Giant Single-Celled Organisms Found in Depths of Mariana Trench

The deepest habitat on the planet appears to be teeming with life.

They say that we know more about the surface of the moon than we know about the deepest, darkest depths of our ocean, although thanks to some American researchers, we know a little more about just what calls those depths home. Cameras lowered down some 6.6 miles into the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on the planet, recorded footage of the largest single-celled organisms on Earth thriving in one of its most extreme habitats. These giant amoebas, known as xenophyophores, can grow up to four inches wide, although never before have they been discovered at such a crushing depth. In addition to the xenophyophores, the cameras caught footage of jellyfish swimming around the trench, making them the deepest-swimming jellyfish on the planet. The conditions that far below the ocean make life all but impossible, as no sunlight penetrates that deeply, and the water pressure is somewhere in the vicinity of eight tons per square inch.