Have you ever thought about the scene under the 10,000-meter-deep sea? What secrets are hidden in that dark realm of nothingness? Are they weird undersea people or other unknown creatures?
In fact, as early as 2010, Japanese scientists dived into such deep waters for detection. What is shocking is that in the faint light, scientists discovered some man-made products that belong here, and also asserted that this would be a harbinger of disaster for the world.
So where do these man-made objects come from, and how do they cause world-wide disasters? Let us start with the world and the ocean.
Ocean: The Main Theme of the Earth
"The world is so big, I want to see it..."
A resignation letter in 2015 almost set off the Internet. The ten short words made countless people who are deeply trapped in life realize that, apart from the immediate obscurity, poetry and distance also exist.
But how big is the world we live in, and where can we go to see it?
Obviously, according to the reality, the answers to these two questions should be opposite, that is, the world we live in is very big, but the places we can visit are very small.
This is mainly because, as humans are terrestrial creatures, land is our main area of activity, which means that most of the places we can reach and stop to appreciate are land landscapes.
However, this land that takes us a lifetime to travel actually only accounts for about 30% of the world's size. As for the remaining nearly 70%, it is mainly composed of oceans, such as the Pacific , Indian Ocean , Atlantic Ocean .
Therefore, we can completely understand that the ocean is actually the main theme of the earth. If it were not for the fact that humans live on land, the earth we live on might be renamed "water polo".
Perhaps it is due to this ratio that human beings have never stopped exploring and conquering the ocean since ancient times, from the earliest Zheng He's voyage to the Western Ocean, and Magellan's circumnavigation of the world, to the later invention of diving equipment, and then to the modern Chinese ship Jiaolong's 10,000-meter submersible.
It can be said that human beings have always used technology as a tool to continuously run on the road of conquering the ocean. However, it should be noted that even with today's advanced technology, human exploration of the seabed still has not exceeded 5%.
This may sound a bit fantasy, but it is also true. According to the definition of scientists, the ocean depth can be divided into five layers, namely the upper ocean layer above 200 meters, the middle ocean layer between 200 and 1000 meters, the deep ocean layer between 1000 and 4000 meters, the abyssal layer between 4000 and 6000 meters, and the ultra-abyssal layer below 6000 to 10000 meters.
Among these five layers, only the upper layer of the ocean above 200 meters can be said to be "active" for humans, and most of the people active here are professional divers. For ordinary enthusiasts and water players, the sea area of more than ten meters is already the limit.
After all, in the middle layer of the ocean below, without the help of equipment, humans cannot breathe oxygen even if they carry oxygen bottles , because the pressure here is as high as 29 atmospheres, and it is impossible for humans to breathe normally.
This means that at lower depths, humans can only rely on control equipment, such as artificial submersibles.
However, in the deep ocean below 1000 meters, sunlight can no longer penetrate. In other words, there is only endless darkness in the sea below 1000 meters, and the submersible can only rely on poor lights to explore the huge sea area.
To be honest, this is like walking by candlelight late at night. The area that humans can see is too small. This makes the exploration efforts begin to shrink infinitely, and almost only fixed-point surveys can be carried out in a certain area.
However, what is different from everyone's imagination is that in the subsequent ocean abyssal layer and ultra-abyssal layer, because the temperature is too low, there are actually very few organisms that can survive.
But it was also in this interval that the detection scientists found signs of man-made artifacts.
Deep-sea disasters
Between 1983 and 2014, Japan Marine Research and Development Agency cooperated with the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center to conduct deep point detection in the western part of the North Pacific, around the Japanese Islands, as well as at the edge of the Mariana Trench and the Para Trench.
The submersible that performed this detection mission was a submersible produced in Japan. It can perform the most basic photography and videography, which gave the joint expert team an intuitive understanding of the deep sea conditions.
However, according to the data returned, the expert team identified an artificial product-- plastic , and what is shocking is that they appeared in all detection areas.
In order to make the detection data more accurate, the expert team conducted a total of nearly 5010 dives and detected 3425 fragments of man-made objects. Plastic accounted for about 33%, making it a well-deserved "top of the list".
Coincidentally, in November 2020, my country's "Struggle" manned submersible also discovered these plastics when it dived into the Mariana Trench.
You must know that this place is 10,000 meters deep and is the lowest point of the world's oceans, but it is still covered with plastic, which makes people feel chills on their backs.
This is mainly because humans have entered the era of plastic manufacturing since the 1950s, and the discharge of plastics into the ocean began at that time. However, after decades of development, humans have always thought that plastics were limited to plastics floating on the sea. But now new discoveries on the seabed have forced people to re-evaluate the level of plastic pollution.
According to marine biology researcher Ryota Nakajima of the Japan Institute of Marine Earth Science and Technology, human society discharges more than 10 million tons of plastic into the ocean every year, but only a small part floats on the sea. Most of them have already sunk into the sea, or have turned into smaller particles.
However, do not think that plastic loses its harmfulness when it is turned into particles. On the contrary, when plastic becomes granular, it becomes more harmful to organisms.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, USA, once conducted a detection of plastic particles . They sampled water quality in sea areas with a depth of 5 to 1,000 meters, and also captured organisms living at various depths.
After some tests, they found that no matter what depth the water was, it was actually covered with plastic particles. Ingested plastic particles were even found in the bodies of oceanic red crabs and giant larvae ascidians .
In addition, Hull York Medical School and the University of Hull in the UK have also carried out related experiments, but the difference is that the subjects of their research are humans.
Experts found 13 volunteers and sampled their blood for testing. What shocked the experts was that 11 of the 13 blood samples contained microplastics , and the number was as high as 39 types.
Obviously, this means that plastic pollution has gradually been transferred to the living body, although there is currently no relevant evidence that microplastics will cause substantial harm to the human body.
But plastic is a non-decomposable product after all. Once it accumulates a large amount in the body, how can it not cause "qualitative change"?
Therefore, it is time for mankind to pay attention to plastic pollution, otherwise, a new round of world disaster will break out in an instant.
Reference:
" Plastic garbage was found in the Mariana Trench , and there is also human garbage on the seabed 10,000 meters away" ------- Popular Science China
"Japanese scientists discovered that the wreckage on the deep seabed of the North Pacific is dominated by single-use plastics" ------- Global Network
"From Antarctica to human blood, what does the discovery of microplastics mean? 》----------cctv.com
Author: Yachen Proofreading: Chuanchuan
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-