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Home> News> Science

Published 16:24 16 Mar 2025 GMT

Scientist made worrying discovery when reaching the deepest point in the sea

Now here's something you weren't expecting to see at the bottom of the ocean

Brenna Cooper

Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock

Topics: Environment, Science

Brenna Cooper

Brenna Cooper is a journalist at LADbible. She graduated from the University of Sheffield with a degree in History, followed by an NCTJ accredited masters in Journalism. She began her career as a freelance writer for Digital Spy, where she wrote about all things TV, film and showbiz. Her favourite topics to cover are music, travel and any bizarre pop culture.

@_brencoco

An image captured from the bottom of the Mariana Trench went viral after a scientist made a chilling discovery on the sea floor.

Situated 35,000 ft (11,000 metres) below sea level is the Challenger Deep, which sits at the southern end of Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench and is believed to be the deepest point of the Earth's oceans.

To put that figure into context, a building would have to be the equivalent of between 28 Empire State Buildings in order to reach the ocean's surface.

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Or 13 Burj Khalifas, 36 Eiffel Towers, and so on and so forth.

In-fact, you could even plonk Mount Everest at the bottom of Challenger Deep and it still wouldn't reach the surface.

At the ocean's deepest point, a skyscraper or Mount Everest wouldn't reach the surface (Getty Stock Images)

After all, it didn't earn the name of Challenger Deep for no reason.

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As of 2022, only 27 people have made the descent into Challenger Deep, a list which includes Titanic film director James Cameron.

Another person to make the descent is oceanographer Dr Dawn Wright, who successfully navigated to the ocean floor back in 2022 — only to discover that humans have been able to leave their mark on even the most remote places on the planet.

Taking to social media after expedition, Dr Wright shared a photo from the bottom of Challenger Deep and shared her shock after discovering that an empty beer bottle had managed to make it down there.

"What did we see upon 1st touching bottom, at 10,900+m depth w/in #ChallengerDeep? A BEER BOTTLE," she wrote on X.

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"Further evidence that we MUST as humanity do BETTER by the ocean and for the health of habitats that we ourselves share & ultimately depend on!!! #ThereIsNoPlanetB #DeeperSeaDawn."

Recalling her reaction upon seeing the beer bottle in an interview with Los Angeles Times, Wright explained how disheartening it was to see how human actions were having an impact on some of the most hard to reach places on the planet.

"It had travelled more than 6.7 miles to the darkest depths of the Pacific, label still intact," she explained.

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"This discarded trash had managed to reach an unsullied part of our world before we actually did - a symbol of how deeply and irrevocably humans are affecting the natural world."

A beer bottle making its way down to the deepest point in the known ocean means that humans have now been able to leave litter at the highest and lowest points of Earth — with Mount Everest previously being called the 'world’s highest garbage dump' due to the amount of trash hikers leave up there.