"The only rise I've heard that comes close to this one is the Peru-Chili Trench. Beginning at 25,000 feet beneath the surface of the sea, it climbs at a rate of one vertical mile for every one horizontal mile. Until now, it was considered the world's most spectacular underwater slope."
The Peru-Chile Trench, also known as the Atacama Trench, is an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 160 kilometres (100 mi) off the coast of Peru and Chile. It reaches a maximum depth of 8,065 metres (26,460 ft) below sea level in Richards Deep and is approximately 5,900 kilometres (3,666 mi) long; its mean width is 64 kilometres (40 mi) and it covers an expanse of some 590,000 square kilometres (228,000 mi²).
The trench is a result of the eastern edge of the Nazca Plate being subducted under the South American Plate. The trench subducts two seamount ridges; the Nazca Ridge and the Juan Fernández Ridge.
The Peru-Chile Trench, the forearc and the western edge of the central Andean plateau (Altiplano), delineate the dramatic "Bolivian Orocline" that defines the Andean slope of southern Peru, northern Chile, and Bolivia.
From the Chile Triple Junction to Juan Fernández Ridge the trench is filled with 2.0 to 2.5 km of mainly turbidite sediments, creating thus a flat bottom topography.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say our contact was a scaled-down version of a good old New England fog bank."
Fog is a collection of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface.
While fog is a type of a cloud, the term "fog" is typically distinguished from the more generic term "cloud" in that fog is low-lying, and the moisture in the fog is often generated locally (such as from a nearby body of water, like a lake or the ocean, or from nearby moist ground or marshes).
Fog is distinguished from mist only by its density, as expressed in the resulting decrease in visibility: Fog reduces visibility to less than 1 km (5/8 statute mile), whereas mist reduces visibility to no less than 1 km (5/8 statute mile). For aviation purposes in the UK, a visibility of less than 2 km but greater than 999 m is considered to be mist if the relative humidity is 95% or greater - below 95% haze is reported.
The foggiest place in the world is the Grand Banks off the island of Newfoundland, the meeting place of the cold Labrador Current from the north and the much warmer Gulf Stream from the south. Some of the foggiest land areas in the world include Argentia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Point Reyes, California, each with over 200 foggy days per year. Even in generally warmer southern Europe, thick fog and localized fog is often found in lowlands and valleys, such as the lower part of the Po Valley and the Arno and Tiber valleys in Italy or Ebro Valley in northeastern Iberia, as well as on the Swiss plateau, especially in the Seeland area, in late autumn and winter. Other notably foggy areas include coastal Chile (in the south), coastal Namibia, and the Severnaya Zemlya islands.
Whatever the reason, it was lost as the Starbuck, like an unleashed bloodhound with a hot scent flowing through her nostrils, swu ng on her new course and surged through the swells.
The Bloodhound (also known as the St. Hubert hound and Sleuth Hound) is a large breed of dog that was bred originally to hunt deer and wild boar, later specifically to track human beings by scent. It is famed for its ability to follow scents hours or even days old over great distances. Its extraordinarily keen nose is combined with a strong and tenacious tracking instinct, producing the ideal scent hound, and it is used by police and law enforcement all over the world to track escaped prisoners, missing people, and even lost pets.
No comments:
Post a Comment