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Evidence record

Ocean of Earth: the ocean and its routes

Everything the ocean’s page says outside its questions, claim by claim. A route’s description stands on the questions it links.

If something here is wrong, misquoted or unfair, write to support@unknownoceans.com and give the claim number, which does not change.

The ocean

Claim: How well do we know the planet we live on?

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Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: The deep sea, the interior, the climate system,

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Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: and the enormous parts of this world nobody has looked at.

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Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    How little we’ve seen: A visual coverage estimate of the deep seafloorabstract; teaser

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Earth and its record · Measurement

    The source reads: In decades of deep-sea exploration, humans have observed only 0.001% of the deep seafloor, leaving 66% of planet Earth unseen.

  • Supports

    How much of the ocean has been explored?fact page, second paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Earth and its record · Measurement

    The source reads: explorers have seen less than 0.001% of the deep ocean seafloor – that’s roughly the size of Rhode Island.

What this does not establish

“Looked at” means seen directly, by camera, submersible or remotely operated vehicle. The whole seafloor has a coarse shape from satellites and more than a quarter is mapped by sonar; what is unseen is unseen, not unknown in every sense.

Later work looked for

Crossref, June 2025 on, "visual observation deep seafloor coverage": nothing that revises the 2025 compilation; NOAA’s page, updated April 2026, gives the same figure.

Claim 3 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

The routes

Claim: Downward

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Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: From the crust to the core,

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This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

A description of the route’s span: it opens on the interior page, which runs from the crust to the inner core, and ends on the magnetic field, which that page says is generated in the outer core.

  • Context

    Inside the Earth (This Dynamic Earth)first paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026

    The source reads: our planet is made up of three main layers: crust, mantle, and core.

Claim 5 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: and the life that turns out to live kilometres into the crust and beneath the Antarctic ice.

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Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Rapid metabolism fosters microbial survival in the deep, hot subseafloor biosphereintroduction, first paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in microbes · Review of the field

    The source reads: allowing their subsistence in sediments that are more than 100 million years old1 and buried as deep as ~2.5 km below the seafloor

  • Context

    Exploring deep microbial life in coal-bearing sediment down to ~2.5 km below the ocean floorabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Abstract only, 24 September 2026 · Research in microbes · Observational study: associations, not causes

    The source reads: Here we provide evidence for the existence of microbial communities in ~40° to 60°C sediment associated with lignite coal beds at ~1.5 to 2.5 km below the seafloor in the Pacific Ocean off Japan.

    The primary report behind the figure Beulig and others cite; read as an abstract and supplement.

  • Context

    Inside the Earth (This Dynamic Earth)second paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026

    The source reads: Below the crust is the mantle, a dense, hot layer of semi-solid rock approximately 2,900 km thick.

  • Supports

    Microbial community structure of Subglacial Lake Whillans, West Antarcticaabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in microbes · Observational study: associations, not causes

    The source reads: Subglacial Lake Whillans (SLW) is located beneath ∼800 m of ice on the Whillans Ice Stream in West Antarctica ... the SLW community was found to be bacterially dominated

What this does not establish

Kilometres, not most of the way to the core: the deepest cells counted on the route’s pages are about 2.5 km below the sea floor, while the core lies below some 2,900 km of mantle. The lake sampled under the ice lies beneath about 800 metres of it.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2016 on, "deep subsurface microbial life depth limit borehole": nothing that moves the drilled record the deep-life page reports.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “From the crust to the core, and the life that turns out to be most of the way down with it.” Life on the route’s pages reaches about 2.5 km below the sea floor, a sliver of the way to a core that lies below some 2,900 km of mantle; "most of the way down" overstated it by three orders of magnitude. The new line also names the second place the route finds life, the lake under the West Antarctic ice.

Claim 6 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The planet’s bad days

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Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: Ice at the equator,

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Historical claim. A statement about the past that historical evidence can test.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Snowball Earth climate dynamics and Cryogenian geology-geobiologyabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Earth and its record · Review of the field

    The source reads: Geological evidence indicates that grounded ice sheets reached sea level at all latitudes during two long-lived Cryogenian (58 and ≥5 My) glaciations.

What this does not establish

That glaciers reached sea level in the tropics is the established part. Whether the ocean froze over completely is still argued, as the snowball page reports.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Four catastrophes and one that is still being argued about, ending with the layer we are leaving.” The old line set four settled catastrophes against one argued one. Its own stops say otherwise: whether the snowball ocean froze over, how much the Deccan eruptions did, why the 100,000-year cycle dominates, where the tipping thresholds sit and how fast Antarctica can go are all argued on those pages, and neither ice ages nor the Anthropocene is a catastrophe. The new line names each stop by what its page establishes, and keeps the "may" the sources use for the thresholds.

Claim 8 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: a mass extinction,

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Historical claim. A statement about the past that historical evidence can test.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

The extinction is established. How much the Deccan eruptions contributed is the argument the dinosaurs page reports.

Claim 9 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: the rhythm of the ice ages,

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Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

A rhythm is what the record shows. Why the dominant cycle of the last million years is 100,000 years, where the orbital forcing is weak, is the open part of the ice-ages page.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2005 on, "glacial cycles orbital forcing": Barker and others (2025), cited by the same page, keep orbital pacing and assign roles to precession and obliquity; nothing that removes the rhythm.

Claim 10 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: two thresholds that may already be behind us,

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What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

The sources say this cannot be ruled out, not that it has happened: the two ice sheets, West Antarctic and Greenland, are the ones McKay and others name, and the sea-level page says the record is too short to tell from measurements.

Claim 11 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: and the layer we are leaving.

Kind
Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

“Layer” is a figure for markers within ordinary sediment and ice. The line claims the signal, not an epoch: the proposal to define one was rejected in 2024.

Later work looked for

Relies on the epoch page’s search (Crossref, 2017 on, Anthropocene markers): the 2024 proposal lists the same markers; the rejection concerns the epoch, not the signal.

Claim 12 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit