Philippine Trench
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Philippine Trench is a submarine trench to the east of the Philippine Islands. It stretches with a length of approximately 1,320 kilometers and a width of round about 30 kilometers from the northeast top of the Philippine island of Luzon southeast to the northern Maluku island of Halmahera in Indonesia. Its deepest point, the Galathea Depth, has a depth of 10,540 meters.
Until 1970, the Philippine Trench was regarded as the deepest point of the earth. Since then, deeper trenches have been discovered, including the Mariana Trench (10,911 meters), the Tonga Trench (10,882 meters) and the Kuril Trench (10,542 meters).
The Philippines Trench is result of a collision of earth plates. The oceanic, only approx. five kilometres mighty, but specific heavier (basalt) Philippine Sea Plate shifts itself with a rate from about 16 cm per year under the 60 km mighty, specific lighter (granite) Eurasian Plate and gets melted by the hot mantle of earth in a depth from 50 to 100 km. This geophysical process is called subduction. In the subduction zone we find the Philippines Trench.
