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James Cameron Visits Challenger Deep

Belisarius

Belisarius

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I may have my disagreements with Cameron, but this is totally pimp; he's done something that no human has done in 52 years, using his own cash; by definition he also has the only submersible extant that can reach this depth. Can't wait to see the footage, though I'm biased by my lifelong love of the sea. :)

Context from Wiki:
369px-Marianatrenchmap.png


Yahoo! article, italics mine:

James Cameron reaches deepest spot on Earth
Associated PressAssociated Press – 23 mins ago

HONOLULU (AP) — Director James Cameron has made it to Earth's deepest point.

The director of "Titanic" and other films used a specially designed submarine called "Deepsea Challenger" to dive nearly seven miles. He completed his deep dive a little before 8 a.m. Monday local time, according to Stephanie Montgomery of the National Geographic Society.

"All systems OK," were Cameron's first words, according to a statement. He arrived at a depth of 35,756 feet early Sunday evening on the U.S. East Coast.

He plans to spend about six hours exploring and filming the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam.

The scale of the trench is hard to grasp — it's 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon and more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

The first and only time anyone dove to these depths was in 1960. Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh took nearly five hours to reach the bottom and stayed just 20 minutes. They didn't have much to report on what they saw there, however, because their submarine kicked up so much sand from the ocean floor they couldn't see much.

One of the risks of a dive so deep is extreme water pressure. At 6.8 miles below the surface, the pressure is the equivalent of three SUVs sitting on your toe.

Cameron told The Associated Press in an interview after a 5.1 mile-deep practice run near Papua New Guinea earlier this month that the pressure "is in the back of your mind." The submarine would implode in an instant if it leaked, he said.

But while he was a little apprehensive beforehand, he wasn't scared or nervous while underwater.

"When you are actually on the dive you have to trust the engineering was done right," he said.

The film director has been an oceanography enthusiast since childhood and has made 72 deep-sea submersible dives. Thirty-three of those dives have been to the wreckage of the Titanic, the subject of his 1997 hit film.

link:
http://news.yahoo.com/james-cameron-reaches-deepest-spot-earth-223416087.html
 
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Am I the only one who thought Avatar was just an ok movie? Not something Id want to watch a year from now.

also this reminds me of how Richard Garriot went into space. Id rather go into space then deep underwater.
 
shimazu said:
Am I the only one who thought Avatar was just an ok movie? Not something Id want to watch a year from now.

also this reminds me of how Richard Garriot went into space. Id rather go into space then deep underwater.
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Avatar was average. yes.

I would much rather go deep sea, atleast there is life down there. Nothing is in space(ok, space around earth/our solar system) that is living or interesting. Just rocks and lack of gravity.. i think id get over that pretty quick. Exploring places never seen by man(in any light, unlike space with lots of pictures, films, etc), and not only that, places full of life never seen.. that is something i would never pass up, even if it was between space and the ocean.
 
IMO, space and the deep sea are apples and oranges; studying them both makes our knowledge more holistic. That said, if we're going to talk about surface (as opposed to underground) environments, the ocean floor is truly the final frontier. Abyssal plains alone cover more area than all of the continents put together, and we're limited to studying it (to use an analogy from a book) like someone who's tethered to a balloon two miles overhead trying to study the land surface. Finally, many deep sea environments may be similar to those that might exist on Europa or Enceladus, the two favorites for current life in the Solar System beyond Earth (or for that matter, past ones on Mars), so the two fields aren't as separate as they seem.
 
They are not seperate, but i think its silly of mankind to be exploring space and other planets before we even explore our own. For all we know there is some ridiculously awesome organic life down there that could provide a cure to cancer, reduced aging, you name it. All of the greatest medical innovations are related to life and whats around us being manipulated, and we've only had the chance to manipulate such a small percentage. Lets get down there already and take the deep ocean seriously!
 
^indeed, remember the recent fungus found which eats non-degradable plastics?


still, at the same time we wouldn't want to be ruining the ecosystem down there neither. finding something of value in the depths could be a double edged sword.
 
L2R said:
^indeed, remember the recent fungus found which eats non-degradable plastics?


still, at the same time we wouldn't want to be ruining the ecosystem down there neither. finding something of value in the depths could be a double edged sword.
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The same can be said for everything. Antibiotics are a good example. We cannot have it both ways, ultimately whatever we find and fuck with, is going to have a negative impact. Its making the positive impact greater than the negative is whats important.

And when i say 'can be said for everything', i mean quite literally, very few if any discovery or invention has had no negative impact. The discovery of steel and developing ways to smelt and use it was great for mankind, in that it allowed us to build many great things... but also build the most diabolical of things including swords, guns, bombs and so on.

I dont think the fear of 'what if a really negative thing happens' should ever get in the way of seeking positive. If we did, we would be nowhere, wiped out by now.
 
moonyham said:
i think its silly of mankind to be exploring space and other planets before we even explore our own. For all we know there is some ridiculously awesome organic life down there that could provide a cure to cancer, reduced aging, you name it.
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Yeah but you could say that about other planets as well. Not to mention our Sun is going to expand billions of years from now, swallowing the Earth. So if Humans never leave Earth we will only last as long as that. Odds are we'll wipe ourselves out long before that but people talk about 2012 like its fact, when that is the only scientifically proven doomsday scenario (like guaranteed to happen, asteroids could happen but not guaranteed).

Id agree in that ocean exploration is the next logical step in that current space propulsion technology is so limited. If we as a species can ever break the speed of light barrier, that will be the single most important invention of mankind.
 
shimazu said:
Yeah but you could say that about other planets as well. Not to mention our Sun is going to expand billions of years from now, swallowing the Earth. So if Humans never leave Earth we will only last as long as that. Odds are we'll wipe ourselves out long before that but people talk about 2012 like its fact, when that is the only scientifically proven doomsday scenario (like guaranteed to happen, asteroids could happen but not guaranteed).

Id agree in that ocean exploration is the next logical step in that current space propulsion technology is so limited. If we as a species can ever break the speed of light barrier, that will be the single most important invention of mankind.
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You COULD say that about other planets - however, unlike other planets, we KNOW that on earth, there is a ridiculous amount of life and other things we have never seen let alone explored or investigated. We are spending billions on flying space equipment to far reaches, yet we spend nothing close to that on our own. Before you start conquering other land, make sure youve already conquered your own, because you might not end up needing to conquer the next for which ever resource is desired.

Also, the unknown things below the ocean could technologically enhance us/our abilities to make space travel easier/more available. Ie, reduced aging(possible) or highly oxygen producing algae. Just something to think about...
 
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