An Australian ship my have detected pings consistent with a black box, and now a search plane has also detected a signal. The signal could be from the still-missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, but no one can say for certain. The main problem, of course, is that even if the signal is coming from the black box, the black box is somewhere on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

The Washington Post has a graphic illustrating just how freaking deep that part of the ocean is (h/t Georgette). The signal was detected at a depth of around 15,000 feet, which is also the deepest known part of that area. It’s also almost 500 feet deeper than Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S., is tall. The pressure there is 6,680 psi, or more than 454 times the air pressure at the earth’s surface (measured as 1 atmosphere). That amount of pressure is unhealthy for humans.

Despite all that, it’s less than half the depth of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, which at around 36,000 feet (about as deep as cruising altitude is high) is the deepest point on the earth. Only three people have ever been to the bottom, and one of them is filmmaker James Cameron. We should just put him in charge of the search.

For my part, I have been terrified of deep water, possibly ever since riding the “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” ride at Disney World as a kid, when the giant squid suddenly jumps out at you. (This probably also explains my fascination with giant squid.) Anyway, my point is that the mere act of scrolling down Washington Post‘s graphic freaks me out a little.

For some additional perspective on just how freaking deep the ocean is, check out xkcd’s graphic showing relative depths of various lakes and ocean trenches (including the real reason why James Cameron went down there…)

Photo credits: “Illustration from the original 1870 edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by author Jules Verne” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Excerpt from “Lakes and Oceans” by Randall Munroe [CC BY-NC 2.5], via xkcd.