CHALLENGER DEEP

Located in the northwest Pacific Ocean, within the oceanic depression known as the Mariana Trench, it is the deepest known point in the world: the Challenger Deep. It is one of the most mysterious and inaccessible places of the planet, being situated at 10,902 meters below sea level and about 2000 meters above the height of Mount Everest. On 23 January 1960, the oceanographer Jacques Piccard and the lieutenant Don Walsh, on board the bathyscaphe Trieste, achieved to reach this unknown darkness. The descent took 4 hours and 48 minutes while the ascent to the surface took 3 hours and 17 minutes, a period of time that was well defined, but they perceived it as an eternity. The two men remained on the ocean floor for about twenty minutes during which the bathyscaphe was subjected to a pressure of a thousand times higher than that recorded on the sea surface. They thought life there in total darkness couldn’t be possible. Turning on the lights of Trieste bathyscaphe, however, they were very surprised to see through the porthole a shrimp and a particular species of sole, wandering in a desert of white sand. The piece describes this legendary expedition through four sections that follow each other seamlessly: "The Ocean" depicts the vast expanse of the sea, "The Mariana Trench" the descent into the ocean trench, "Abysses" the dark depths of the sea, "Towards the Sky" the ascent to the surface in the sunlight. A fearless and extraordinary feat which has never been repeated. Man climbed thousands of times on the summit of Everest, six times he has set foot on the moon. Piccard and Walsh, however, remain the only human beings who have reached the farthest point of the earth, the Challenger Deep.