Philippine Trench

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Philippine Trench, to the east of the Philippine Islands.

The Philippine Trench is a submarine trench to the east of the Philippine Islands. It has 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 (5,763 fathoms or 34,580 feet).

The Philippine Trench is the result of a collision of earth plates. The oceanic, only approx. five kilometres thick, but specific heavier (basalt) Philippine Sea Plate shifts itself with a rate from about 16 cm per year under the 60 km thick, 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.