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The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.
- 4,280 m (14,040 ft)
- 165,250,000 km² (63,800,000 sq mi)
- 10,911 m (35,797 ft)
- 710,000,000 km³ (170,000,000 cu mi)
The Pacific Ocean is the body of water between Asia and Australia in the west, the Americas in the east, the Southern Ocean to the south, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. It is the largest named ocean and it covers one-third of the surface of the entire world.
The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approx. 70.8% of Earth. [8] In English, the term ocean also refers to any of the large bodies of water into which the world ocean is conventionally divided. [9] The following names describe five different areas of the ocean: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and Arctic.
- 3.688 km (2 mi)
- 1,370,000,000 km³ (328,680,479 cu mi) (97.5% of Earth's water)
- 361,000,000 km² (139,382,879 sq mi) (71% of Earth's surface area)
- List of countries by length of coastline
The Pacific islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are further categorized into three major island groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
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- History
- Geological Origins of The Pacific Islands
- Andesite Line
- Earthquakes
- Features
In the Early Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea was surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa, the ocean floor of which was composed of the Izanagi, Farallon, and Phoenix plates.These three plates were joined at a migrating, or unstable, ridge-ridge-ridge (RRR) triple junction from which the Pacific Plate began to grow 190 million years ago in an ...
The islands of the Pacific have developed in a number of ways. Some have originated as chains of volcanic islands on the tectonic plates either as a result of mantle plumes or by fracture propagation. Atolls have developed in tropical waters when, after volcanoes sink, coral growth results in reefs as evidenced by the Cook Islands. Coral reefs can ...
Along the rim of the Pacific Basin are convergent plate boundaries often referred to as the andesite line since orogenic andesite is associated with this boundary. This line is often, but erroneously, confused with the boundaries of either the Pacific Plate or the Pacific basin; the andesite line, however, also includes the Juan de Fuca, Cocos, and...
In March and April 2008, a series or swarm of moderate earthquakes occurred both near and within the Blanco Fracture Zone. The swarm began on 30 March when over 600 measurable tremors began occurring north of the zone within the Juan de Fuca Plate. A decade earlier, in January 1998, another swarm was detected at Axial Seamount in the Juan de Fuca R...
Seamount chains and hotspots
The Pacific Ocean contains several long seamount chains, formed by hotspot volcanism. These include the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, the Tasmantid Seamount Chain, the Lord Howe Seamount Chain and the Louisville Ridge.
2 days ago · Pacific Ocean, body of salt water extending from the 60° S parallel in the south to the Arctic in the north and lying between the continents of Asia and Australia on the west and North and South America on the east. Its area, excluding adjacent seas, encompasses about 62.5 million square miles.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names (2017), by John Everett-Heath, states that Oceania is "a collective name for more than 10,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean" and that "it is generally accepted that Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the islands north of Japan (the Kurils and Aleutians) are excluded."
