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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."
For those who don't speak ancient google translated it to be:
9 000 feet = 2 743.2 meters
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I'd like to test the effects of global warming on the production and recreational use of the marijuana plant. I swear to God it will be a scientific study.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
How would global warming, if it even exists as people say it does, affect the temperature of water on the ocean floor?
Blerg.
Who the hell modded this troll? It's insightful! The water is deep in the ocean, closer to the earth's core... or does geothermal heat not exist in the mod's world?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
So, the very first question is weather this is related to global warming or not. What about.. Or it may be due to hot magma underneath or some previously unknown "conveyor belt"?
Not jumping to conclusions or anything, are we??
Scientists sell too. They need funding to feed their families and buy machines than go beep. They need to use teaser language to get people interested in their work to get funding.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
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.
stuff |
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'.
It always amazes me, that we (well, humankind that is, I can't take all the credit) managed to dive to almost 40,000 feet with the Challenger in *1951*, but haven't been back or deeper since! There is so much to explore on our own planet, and so much effort is being placed into going out into a vast, mostly empty vacuum, instead of looking under our own massive oceans, which are teeming with life (almost a new form, ever time we look at it).
The discoveries we are likely to make under our oceans, are undoubtedly going to be of far more relevance and benefit to our own lives on this little planet, that anything we find "out there." Yes, I think we should do both, but I think the depths of our oceans are severely and disproportionately neglected, except for the odd diving renegade.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
why is it that topics like global warming (and evolution for that matter), everyone thinks they know better than someone whom has (presumably) studied the topic for years by dismissing them as saying what they "cause it sells newspapers/magazines"?
i'm not saying that your theory is wrong (or that the scientist is right), but assessing validity between A) a random poster on
sorry, not to pick on you, but it amazes me how often politicians, theologians, pundits, etc., spout their opinions as if it carries more weight than someone who has dedicated their life studying the subject. if it turns out that science is wrong, then the truth will bear out, and any scientist worth their salt will be the first to say it's wrong -- i also suspect that most scientists *are* worth their salt.
modern science has benefited humanity in so many ways, yet people deny it when it goes against their opinions/politics.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
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
No, they made no such conclusion. They are only marking climate change as one possible explanation for differences between expected and measured values.
Any physical oceanographer (my wife happens to be one) will tell you that ocean temperatures are a very complex phenomenon. If the surface temperature of the ocean increased, it wouldn't be seen any time soon as an across the board increase in deep ocean temperatures, because the ocean doesn't vertically mix much in any locality. Instead, surface currents carry energy great distances horizontally, eventually cooling and sinking to drive deep ocean return currents.
Monitoring changes in deep ocean temperatures in many places is an interesting objective, because it might say a great deal about changes in ocean circulation patterns. The relationship between increased surface temperatures and deep ocean temperatures is more complex than it would be if temperatures simply diffuse downard. It is quite possible that in some places a global increase in surface temperature would cause temperatures to drop in some deep ocean localities.
You can no more make conclusions about global climate change from a single deep ocean location than you can from a single surface weather station.
IIRC, there already is robotic monitoring of deep ocean temperatures. Extending the reach of these programs will give us a more complete picture, which in turn can be used to validate or invalidate climate change scenarios. If you believe global warming is a sham, then obtaining a more complete picture is a good thing. It'll make faulty models harder to validate.
AFAIK, the radiative cooling of the Earth is a relatively minor contributor to ocean temperatures; however by looking at changes in temperature, especially across many places, then it can be effectively factored out.
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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?
It not only sells newspapers, it wins Oscars!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
A good bit of any extra heat that is trapped in the atmosphere will go into the oceans.
If the heat came from the atmosphere, wouldn't it be detected in surface temperatures? This story seems to indicated the reverse: A good bit of any extra heat that is trapped in the ocean will leak into the atmosphere.
Heat from hydrothermal vents and other underwater volcanic phenomena heats the ocean water. The Juan de Fuca Ridge is in the pacific ocean along the Washington coastline, so I think it likely that this process is what the scientists' sub has detected.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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The Lobstermen are the worst ones. They just will not die. And the ones who keep mind controlling my operatives.
Well, them and the Sea Devils - they used to give Jon Pertwee a terrible time.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The oceans are indeed a mystery. We haven't studied them near as well as we have the land above, mainly becuase we humans are quite puny in comparison, and absolutely must have a ready supply of breathable air. Preferably at an ambient pressure of less than 100psi.
The deepest we've ever been, and two guys lived through it, is actually deeper than Everest is tall, 37,800 feet to the bottom of the Marianas Trench off the Phillipines. The iron ball, 6 feet in diameter that they were in, suspended from the kerosene ballast tanks of the Navy's Trieste, was squeezed by the nominally 18kpsi pressure, enough to warp the frames of the equipment braces holding the controls and monitors for the tv cameras that I actually helped build back in about 1960. The Treiste ran everything in it and on it from big racks of Sears Die-Hard batteries, each of which had a heavy balloon with half a pint or so of battery acid in them, snapped over the neck of the cell, with a wire cage to keep them from being dislodged by water currents. They brought back a lot of pix of blind, eyeless fish from down there, and they turned the cameras around to look at the batteries once and found that all of the balloons had been driven into the batteries. So don't ever let anybody tell you that water is incompressible, it is at 18,000 psi. So is oil, we had filled the pan & tilt drives with motor oil, and layed a neoprene rubber gasket on the top, then drilled some holes in the cover to let the pressure in. There was about an inch of clearance to the closest gear. One gasket was cut thru, the other was damaged by the turning gears slicing into it but held.
But the guys weren't in very good shape by the time it had surfaced and the gondola opened to let/get them out, so thats a trip they never repeated, and they were using state of the art air recycling gear. If something better has been invented now for that, I'm not aware of it. The danger of it imploding was very real, this was about 2x deeper than Alvin or its successor ilk have ever been. But then Alvin and company have access holes that can be opened, this ball didn't due to the pressure calcs saying they couldn't support it, so it was cut in half, and the seams epoxied together after the guys were inside, and it had to be removed somehow to get them back out. The Navy never said how they opened it once the epoxy was set.
But, man being the curious thing that he is, if better tools can be made, I expect there will be ready volunteers to occupy the viewports for yet another trip into that abyss.
Do you feel lucky? I think I'l stay up here, thank you...
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Cheers, gene
All subs can dive to crushing depths. The problem is getting back up.
I have a meter that measures kilometres. What's a kilometer, and what does it measure?
Awesome info, thanks for sharing.