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¿Por qué la Fosa de las Marianas Sigue Aterrorizando a los Científicos? — Transcript

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0:03In 1960, two men made a journey of just
0:0611 km, a distance you could drive in a
0:08few minutes today. It took them almost
0:125 hours. And not because they were
0:15traveling on a difficult road; they
0:16were going straight down. Jack Piccard
0:19and Don Walsh were descending to the
0:21deepest known point on the planet, the
0:24Mariana Trench. Their vehicle moved so
0:30slowly that, on average, a person
0:32walking could have covered those same
0:3411 km faster. But down there, speed
0:39wasn't exactly an option. During the
0:47descent, the light disappeared
0:49completely. The temperature dropped to
0:51near freezing, and with every kilometer
0:54, millions of tons of water piled up.
0:57above them until, at almost 10 km deep,
0:59they heard something that was likely
1:02the last thing they wanted to hear
1:04inside a steel sphere surrounded by
1:06ocean. A cracking sound. One of the
1:11outer windows had cracked. Even so,
1:15they continued. At 1:06 PM, after
1:18almost 5 hours underwater, their
1:21vehicle finally touched the bottom.
1:2710,916 meters below the surface. For
1:31the first time, two human beings were
1:33sitting at the deepest known point on
1:35our planet. They stayed there for just
1:4020 minutes and then left. That happened
1:46over six decades ago. Since then, we
1:49have built much better submarines. We
1:52have sent cameras, sensors, and robots.
1:54We have returned time and time again.
1:57After more than 65 years of exploring
1:59this place, we still know absolutely
2:02nothing, because every time we go down,
2:04we find things so terrifying that it
2:06feels like we are exploring a
2:08completely new world. Down there,
2:11creatures exist that are so strange
2:13they make us question if they are even
2:14from this planet. Deposits of burning
2:18ice and ecosystems that function
2:20without ever receiving sunlight.
2:24Apparently, reaching the bottom wasn't
2:26the end of the story; it was just the
2:29beginning. Chapter 1. Too deep. For
2:38thousands of years, the problem wasn't
2:40reaching the ocean floor, it was
2:42managing to stay underwater for a few
2:44minutes without dying. Greeks and
2:46Romans were already free-diving to
2:48recover sponges, pearls, and objects
2:50from sunken ships. Some descended by
2:53holding onto a heavy stone to sink
2:54faster. It was so dangerous that
2:56ancient Rhodian maritime law allowed a
2:58diver to keep up to half of what they
3:00recovered if they brought it up from
3:01about 27 meters. And 27 meters were
3:04enough to discover that the ocean does
3:06not behave like our world. The pressure
3:09increased, ears could be damaged, and
3:11the time available depended on how much
3:14air a person could hold. In 1691,
3:19Edmund Halley tried to solve part of
3:22the problem with a diving bell that
3:24trapped air inside and replenished it
3:26using barrels sent from the surface. he
3:29managed to stay for about an hour and a
3:32half at around 18 m. It was a shallow
3:34depth, but for the first time, humans
3:36could take a small bubble of their
3:38environment with them. Later came
3:43better bells and suits that allowed
3:44walking on the bottom, but they all
3:46shared the same flaw: they depended on
3:48the surface. And while we struggled to
3:52go down a few dozen meters in 1875, the
3:54British Challenger expedition was near
3:55the Mariana Islands when it dropped a
3:57rope with a weight to measure the
3:59bottom. The rope kept going down until
4:03it touched ground at nearly 8,200 m.
4:05Years later, another measurement in the
4:07region exceeded 9,600. The contrast was
4:10absurd. We could measure a place
4:12located kilometers deep, but we didn't
4:15have any machine capable of taking us
4:17there. To advance, improving a suit was
4:19no longer enough. Something much more
4:21radical had to be done: completely
4:23separate the human being from the ocean
4:25. And the first serious attempt was
4:27practically a steel ball hanging from a
4:29cable. In 1934, William Beebe and Otis
4:33Barton descended inside the Bathysphere
4:36to 923 m. The machine was brutally
4:40simple: a steel sphere for two people,
4:42stored oxygen inside, and a cable
4:43connecting it to the ship, with small
4:45windows. They observed bioluminescent
4:49fish moving in a darkness that no human
4:51had ever seen directly. The interior
5:00was not comfortable at all, either. To
5:02get in, they had to crawl through an
5:04opening of less than 60 cm. A door
5:06weighing hundreds of kilos sealed them
5:08inside, and as the sphere cooled,
5:10moisture condensed on the ceiling and
5:12ended up forming small puddles under
5:13their feet. They had oxygen for several
5:16hours. but practically no space to move
5:19around. But the deeper they went, the
5:22more evident their weakness became. The
5:24Bathysphere had no engines. A storm
5:26above could make it sway below, and to
5:28go further, they needed an increasingly
5:31long and heavy cable. There would come
5:33a point where the cable itself could
5:35become what killed them. The solution
5:40appeared thanks to a man who had spent
5:42years trying to travel in exactly the
5:44opposite direction. Auguste Piccard was
5:46a tall, extremely thin Swiss physicist,
5:48so eccentric that he looked like a
5:50science fiction character. In 1931, he
5:52went up inside a capsule suspended
5:55under a balloon to 15,781 m. A year
5:58later he reached 16,201, but the record
6:01wasn't what mattered. At that altitude,
6:04his capsule kept two people alive, even
6:06though the air outside was too thin to
6:08breathe normally. Piccard understood
6:10that the problem of the sky and the
6:12ocean were opposite, but the solution
6:13could be similar. Build a small room
6:16where the conditions outside didn't
6:18matter. Thus, the bathyscaphe was born.
6:20Instead of being tethered to a ship, it
6:22carried a massive float filled with
6:24gasoline, which is lighter than water
6:26and compresses very little. To descend,
6:28it carried tons of iron as ballast. To
6:30return, it would release that iron, and
6:32the gasoline would cause the vehicle to
6:33ascend. It was, in essence, a hot air
6:36balloon designed to travel downward.
6:39Together with his son Jack, Piccard
6:41ended up developing a new machine
6:43called the Trieste. It was about 18
6:45meters long and carried its two
6:47occupants inside a small steel sphere
6:49located beneath the float. The ballast
6:51was held by electromagnets, a detail
6:53that seemed simple but was brilliant.
6:55If the electricity failed completely,
6:57the magnets would turn off, the iron
6:59would fall, and the vehicle would start
7:00to rise automatically. In a place where
7:02there was no emergency exit, losing
7:04power could become the system that
7:06saved you. In 1953, Auguste and Jacques
7:10descended to 3,150 meters. Afterward,
7:13the Trieste conducted more tests, but
7:15the goal that really mattered was still
7:18nearly 8 km further down. In 1958, the
7:21United States Navy bought the machine
7:23for $ 250,000. And launched Project
7:26Nekton. They didn't just want to break
7:29a record; they wanted to take two
7:31people to the deepest known point on
7:33Earth. There was only one rather
7:35strange question left to solve. If no
7:37one could see it from above, how did
7:39they know exactly where the ocean ended
7:42? Chapter 3. The Scar. For centuries,
7:48knowing the depth of the sea meant
7:50lowering a rope with a weight and
7:51waiting for it to hit the bottom. Sonar
7:54changed the rules. Instead of sending
7:56down a rope, a ship could send sound
7:58toward the bottom, measure how long the
8:00echo took to return, and calculate the
8:02distance. Suddenly, it became possible
8:04to map mountains, plains, and trenches
8:06hidden under kilometers of water. It
8:09wasn't as simple as measuring an echo
8:10with a stopwatch. The speed of sound
8:13changes with temperature, salinity, and
8:15pressure. Additionally, the ship moves
8:17while measuring, but the system was
8:19precise enough to reveal something
8:21gigantic. In 1951, the Challenger II
8:25recorded a depression near 10,899
8:27meters in the Mariana Islands. That
8:31spot would eventually become known as
8:32Challenger Deep. This also explains a
8:34phrase that is often misunderstood.
8:36Just because a large part of the ocean
8:38remains unexplored doesn't mean we have
8:40no idea of its shape. It is similar to
8:42observing a territory from a great
8:43height. You can know where its
8:45mountains and valleys are without
8:47knowing every animal that lives there.
8:48And there is an even stranger way to do
8:51it. Underwater mountains that are large
8:53enough exert a slightly greater
8:55gravitational pull, creating tiny
8:57elevations on the very surface of the
8:59ocean. They are too small to be
9:01recorded from a ship, but satellites
9:03can measure them and use those
9:04variations to infer the general shape
9:06of the bottom. This is how we can
9:09detect large geographical features
9:10without ever having visited them. The
9:13map exists. What remains extremely
9:15difficult is getting close enough to
9:17know what is happening inside it. The
9:22Mariana Trench itself is much more than
9:25just a hole. It is a geological scar
9:27over 2,500 km long, formed in a
9:29subduction zone where one tectonic
9:31plate bends and begins to sink beneath
9:33another. Challenger Deep is one of the
9:36parts where that scar reaches its
9:37greatest depth. Project Nekton already
9:39had its destination. The Navy
9:41reinforced the Trieste's sphere,
9:42increased its buoyancy, and brought the
9:44machine to Guam for tests during 1959.
9:48In one of them, Jacques Piccard and
9:50oceanographer Don Walsh began their
9:52descent. At 200 meters, the light began
9:55to fade. At 1,000, it had practically
9:58disappeared, and there were still
10:00several kilometers of ocean below.
10:05Chapter 4. Where the sun hides. The
10:09first 200 meters still belong to the
10:12ocean we recognize. There is enough
10:14light for photosynthesis, and a large
10:16portion of marine life is concentrated
10:17there. Then the twilight zone begins.
10:20The blue slowly turns to black, and
10:22many species stop depending on the
10:24light coming from above. Some developed
10:26enormous eyes; others do the opposite
10:28and produce their own light through
10:30bioluminescence. For a human being,
10:32however, the problem starts long before
10:34the sun disappears. Under pressure,
10:36part of the nitrogen we breathe can
10:38dissolve into the blood and tissues. If
10:40a diver ascends too quickly, it forms
10:42bubbles inside the body again, capable
10:44of damaging tissues and blocking blood
10:46vessels. That is why Ahmed Gabr needed
10:49nearly 14 hours to complete a dive of
10:51just over 300 meters. Challenger Deep
10:54is more than 30 times deeper. Upon
10:57crossing the 1,000-meter mark, the day
10:59ceases to exist. Here, anglerfish,
11:01giant squid, and transparent or
11:02gelatinous animals appear, looking as
11:04if they were designed by different
11:06rules. And the pressure doesn't simply
11:08crush them, because their bodies
11:09contain very little gas and are adapted
11:11to maintain equilibrium with the
11:13surrounding water. What requires steel
11:16for us is anatomy for them. At about
11:194,000 meters, the abyssal zone begins.
11:22The temperature hovers a few degrees
11:23above freezing, and the food that
11:25arrives from above is minimal. Part of
11:27it falls as marine snow, fragments of
11:29organisms, waste, and particles that
11:31can take days or weeks to reach the
11:33bottom. But deep trenches also function
11:36as funnels. The relief can accumulate
11:38organic matter and create small points
11:40of abundance in the middle of an
11:41environment that would seem empty.
11:44After 6,000 meters begins the Hadal
11:46zone, named after Hades. The Greek
11:48underworld only exists within the
11:50deepest trenches, and here something
11:52happens that breaks the typical image
11:54of a giant monster hiding in the
11:55Marianas. The deeper you go, the harder
11:58it becomes to maintain a huge body.
12:00Food is scarce, pressure alters
12:02proteins and membranes, and even fish
12:04seem to approach a limit. One of the
12:08strangest inhabitants is the Mariana
12:10snailfish. It has been observed at over
12:138,000 meters, and its body seems almost
12:14unfinished. Its skin is so transparent
12:17that muscles and internal organs can be
12:18distinguished. Much of its skeleton
12:21remains more like cartilage than fully
12:23hardened bone, and its skull is not
12:25even completely closed, which helps to
12:27balance the pressure. At a chemical
12:30level, it also does something
12:31extraordinary. It accumulates compounds
12:33like TMAO, which help keep its proteins
12:35functioning when the pressure would try
12:37to deform them. And it is not a
12:38defenseless animal. In one studied
12:41specimen, scientists found 98 small
12:43crustaceans inside its stomach. Down
12:46there, it may be one of the main
12:47predators of the ecosystem. Even
12:50further down, animals continue to exist
12:52, but amphipods, sea cucumbers, and
12:53microorganisms predominate. The
12:56confirmed record for a living fish in
12:58any ocean is around 8,300 meters in
13:00another Pacific trench; Challenger Deep
13:02continues approximately 2.5 kilometers
13:04further down, meaning there is a huge
13:07portion of the descent where, as far as
13:09we know, no fish can follow you. While
13:12Picard and Walsh were crossing part of
13:15this world in 1959, they reached about
13:185,530 meters and set a record. Then a
13:21very non-theoretical problem appeared.
13:23During the ascent, they discovered a
13:25crack in the epoxy adhesive used on
13:26part of the sphere. If the Navy
13:29concluded the machine was unsafe,
13:30Project Nekton could end right there.
13:33The team made repairs, performed
13:35another test, and the Trieste surpassed
13:367,000 meters. This time it held. There
13:40was no point in continuing to test a
13:42few hundred meters at a time. The next
13:44dive would go directly to the
13:45Challenger Deep. Chapter 5. Descending.
13:55It was January 1960. Jacques Picard and
13:58Lieutenant Don Walsh entered the sphere
13:59of the Trieste. Outside, the waves
14:02reached 7 or 8 meters, and part of the
14:04equipment had gotten wet during the
14:05transfer. Inside, there was barely room
14:08for the two men, oxygen tanks,
14:10chemicals to absorb carbon dioxide, and
14:12some food. There was no possibility of
14:14putting on a suit and getting out if
14:16something went wrong. The sphere was
14:18their entire world until they returned.
14:21At 8:23 in the morning, they began to
14:23descend. But there is no need to repeat
14:25the entire journey from the beginning
14:26here. The interesting part is how
14:28little they could do while it was
14:29happening. For hours, Picard and Walsh
14:32sat watching instruments and almost
14:34absolute darkness through the small
14:36windows. They couldn't accelerate too
14:38much, couldn't know what was a few
14:40meters ahead, and couldn't call for
14:42help effectively if the main structure
14:44failed. Then came the cracking sound we
14:47heard at the beginning, near 9,900
14:49meters. Years of engineering were
14:51suddenly reduced to one question. what
14:53had just broken. They finally
14:57determined the damage was to an outer
14:58hatch window of the entry shaft, not
15:00the main pressure-resistant sphere.
15:02They continued. At 1:06 PM, they hit
15:07bottom. By then, the sphere was cold,
15:10around 7 ° C, and the mission's food
15:12had been as rudimentary as the vehicle
15:15itself. They brought only a few
15:17chocolate bars. Even so, from nearly 11
15:19km deep, they managed to communicate
15:21acoustically with the support ship,
15:22something they weren't even sure they
15:24could do from the bottom. The landing
15:27kicked up so much sediment that, after
15:28the deepest journey ever made by a
15:30human, their window ended up looking
15:32mostly at a cloud. Picard and Walsh
15:35believed they saw small animals and
15:37perhaps a flatfish. That last
15:39observation would be questioned later
15:40because today we know that fish seem to
15:42have a depth limit well above the
15:44Challenger Deep. After barely 20
15:46minutes, they released the ballast. 3
15:49hours later, they were back on the
15:51surface. Both thought their descent
15:53would be the start of a new era of
15:55exploration and that others would
15:57return soon. It didn't happen. The
16:02Trieste was huge, expensive, and
16:04difficult to operate. And the United
16:06States was entering a much more visible
16:08technological competition: the space
16:10race. Budgets, headlines, and ambitions
16:12began to look upward. For 52 years, no
16:16human returned to the Challenger Deep
16:18until 2012. That year, James Cameron,
16:21director of Titanic and Avatar,
16:23descended alone in the Deepsea
16:24Challenger. His vehicle weighed a
16:26fraction of the Trieste, carried
16:28high-definition cameras, robotic arms,
16:30and could make the descent much faster.
16:33Then came Victor Vescovo with the
16:35Limiting Factor, designed not to
16:37survive a single feat, but to repeat it
16:39. He made multiple dives and took
16:42scientists and explorers with him.
16:45Kathy Sullivan, a former NASA astronaut
16:47, even became the first person to have
16:49walked in space and visited the
16:50Challenger Deep. In a few decades, we
16:53went from celebrating a machine
16:55surviving once to building vehicles
16:56capable of returning. And that change
16:59opened up a much more interesting
17:00question than the depth itself. Now
17:03that we could reach it, what were we
17:05actually finding down there? Chapter 6,
17:12where the rules change. The answer
17:15requires us to clarify something. Not
17:17all the strange phenomena associated
17:19with the Marianas happen exactly in
17:21Challenger Deep. The trench is part of
17:23a much larger geological system that
17:25includes underwater volcanoes and the
17:27Mariana Arc. And some of the strangest
17:29discoveries are precisely there. In
17:332004, a remotely operated vehicle
17:35explored the NW Eifuku underwater
17:37volcano. At a depth of about 1,600 m,
17:39it found a place called Champagne Vent.
17:42From the same hydrothermal field, hot
17:45fluid flowed at about 103ºC, and a few
17:47meters away, small cold droplets formed
17:49of approximately 98%liquid carbon
17:51dioxide. On the surface, we know carbon
17:54dioxide as a gas. There, the
17:56combination of pressure and temperature
17:58allows you to see it erupt as bubbles
17:59that slowly rise through the water. It
18:01is one of the very few known places
18:03where this phenomenon occurs naturally.
18:06And Eifuku is not the only strange
18:08place in the region. At the Daikoku
18:11volcano, a pool of molten sulfur has
18:13been observed. It is so unusual that
18:15NOAA points out the only other
18:17comparable natural example we know of
18:19is off Earth, on Io, a volcano-covered
18:21moon of Jupiter. Without leaving our
18:24planet, the Mariana system can show
18:25landscapes that literally remind us of
18:27another world. But the most important
18:32part is that these places are not empty
18:34. At NW Eifuku, there are mussel
18:36communities associated with
18:37chemosynthetic bacteria. Instead of
18:40depending directly on sunlight, these
18:42bacteria obtain energy from chemical
18:44substances. In that carbon dioxide-rich
18:46environment, the shells of some mussels
18:48are about half as thick as those of the
18:50same species elsewhere. The chemistry
18:53is so aggressive that when one dies,
18:55its shell can dissolve before the
18:57animal's own tissue finishes
18:58decomposing. Chemosynthesis changed a
19:01fundamental idea about life. For a long
19:04time, it seemed logical to imagine that
19:06almost all ecosystems depended sooner
19:07or later on the sun. But at the bottom
19:10of the ocean, there are communities
19:12whose immediate source of energy comes
19:13from the Earth's own chemistry. That
19:16makes the depths something more
19:17important than a collection of strange
19:19animals. One hypothesis about the
19:22origin of life proposes that
19:23hydrothermal environments could have
19:24offered useful energy and chemical
19:26reactions for the first organisms
19:27billions of years ago. And if life can
19:31function without direct sunlight, the
19:33inevitable question is whether it could
19:35also do so outside of Earth. Europa, a
19:39moon of Jupiter, seems to hide a huge
19:42ocean beneath an icy crust. We don't
19:45know what's at the bottom, but if there
19:47is geological activity capable of
19:48fueling chemical reactions, our ocean
19:50vents become a natural laboratory for
19:52imagining what we should be looking for
19:53there. It's a rather strange paradox.
19:57To understand where life might exist
19:59hundreds of millions of kilometers away
20:01, we first need to better understand
20:03environments located just a few
20:04kilometers under our own ocean. And
20:07even studying its inhabitants is not
20:09simple. Taking an organism from the
20:11depths can destroy the conditions it
20:13evolved for. To observe it properly,
20:15you need cameras, containers, and
20:17laboratories capable of maintaining
20:19enormous pressures. In other words,
20:21some creatures may be discovered long
20:23before we can study them alive under
20:25normal conditions. But while science
20:28tries to figure out how that world
20:30works, we have already begun to leave
20:32our mark on it, and that is probably
20:34the most unsettling part. Chapter 7.
20:41The danger is here. In 2019, a study
20:44found microplastics in sediment taken
20:46from several Pacific trenches,
20:48including Challenger Deep, with samples
20:51reaching down to about 10,890 m. And
20:54that is perhaps more unsettling than
20:56finding a bottle or a bag. We aren't
20:59talking about an object you can remove
21:01with a robotic arm, but tiny particles
21:03mixed directly into the ecosystem's
21:04sediment. Think about it: one of the
21:07hardest places to reach on the entire
21:09planet already contains waste produced
21:11by a civilization that has barely
21:13managed to visit it a few times.
21:15Trenches act as accumulation points.
21:18Particles that enter the ocean can
21:19travel, sink, and end up concentrating
21:21in the deepest depressions. So the
21:24isolation of Mariana was, in a way, an
21:26illusion. It may have taken us decades
21:29to build a machine capable of going
21:31down there, but our waste found other
21:33routes. At the same time, the ocean
21:37floor is becoming more economically
21:39interesting. In various deep regions,
21:41there are methane hydrates and
21:43polymetallic nodules rich in manganese,
21:45nickel, copper, and cobalt—materials
21:47useful for batteries and technology.
21:51Not all these deposits are within
21:52Challenger Deep, and large-scale
21:54commercial mining in the Mariana isn't
21:55a current reality, but the technology
21:57that allows us to explore and work at
21:59great depths is advancing rapidly, and
22:01that changes something that kept these
22:02ecosystems protected for millions of
22:04years: their inaccessibility. The
22:08problem is that deep environments
22:09operate at a different pace. Many
22:11organisms grow slowly, receive little
22:13energy, and depend on ecological
22:15relationships we are only just
22:17describing. In some areas of the seabed
22:21, the footprints of experiments
22:22conducted decades ago can still be
22:24distinguished in the sediment. A
22:26disturbance that might disappear in
22:27months on the surface can remain down
22:29there for years or much longer. That is
22:32why there is a contradiction that is
22:33hard to ignore. Each new generation of
22:35vehicles allows us to take better
22:37images, collect samples, and stay
22:39longer on the bottom. But that same
22:42capability means we can also touch,
22:44disturb, and alter places before even
22:46knowing all the species that live there
22:48. Technological competition adds
22:51another layer. The United States, China
22:54, and other countries have developed
22:55vehicles capable of operating at hadal
22:57depths. China, for example, sent the
23:01manned submersible Fendouzhe down to
23:0310,909 meters in Challenger Deep in
23:052020. The vehicle performed multiple
23:08operations above 10,000 meters, proving
23:10that these descents are starting to
23:12become repeatable missions and not just
23:14extraordinary records. For science, it
23:17is a huge opportunity. More expeditions
23:20mean more maps, more samples, and more
23:22data, but it also means that a part of
23:24the planet once protected by a physical
23:26barrier is becoming accessible for
23:28scientific, economic, and strategic
23:30interests at the same time. And here,
23:33the fear surrounding the Mariana Trench
23:35changes. For centuries, we imagined
23:39that the terrifying thing would be
23:41discovering what was hidden in the
23:42darkness. A gigantic animal, an unknown
23:44creature, something capable of
23:46surviving where we could not. But what
23:48we have found is more interesting.
23:51Translucent fish living kilometers deep
23:53, microorganisms adapted to extreme
23:55pressures, chemistry that seems from
23:57another planet, ecosystems that
23:59function with a minimal amount of
24:01energy. The monster we imagined did not
24:03appear; an extremely specialized and
24:05fragile world appeared. And the truly
24:08new thing in this whole story is us. In
24:131960, we could barely fit two men
24:15inside a steel sphere and hope they
24:17would return. Today, we can send robots
24:20, repeat dives, take samples, and study
24:23regions that for almost all of human
24:25history were completely out of our
24:27reach. Technology advanced faster than
24:30our knowledge of the place, and that
24:32means that for the first time we have
24:34the capacity to alter some of the least
24:36understood parts of our planet before
24:38knowing exactly what we might lose.
24:41Perhaps that is the reason why the
24:43Mariana Trench continues to be so
24:45unsettling. It is not because
24:47scientists expect to find a gigantic
24:49monster in Challenger Deep, nor because
24:51after decades we know nothing. We know
24:53much more than in 1960. The strange
24:56thing is everything that continues to
24:57appear every time we manage to look
24:59with better tools. Piccard and Walsh
25:02needed almost 5 hours to travel those
25:0411 kilometers. Today we can do it
25:06faster, return repeatedly, and send
25:08machines without risking a human life.
25:11The physical barrier is disappearing,
25:13but having conquered the distance does
25:15not mean having conquered the place. We
25:18are still discovering how its life
25:20survives, how matter circulates in the
25:22trenches, which species remain
25:24undescribed, and to what extent our
25:26surface activities end up affecting the
25:28deepest point on the planet. For
25:31millions of years, that world's best
25:33defense was that we could not reach it.
25:35It needed no borders, surveillance, or
25:37laws. 11 km of water were enough. Now
25:42we can. And perhaps the most important
25:45question is no longer who is hiding at
25:47the end of those 11 km, but what will
25:49happen now that we finally have the
25:51ability to touch it.

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