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Ship-Sinking Monster Waves Revealed
vinlud writes "Once dismissed as a nautical myth, freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks have been accepted as a leading cause of large ship sinkings. Results from ESA's ERS satellites helped establish the widespread existence of these 'rogue' waves and are now being used to study their origins. ESA writes about it in a story. More information about this phenomena at the website of Karsten Trulsen, Associate Professor at the University of Oslo."
I got first post !
Used a rogue wave in one of his stories (they all run together not sure which one). It's also a leading theory behind the disapearance of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
It was a little strange...I thought the webpage download was interrupted...I'd never seen an article page that short before ! I guess I got modded down to score 0 because of my very short reply. Must be the new slashdot changes...someone file a bug !
Bah... Only 30m? That's nothing compared to the Mega Tsunami!
There's been credible reports of these for years. In "Silent Spring" Racheal Carlson mentioned a something like 125 foot wave that had been observed by reliable observers and measured against the mast of a ship.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
In the past, there were a few incidents of US Navy submarines spontaneously diving while doing surface transits near the mouth of the San Francisco bay.
There were no deaths, but a few people in various instances got hurt. I recall one person suffering very serious injuries when the submarine went down over 100 feet pretty much instantly.
The cause was finally determined to be that the period of the swells near the Golden Gate bridge caused the distance between the swells to be just less than the submarines total length.
The wave swells would lift the sub up, and then 'drop' the sub as it passed over the wave. Inertia would keep the sub 'dropping' and an un-intentional dive occured.
Since they were rigged for surface operations, they quickly popped back up to the surface.
We had revised operating procedures for transiting near San Francisco after this was discovered.
However, newer submarines are larger, and the period of the swells doesn't match up as nicely with the dimensions of the sub, so it is less of a hazard than it used to be.
I only glanced at the story and thought "SHIP DESTROYING MONSTER! WTF"
I haven't been amused this much all day.
100% Crunchier
Where it counts
You know it is.
He's out looking for something that is both crunchy and chewy.
And we're all just caught up in his wake.
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I thought the write up said ESR was studying waves.
Maybe he could write a configuration script editor for the waves, and then claim he invented the waves, if no maintainer is ever found, or it ceases to be maintained.
I could have got really rude about him causing the waves, but thought better of it.
Skiers I know have sometimes gone heli-skiing, getting the copter to drop them onto otherwise hard-to-access mountains with pristine deep powder.
There's probably some surfers that have Been There-Done That ® on Diamond Head in Hawaii that would pay for a chance to be dropped down onto a 25-meter wave.
If the ESA satellite data can be used to find the waves before they disappear, some dudes could be riding some truly radical waves.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
solitons ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I wonder if they're related to undersea methane releases.
Can't remember the author or title, but I read a book that rather methodically debunked Bermuda Triangle stories (i.e. many didn't actually happen in the triangle, occurred in stormy weather, etc.) and found that unexplained disappearances were statistically similar to any other ocean area. These monster waves would go a long way to explaining many previously unexplained disppearances from any area of the ocean, especially the "spooky" way they disappear w/o so much as an SOS Or so the alien abductors would have us believe...
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
FWIW I was travelling recently and saw some posters which appeared to be made from underwater photos of the resting place of the Fitz. Sobering.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Chance sightings and measurements of these brief phenomena are one thing, a global census-by-sampling is quite another.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Technology developed for space travel has been adapted for uses on Earth for a long time. But today, three articles report that some current customizations can save lives. For example, SPACE.com writes that space technology is entering hospitals. It says that a system originally intended to keep clean the space station Mir, and later the International Space Station (ISS), is now used in hospitals to build temporary 'clean rooms' -- virtually bacteria-free -- around patients. And a video infrared camera developed by NASA's JPL to study Earth is being modified into a brain scanning device searching for tumors. Elsewhere, National Geographic is saying that satellites are starting to aid earthquake predictions. And of course, these ESA satellites are identifying these 'rogue waves'. You need to read the articles mentioned above to realize how all these bleeding edge technologies can really help us on Earth, but if you have a limited time, please read this summary for selected excerpts and photos.
The real problems are that you have to take a boat or aircraft from wave to wave (IF you can forecast them well enough), there is no beach to camp on between waves and no vantage point for spectators. The high costs and difficulty of milking spectators for money makes it unlikely that a sport would develop.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Ive already filed my patent application for a Ship-Sinking Monster Wave. So dont even think of using it without payin me my royalties! And by the way if anyone is interested in taking over the world, Ive got some interesting IP you might be interested in licensing.
The article reads:
two large ships sink every week on average
Is that correct ?
Shouldn't that read: Ship-Sinking Monster Waves Secrets Revealed
I mean, how are they going to get a book deal otherwise?
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
GODZILLA!
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... that as a "researcher at the University of Ohio"? I mean, shit, ANY wave is going to be disastrous to someone from there, right?
There was an excellent doco about this shown here in NZ several months ago. For years people have claimed that their vessel was mangled by a huge wave and have been scoffed at, the reason being that oceanographers have traditionally used a linear model to describe surface waves, which yields a gaussian(?) wave-height distribution, placing all wave heights close to the mean height, and rendering these gargantuan waves extremely improbable. Modelling surfaces waves with a variant of the non-linear schrodinger (aka gross-pitaevskii?) wave equation, which is used to describe many-body quantum systems, such as Bose-Einstein condensates, shows that waves several times larger than the mean wave height will occur.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of people being morons and using simple models, and then refusing to believe that by using their crap approximation they may have missed something important. As Enrico Fermi said many years ago now, "Nowhere in the bible does it state that the laws of nature must be describable linearly!"
The book, Perfect Storm, described specific details leading up to the time the now infamous fishing trawler boat disappeared. It described these radio beacons tethered to the sea-bed (IIRC) that provided amongst other data, the height of waves as they passed underneath. One of the last pieces of info from one beacon during the big storm, was it registering a wave around 100 feet high. It was wrenched from its tether and vanished not long afterwards. Made for pretty compelling reading, not to mention how utterly frightening it must have been for those fisherman who died.
"freakish ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-storey apartment blocks" Wow, that's almost as tall as a ten-storey office building!
Here's an interesting alleged first hand account published in Fortean Times
www.forteantimes.com/articles/177_9thwave.s html
Copypasted here for your viewing pleasure:
The Ninth Wave
Over the years, FT has published many first-hand accounts of strange phenomena, but few as terrifying as Gavin Craig's close encounter with a relatively unknown force of nature - a giant wave.
When I saw the killer wave from the bridge of the Cape Horn, I took it for a natural peril; it was only much later that I realized that I might be one of the very few people to have observed a rare marine phenomenon - a monster seiche wave - at close quarters and survived.
When I joined her in 1930, the Cape Horn was an almost new, standard 'three island' ship of the period. The man in charge, Captain ES Wilkie, had commanded the last active square-rigged ship on the British register, and he and I were the only sailing ship men aboard.
The incident happened during a Force 9 or 10 gale in the Pacific, sometime between April and June 1935. We were nearly two weeks out of a Canadian or US west coast port taking sawn lumber to Shanghai. It was blowing hard with 25-ft (7.6m) seas and the phosphorescence given off by the breaking seas provided plenty of light to see by as I made my way over the deck-load towards the bridge. Ahead and to port one could see for a couple of miles, but the horizon was not clearly defined. The temperature was near zero.
About 4:30am, I noticed a change in the regular run of the seas ahead. A larger wave was forming, to judge from the gaps of blue water between the crests. The Chief Mate, Mr McKenzie, had the watch and I drew his attention to it. "Here's a 'ninth wave' bearing down, Mister." He examined it with the glasses, took a bearing from the ship's compass, checked the ship's head, then moved back to the corner window.
A 'ninth wave' is a common seamen's expression, meaning a single wave larger than the others. As I kept my eyes on it, it slowly increased in size. Later, I added: "It's not just one big wave, there are others behind it just as big. I can see their crests breaking here and there." His left hand moved towards the engine telegraph, hesitated and drew back.
By this time the wave had become so huge that I knew it would capsize the ship. No increase in speed would save us now. I was puzzled by the slowness of the advance of the sea; we seemed to be drifting together. Then I noticed that what I had initially taken for wave crests were actually widely-spaced geysers, dancing on the upper surface. These geysers - or whatever they were - were rising to a height of about 20ft (7.6m) and dropping to half that before rising again, sometimes curving against the wind. The upper surface of the sea appeared flat and endless, stretching towards the unseen horizon. By 'flat' I mean there was no defined wave motion; the surface boiled gently in whorls, exactly like the water filling a lock of the Panama Canal.
I knew beyond question that I was a dead man, but the idea didn't seem to worry me unduly. Rather, there was an absence of feeling. Suddenly I was shocked back to the present. I could plainly hear the thumping and rattling of the rocker arms of the main engine and the noise of the big exhaust in the funnel. Then, like the slamming of a watertight door, the wind dropped from a full gale to a calm. I knew what was happening; the height of the sea had cut off the wind, making a temporary lee for the ship. Glancing at the compass, I saw with surprise and delight that the ship's head was coming up to windward. In fits and starts it moved in the right direction. I talked to her: "Hurry 'fore the bastard wind comes back. Do it for me, lover..." stuff like that, but meaning every whispered word.
The bows were only about 30 ft (9m) off the far end of the 'sea' when she rammed it. Then all hell broke loose. I felt the shock as the fo'c's'le head went in and the deck-load forrard tore loose. There was another crunchin
A short-wavelength wave will move slowly in any depth of water; the speed of rogue waves is determined by the same factors as those of other wind-driven waves. The distinguishing feature of "rogue waves" is that they are tall and steep, and the same factors which allow them to do damage make them theoretically amenable to surfing.
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As a kayaker, I wonder how large is the largest standing wave recorded. I'm sure it's flood stage somewhere, maybe a pourover over a parking deck or something.
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King Waves are reported often in Western Australia where a wave of over 10 metres heigh swamps fishing boats, usually without injury. They seem to occur near reefs on relatively calm day and a product? of a number of small waves coming together for a short distance and then dispersing. A neighbour turned around in time to see a wave 10 metres high 'sneek' up on his boat and held on as it moved over the boat, all over within a few seconds.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Isn't that the wave that killed Swayze in that surfing movie?
A bicyclist travelling down a much shallower slope can hit speeds upward of 100 kph. A human being in much bulkier clothing will hit a terminal velocity of ~200 kph falling straight down; given that air drag scales as speed squared you would expect a terminal velocity of about 85% of that for a person sliding down a frictionless 45 degree slope. 170 kph is more than twice your figure of 65 kph.
You can say that the slope isn't frictionless, but it's up to you to show that hydrofoils and the like cannot reduce drag sufficiently to allow such a wave to be surfed. Given that it's easy to fly down such a slope in air and the density of water allows the same lift to be generated with much less induced drag, I don't think you'll be able to make your case.
Sustainability and energy independence essay