Source: Scientific American
Author: Adam Levy
The Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific Ocean between Japan and Papua New Guinea, plunges nearly seven miles below the surface at its deepest point. It is one of the most inaccessible environments on Earth, but it has not escaped the impact of humanity’s violence.
A group of scientists have now found radioactive carbon-14—at levels high enough to indicate it originated from the detonation of nuclear bombs—in the flesh of shrimplike crustaceans living in the trench. “Typically, we say the trenches are far away from us; they’re very deep and they’re pristine. But actually, they’re not,” says earth scientist Jiasong Fang of Shanghai Ocean University, who worked on the new study. “Everything can get into the trenches.”
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