A Visit to the Ocean's Deepest Point
Planning for the sequel to "Avatar," Hollywood director James Cameron hopes to send a manned submersible to the bottom of the Mariana Trench to film 3D footage for possible use in the film. That's a big ambition. The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans. How deep? Consider this: If you dropped Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, into the deepest part of the Trench, the mountain would still be nearly 7,000 feet under the water.
If successful, Cameron's submarine would be the first submersible in five decades to send humans down for a subterranean visit to the Mariana Trench. The two-man crew of Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard achieved that feat - some 35,797 feet below the surface of the water - on January 23, 1960.If he's looking for odd phosphorescent sights to populate the backdrop for Pandora, Cameron's come to the right place. Scientists who have sent probes to the region have published amazing pictures of erupting underwater volcanoes as well as images of rich bio-diversity of (often strange) marine life. In the accompanying gallery, you'll see some of the pictures that geophysicists sent back from a 2006 exploration of the area.
