Robot Submarine Maps World's Deepest Sinkhole

holy_calamity writes "The world's deepest water-filled sinkhole has finally been mapped — by a robotic submarine whose descendants may one day swim on one of Jupiter's moons. The last attempt to find the bottom resulted in the SCUBA diving depth record and the death of a diving legend. The sub's sonar found that the divers had descended to only about 10m from the floor. The sub's mapping also indicated that the sinkhole, which is over 300m deep, could connect to even deeper caves."

Comments

Re:Mel's Hole?

[ricree]

I know that wikipedia isn't exactly the world's most reliable source, but why in the heck hasn't that article been deleted yet.

Re:Mel's Hole?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I know that wikipedia isn't exactly the world's most reliable source, but why in the heck hasn't that article been deleted yet.

For the same reason that articles on Leprechauns or the Piltdown Man aren't deleted. So someone can go & read about them, find out they're not real things, and the read the story of how the hoax/myth/whatever was perpetutated.

Re:Deep Diving Risks

[Joaz Banbeck]

Quite a sad tale as I recall. Shows the dangers of nitrogen narcosis. Makes your judgement horrible.

Shaw made one serious mistake: he had a plan, and when something went wrong - the corpse's head came off - he tried to modify the plan at 800+ ft below, instead of going up to safety and making a new plan. ( Can't say I would have done better, though )

Re:Deep Diving Risks

[flyingsquid]

Personally, I think the bigger mistake was first putting himself in a situation where even the slightest misstep could result in death. He pushed his luck, and his luck ran out. Outside Magazine just loves this kind of death-by-adventure story. There was the one about the kid who went into the backwoods of Alaska to live off the land and starved to death, and there was the one about all the people who died in a storm on Everest (both appeared first in the magazine and were later written up as Into The Wild and Into Thin Air, respectively, both by Jon Krakauer).

But I have a hard time crying too much about those stories where someone takes a lot of risks and then dies. Either you're incompetent and in over your head, in which case you deserve whatever you get. Or, you know the risks but take them anyway, figuring a potentially short, but adventure-filled life is better than a long, boring, risk-averse one, in which case you knew exactly what you were getting into, so you can't complain too much. Still, they do make for great reading.

Re:Deep Diving Risks

[Comatose51]

I'm not sure if people like him needs anyone to feel sorry for or to even pass any judgment on him. From the article, his friends certainly didn't. They accepted the fact and that was it. He accepted the risks and knew that there's always an element of chance. His luck ran out and he's dead. There's a great deal of stoicism that I admire in people like that. If all of us waited until all the conditions were 100% right, nothing amazing will ever be achieved.