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New Sub Dives To Crushing Depths
University of Washington Scientists are reporting that they have a new autonomous underwater vehicle that increases both the attainable depth and duration of deployment over current submersibles. Weighing in at just under 140 pounds, the "Deepglider" is able to stay out to sea for up to a year and hit depths of almost 9,000 feet. "Deepglider opens up new research possibilities for oceanographers studying global climate change. The glider's first trip revealed unexpected warming of water near the ocean floor, and scientists are interested in studying whether the temperatures are related to global warming."
And to put that further into perspective, from a quick Google, the current record holder was the Japanese The Shinkai 6500 With a maximum recorded depth of 6,527m.
It's still got a few K's to go.
Read the article you link to. Submariners have NEVER been to the bottom of the trench. If any person has been to the bottom of the trench, they were dead long before they got there. From the article, "Using echo sounding, the Challenger II measured a depth of 5,960 fathoms..." Nothing manmade has ever been to the bottom of the trench and returned.
The average heat flux from the earth is less than 0.1W/m2. Compare that to ~ 1000 W/m2 for the sun. Sure, it varies all over the place (see: volcanoes, etc.), but it's not a no-brainer where any heat anomalies the glider detected came from. In general, the deep ocean is quite cold because of that whole thermal expansion thing (also note that seawater is densest a few degrees above freezing (~4 deg C, if I recall). So heating from the bottom tends to cause convection.
You'll note that the scientists quoted don't mention global warming; they are excited to see stuff that they didn't expect. That's good enough to satisfy their intellectual curiosity & need to come up with new and interesting grant proposals.
You'll also notice that scientists in general don't sell newspapers or magazines. It's the journalists whose job it is to butcher the science to sell newspapers and magazines.
Finally, the oceans are very much tied up in our little carbon experiment. A good bit of any extra heat that is trapped in the atmosphere will go into the oceans. Also, a lot of the CO2 that we've emitted is already going into the oceans, which leads to ocean acidification. This is the rate of carbonic acid input (that's CO2 + H2O H2CO3 H+ + HCO3-) is much higher than the ocean can buffer it with CaCO3 (which buffers effectively, but only on very long time scales). In the meantime, hope you don't like coral.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
I'm working in a buoyancy related problem so I have to point this out. From the full article: "When pressure compresses a hull in a traditional glider, it gains buoyancy and requires more energy to control." If it's compressed, the volume shrinks, it gains density and loses buoyancy.
1. It's an autonomous vehicle. Most unmanned subs have to be remotely piloted. Many are tethered to their mothership, severely limiting their range and maneuverability.
2. Its range and endurance are nothing short of phenomenal. They've made a quantum leap in efficiency.
3. It may be the cheapest way to get to a depth of 9000 ft.
That is probably the very question they're trying to answer.
Ocean water is not stagnant and there are currents that mix surface water with warmer water in places where the surface water is colder (and denser) than the deeper water.
Oops, ./ ate my brackets. I meant: CO2 + H20 <=> H2CO3 <=> H+ + HCO3- (bicarbonate)
Might as well go all the way: HCO3- <=> H+ + CO3- (carbonate)
Here's the carbonic acid scoop.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
The reason this matters, from TFA, is that this is a glider, not a submarine. It's cheaper, lighter, and more energy efficient than dropping a big ball to the bottom of the ocean. This thing can drive around and look at stuff very similarly to how a non-crush depth submersible could do.
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How sad is it when a scientist sees something for the first time and rather than say 'I have no clue whay this is happening, I should study the reason this is happening' says 'This might be because of gloabal working, I should go look for a link'.
The "Crush Depth" of a submarine is the depth at which it is crushed by the pressure.
Thus the headline translates to: New Sub Dives Deeper than other subs without being crushed
There are two kinds of people: 1) those that need closure
the challenger was a sailboat carrying instruments. It didn't dive. The bastiscaphe trieste, did though. You probably were thinking about this one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
I read a recent blog where a real scientist showed that hydrothermal vents could contribute as much as 0.0000343 K!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I know this is derived from a grandpa Simpson quote, but to put the quote in perspective, 40 rods is .125 miles and a hogshead is 63 gallons, so doing the conversion it's .00198 miles per gallon (.00084 km/liter according to google) or roughly a thousand gallons of gas to go 2 miles. That would cost me roughly $30000 per day at current gas prices to get to and back from work.
I think you answered your own question. Anyways, lookup Copernicus.
Nope. Kelvins are treated as regular units, rather than degrees. So it's correct to read 10 K as "ten Kelvins", as opposed to the common equivalent, which would be -263 degrees Celsius (or -442 degrees Fahrenheit). Must have something to do with the fact that Kelvins are absolute, and therefore cannot be negative, although interestingly enough, it's correct to say 18 degrees Rankine, not 18 Rankines.
Kelvin himself was rather absolute in some of his pronouncements, like his assertion that radio would never be more than a curiosity, and that heavier-than-air flight was impossible.
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I have a meter that measures kilometres. What's a kilometer, and what does it measure?