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Arctic Ocean Survey May Reveal Lost World
core plexus writes " A new survey of the depths of the ice-capped Arctic Ocean as reported at Reuters, BBC, and others, could reveal a lost world of living fossils and exotic new species from jellyfish to giant squid, scientists said on Thursday. They speculated that Arctic waters might hide creatures known only from fossils, such as trilobites that flourished 300 million years ago. The international scheme will include probing a 12,470-foot abyss off Canada described by project leaders as the "world's oldest sea water -- a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice." Bring on the "Jurassic Park" references."
considering that that pool is completely sealed from the outside world would mean that anything in it isn't resistant to infections from the outside world or the other way around...
so couldent it be that once humans put a crack in that icy shield that protects the pool, that some human deseases, to which humans have already build a resistance, that these deseases infect the ancient inhabitants of that pool, creating a slaughter among them... or the other way around...
so... altho the stuff they'll find can prove valuble to science, I would aproach with caution if I was them...
All indicators show that the human race is selectively breeding itself for stupidity.
Canada Basin has already been checked out in a mission in 2002 which you can read about here. I guess this time round it's so they can have a jolly good look. I wonder if they'll find any aluminium cans or plastic bags at the bottom :)
:)
As one reader pointed out, exploring the deep ocean is harder than space. I guess that's why they felt compelled to put a flag at the bottom.
The Abyss
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
As ice changes, so does the ecosystem. Polar bears cannot walk on water, for example.
There are also global consequence of Arctic change that worry climate scientists. For one thing, there is a nonlinear feedback loop since ice has a high albedo. Thus, ice reflects solar radiation back to space, which keeps the system cool. But water has a much lower albedo than ice. This yields a nonlinear feedback loop. Melting ice creates open water, which absorbs more heat, which melts more ice. There was a time when USSR scientists suggested we could open up a northwest passage through the Arctic simply by painting the ice black, setting this feedback loop into action. Of course, if the ice melts, navigation will be easier through the Arctic. Traffic may avoid Panama and go through a more direct route. Part of this traffic could be oil tankers, which can run aground, causing great damage to a system already damaged by the climate change.
You could use a different approach. Consider a geometrical inversion of the world at the surface of the earth, thus the center of the earth gets mapped to infinity, by setting the radius of the earth to 1 and mapping every vector of the length d to a certain point A to the vector in the same direction, but of 1/d length, thus pointing to A'.
For instance the moon is about 50 times the radius of the earth away, so his image would be projected somewhere at 1/50 of the earth's radius, or just 85mls from the center of the earth. You can use other scaling functions but you will always end with a similar discrepancy. If you use 1/sqrt(d), A' will be somewhere at about 700mls from the center of the earth... still far away from everything we reached until now.
There have been men on the moon, but no one deeper than 8mls from the earth's surface. Basicly we barely have scratched the surface of the earth yet, with even the deepest holes ever drilled lurking somewhere at the 7mls point (don't have the current number right here).
Actually, just to be clear, whole (or quite nearly whole) specimens of adult (we think) giant squid have been seen/recovered/studied. We've just never found them alive.
Game... blouses.
when the primary producers could be chemoautotrophic bacteria (which are microscopic and require no light), the size of this pond appears much larger. I'd be VERY supprised if they do not find life down there.
we found baby "giant" squid last year. They were less than an inch long and you needed a microscope to properly identify them but we found em. The researches tried to keep 6 for study but they all died before they reach land. If a ship full of PhDs can't keep the little bastards alive I'd say theres a lot we don't know about em
You might want to visit this link and read the article with the quote "Two thirds of the world's surface is covered by water, yet more people have walked on the moon than visited the deepest parts of our oceans.".
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You're wrong.
With bonus, the plural was boni. Well, there were a lot of plural forms... boni, bonorum, bonis, bonos. So I don't know what you're talking about it having but one plural form identical to its singular. There are many words similar to what you describe in Latin, but bonus is not one of them.
I also don't know about the other words, since I'm too busy to get my old Latin dictionary out, but I'd wager to bet that they get declined in either the second or fourth declensions and have multiple plural endings (though I will give you that the plural nominative of fourth declension masculine and feminine forms are indentical, maybe this is what you're thinking of?)
Oh, and if a word is assimilited into a new lnaguage, the plural of that new language is far and away apporporiate for usage with the new word, especially when there is already a class of native nouns that function similarly when pluralizing but have entirely different endings -- the likelihood that the non-native nouns will ever form their own class in the new system is nil. Use some common sense.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
As a space engineer (really, I work for NASA) I feel compelled to point out that exploring space is an assload harder than exploring the ocean. Accordingly, we've explored far less of it than the oceans (as a percentage of total volume). [Space] technologies are stagnating because most of the NASA beauracracy is directed towards making existing technologies less efficient. We (NASA) really don't have any improvements for reaching really deep space areas and are still using technology pioneered in the 60s. So there! Our technology sucks a lot more than yours!
That's because it dosn't get harder. Once you have achived orbit it's simply a matter more efficent engines and larger volumes of fuel/life suport consumebles.
I.e. With a few years suply of food and enogh fuel for the trib the curent space shutles could make a trip to Mars.
The ocean is diferent. I can go down to 15 feet with no equptment at all. Just a pair of shorts. As you get deaper the requierd equiptment gets more complex. To dive to 200 feet you need 3 air tanks with diferent mixtures.
I hope you get the point. If not... When we can rutenly explore the deapest part of the ocean the rest can then be dealt with in time.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
They won't find great new ecologies full of living fossils.
... poisoned from the massive dumping of radioactive waste into the Arctic Ocean basin by the former Soviet Union.
They will find the remains of those ecologies, that have died in only the last 50 -60 years
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Hmm...as strange as the parent post is, I must point out that here in Slashdot-land, the Necromicon you refer to can only truly describe the Book of the Dead of Evil Dead Series fame.
Thus, we need only fear Deadites, and other related Candorian demons. No Elder Gods here.
And certainly not down in that part of the ocean.
Dude, are *you* serious? I made a point, which you seem to have grossly misinterpeted. I admit that perhaps the question was better written "Should we?", but I only want the question asked.
I really have no idea how science really works. Guess what, I'm not a scientist. No, not going to learn how real scientists go about their work either... we all specialize in our respective careers. I'm sure the majority live by a code of ethics that I would approve of, while a minority don't. So don't ask me to be naive and trust all scientists to behave ethically.
By asking "must we?", I would hope that your question of "how?" gets careful and serious consideration. I believe we both share the feeling that it should be done carefully, right?
Now, as far as "reactionary"? You, sir, fairly exploded on me.
Bill
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.