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The Mariana Trench (or Marianas Trench) is the deepest known part of the world's oceans, and the deepest location on the surface of the Earth's crust. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about 2550 km (1580 miles) long but has a mean width of only 69 km (43 miles). It reaches a maximum depth of about 11,034 meters (36,201 feet) at the Challenger Deep, a small slot-shaped valley in its floor, at its southern end.[1]

Part of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc system, the trench forms the boundary between two tectonic plates, where the western edge of the Pacific Plate is subducted beneath the small Mariana Plate. Because the Pacific plate is the largest of all the tectonic plates on Earth, crustal material at its western edge has had a long time since formation (up to 170 million years) to compact and become very dense; hence its great height-difference (which translates to water depth) relative to the higher-riding Mariana Plate, at the point where the Pacific Plate crust is subducted (is forced down beneath the other). This deep area, is the Mariana trench proper. The movement of these plates is also responsible for the formation of the Mariana Islands.

At the bottom of the trench, where the plates meet, the water column above exerts a pressure of 108.6 MPa, over one thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. Some creatures of the type normally encountered that could live at these depths are few, but some fish species, like the angler fish or other deep-sea fish, have been spotted in these waters.[

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Q: What are facts about the mariana trench?
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