What is the largest ocean in the world?
The Pacific Ocean is the largest, covering about 165 million square kilometers. That is roughly a third of Earth's surface and more than all the land combined.
The Pacific stretches from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, and from Asia and Australia to the Americas. At its widest, near Indonesia and Colombia, it spans about 19,800 kilometers, almost halfway around the world.
It is also the deepest ocean. The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench reaches nearly 11,000 meters below the surface. The Pacific holds more than half of the free water on Earth.
How it got its name
Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan named it Mar Pacífico, meaning peaceful sea, when his ships crossed calm waters in 1520. The name is a little ironic: the Pacific is surrounded by the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and earthquake zones, and it produces powerful typhoons. The Atlantic is the second-largest ocean, followed by the Indian, Southern and Arctic oceans.
Did You Know?
The Pacific is slowly shrinking by a few centimeters a year as tectonic plates move, while the Atlantic is getting wider. It also contains the most islands of any ocean, around 25,000, many of them in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.