Pacific Ocean

The Pacific is the largest single feature on the face of the Earth — about 165 million square kilometers (63.8 million square miles) of water, greater in area than all the planet's land combined. It stretches from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean, and from the coasts of Asia and Australia in the west to the Americas in the east, spanning nearly a third of the globe. Ferdinand Magellan named it the "peaceful sea," though its scale conceals enormous power.

It is also the deepest ocean, plunging to about 10,935 meters (35,876 feet) at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench — a chasm that could swallow Mount Everest with more than two kilometers to spare. The basin is ringed by the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and subduction zones that produces most of the world's earthquakes and tsunamis. Scattered across its surface are tens of thousands of islands, from continental fragments to coral atolls and volcanic peaks.

The Pacific drives much of the planet's weather and climate. The periodic warming and cooling of its tropical surface — the El Niño and La Niña cycles — shifts rainfall and temperature across continents. Its currents redistribute vast amounts of heat, and its waters sustain some of the richest fisheries on Earth, even as warming, acidification, and plastic pollution mount across its immense expanse.

• Asia
  Earth's largest and most populous continent borders
• North America
  The third-largest continent, from the Arctic to the tropics borders
• Oceania
  The smallest continent, built around Australia and the Pacific isles borders
• South America
  A continent of the Andes, the Amazon, and dazzling extremes borders
• Atlantic Ocean
  The world's second-largest ocean and great highway of history connected ocean
• Indian Ocean
  The world's third-largest and warmest ocean connected ocean
• Southern Ocean
  The youngest-named ocean, encircling Antarctica merges with