on the sea floor. Wrecked ships, the bones of dead whales, even whole islands, will disappear into the bowels of the earth.

The deepest of the ocean trenches, indeed, the deepest part in the whole ocean is the Marianas trench - our final destination. Only two people have ever been here. In 1960 Jaques Piccard and Don Walsh descended the 7 miles to the bottom of the Marianas trench in their submarine the Trieste. The pressures at this depth are so great, that paradoxically, there is no danger of drowning. If their vessel had sprung a leak, the water would have entered in a jet so fast, that it would have sliced them in two.

The ocean trenches are some of the most violent places on earth. As the sea floor descends back into the earth, its death throes give rise to thousands of underwater volcanoes. But far worse for us, it also produces earthquakes powerful enough to send giant tsunamis crashing into continents hundreds of miles away.

The ocean floor is a violent, changing landscape. This film reveals the full range of its awesome power.

ASPECT RATIO 4.3
MAIN SOUNDTRACK English Stereo
DISC FORMAT DVD 5
REGION 1 NTSC
CLASSIFICATION Exempt
NOTE Not available for shipment outside the USA

Runtime: 54 minutes