ROV Deep Discoverer images a newly discovered hydrothermal vent field at Chamorro Seamount, which is located west of the Mariana Trench. Vescovo gave depressing insight into humankind’s impact on these seemingly untouchable remote locations when he observed a plastic bag and candy wrappers at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.Ī handful of explorers have trekked to the Challenger Deep since then, but the expeditions are not common - and the journey is extremely dangerous. He piloted a submersible - one that he personally had helped design - to about 35,787 feet (10,908 meters), setting a world record in 2012.Īnother explorer who returned to the site was Victor Vescovo, a Texas investor who journeyed 35,853 feet (10,927 meters) down and claimed a world record in 2019. ![]() James Cameron, director of the 1997 film “Titanic,” was the next deep-sea explorer to follow. He spent more than 30 years at the space agency.ĭeep-sea explorer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron sits in a scale model of the Deepsea Challenger's pilot chamber at an exhibition about his history-making ocean expeditions in Sydney on May 28, 2018. Gene Feldman, an oceanographer emeritus at NASA, previously told CNN. “Right away, all of our preconceptions about the ocean were blown out the window,” Dr. During the dive, passengers Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh said they were stunned to see living creatures where scientists once imagined it was impossible for anything to survive. The first came in 1960 with the historic dive of the Trieste bathyscaphe, a type of free-diving submersible. Here are some fascinating facts about this deep-sea phenomenon.ġ. ‘Titanic’ director James Cameron is one of the few people who have visitedįew human expeditions have ventured to the Challenger Deep. That’s nearly three times deeper than the site where the wreckage of the RMS Titanic lies in the Atlantic Ocean, and it’s deeper than Mount Everest is tall. Perhaps the most intriguing of these features is the Mariana Trench - a chasm in the western Pacific Ocean that spans more than 1,580 miles (2,540 kilometers) and is home to the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on Earth’s surface that plunges more than 36,000 feet (about 11,000 meters) underwater. The Virgin Oceanic team now plans to go back to those depths for the first time since 1960, with a vessel that will ’sail’ along the Mariana trench rather than simply moving up and down like a balloon as Trieste did.Just as Earth’s land surface has enormous peaks and valleys, the oceanic world has similarly varied topography. These would render the dumping of radioactive wastes extremely risky.’ ’An observation of major interest was that of a fish near the bottom, indicating the presence of oxygen and hence vertical currents. Officially Trieste was all about frontiers and exploration, but The Engineer’s editorial team obviously had other possibilities in mind. The joints are true to within 0.05mm and are bonded with “Araldite”.’ ’The sphere is built up of three chromium-nickel-molybdenum steel forgings. ![]() “The steel sphere is able to resist nearly 2,200 atmospheres” ![]() The petrol communicates with the sea so that there is no resultant pressure on the hull, while the steel sphere can resist nearly 2,200 atmospheres, as shown by tests on a 1:20 scale model which was crushed at that pressure. Buoyancy is increased by jettisoning steel shot and decreased by releasing petrol. ’It has a compartmented hull filled with 125m3 of petrol, from which is slung a 12-ton steel sphere, 2.18m in diameter and with 120mm-thick walls. The design was actually penned 25 years prior to the achievement by Prof August Piccard, whose son Jacques went on to pilot the craft alongside Don Walsh of the US Navy. The Trieste bathyscaphe submersible touched down at 10,914m below sea level near the bottom of the Challenger Deep section of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.ĭiscussing the accomplishment in its yearly technology round-up of 1960, The Engineer said: ’Penetration into stranger and more forbidding environments has been an exciting adjunct of technical advance throughout the ages.’ 52 years ago, on 23 January 1960, humans went deeper than ever before – and indeed since.
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