The Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of the ocean floor, lies in which trench?
- A.Puerto Rico Trench
- B.Java or Sunda Trench
- C.Mariana Trench
- D.Tonga Trench
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, the Mariana Trench, which lies in the western Pacific east of the Mariana Islands. Its southern end holds the Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point on earth at roughly eleven kilometres below sea level, deep enough to swallow Mount Everest with water to spare. Trenches like it form where one oceanic plate is being pushed down beneath another, which is why they run beside volcanic island arcs.
Option A, the Puerto Rico Trench, is the deepest point of the Atlantic but is far shallower than the Mariana. Option B, the Java or Sunda Trench, is the deepest part of the Indian Ocean and lies south of Indonesia. Option D, the Tonga Trench, is in the south Pacific and is among the deepest in the world, yet its greatest depth is still less than that of the Challenger Deep.
Read the full article: Oceans and Ocean Currents: Tides, Salinity and PYQs
Practice Questions
View allWhich of the following ocean currents is associated with the Indian Ocean?
- A.Florida current
- B.Canary current
- C.Agulhas current
- D.Kurile current
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It is a warm current of the Indian Ocean that flows southward along the eastern coast of southern Africa, carrying tropical water towards the Cape before most of it turns back into the Indian Ocean.
Read the full explanation →El Nino is a name given to the periodic development of a warm ocean current along the coast of _______.
- A.Columbia
- B.Peru
- C.Chile
- D.Bolivia
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El Nino, Spanish for the child, is the warm surface water that appears off the coast of Peru and Ecuador around Christmas in some years, replacing the normally cold Peru or Humboldt current.
Read the full explanation →With which of the following oceans would you associate the 'Ring of Fire'?
- A.Pacific
- B.Indian
- C.Atlantic
- D.Arctic
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The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt running around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, from the Andes up the west coast of the Americas, across the Aleutians and down through Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia to New Zealand.
Read the full explanation →The percentage of earth's water found in the oceans is ______.
- A.94 percent
- B.97.2 percent
- C.90.2 percent
- D.92.2 percent
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Textbooks describing the distribution of water on earth give about 97.2 per cent as ocean water, roughly 2 per cent locked in ice caps and glaciers, and well under 1 per cent as groundwater, lakes, rivers, soil moisture and water vapour together.
Read the full explanation →Spring tides, the highest tides of the month, occur when:
- A.The sun, the earth and the moon are in a straight line
- B.The sun and the moon are at right angles with respect to the earth
- C.The moon is farthest from the earth
- D.The season of spring begins in the northern hemisphere
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Spring tides occur at new moon and at full moon, when the sun, the earth and the moon lie in a straight line, a position called syzygy.
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