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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."
This reminds me of the amazing (and sobering) story of Dave Shaw, who perished in a deep freshwater cavern trying to recover the body of a fellow diver. Quite a read, if you have 20 minutes.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
Wow, a robot sub in a sinkhole... didn't we have machines capable of going MUCH deeper, say to film the Titanic, MANY years ago? I am not impressed.
Crazy. I've done ~380 fsw on trimix, with four different decompression gases, and it was a logistical headache. I know that one team has done the Edmund Fitzgerald on SCUBA, but at those depths the logistical issues, risks and costs escalate to the point that you have to wonder what you are gaining over surface supported surface supply or saturation diving - a much safer option than SCUBA. Stunts like the one Sheck pulled, or those by Jim Bowden, etc., are nothing more than showboating for the sake of setting records. Problem is, the record you set might not be the one you were shooting for. (Most preventable death award goes to...)
With trimix being so accessable now, it doesn't make any sense to me why anyone would continue to endanger themselves by doing deep dives on air. Actually, considering the widespread availability of nitrox, using air for any diving whatsoever doesn't really make sense anymore. I don't.
As for 1000' deep sinkholes, using a ROV is probably the right idea.
Wonder if we'll ever have nanotech suits that make diving as safe as a submarine (or, hopefully, safer).
Then I guess you'll have divers who wish for the good old days when you had to have skill to dive.
A similar technology for space suits is probably a lot easier though. Only a single atmosphere of pressure, and a near vacuum environment.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You can't find that out from Wikipedia, because the gravity-based cosmologists there are deathly afraid of people supporting plasma cosmology (which still does have a Wikipedia page). Even if new info is presented as what plasma cosmologists believe but everyone else has moved beyond, it gets immediately cut out. It's like a medical doctor gutting the page on bloodletting, because he disagreed with the practice. No crap, you disagree with it. That doesn't mean nobody should know what it's about. The fact that the Hollow Earth theory has a bigger page than plasma cosmology says a lot about what those idiots are doing to the page (and I say "idiots" NOT because I think gravity-based cosmologists have anything wrong with their own theory - it's just the ones at Wikipedia who feel the need to suppress information).
Freedom is assumed. Then they try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
The world's largest known underground lake is Lost Sea, in Tennessee between Chattanooga and Knoxville. It's worth stopping off if you're ever in the area. Back in the 1970's, a group of divers tried to map the lake. The bubbles from their air tanks dislodged so much debris from the ceilings of the caves that they were unable to complete the project. I wonder if something like this robot would be able to finish the job.
Exley was a pioneer. He literally wrote the book on cave diving and was the first person in the world to log over 1,000 cave dives. Slashdotters may also be interested to know that he was a North Florida math teacher who wrote his own software ("Dr. X") to help calculate gas mixes etc. during deep dives into the many caves which are part of the Florida Aquifer system. I submitted a story a few years ago on the tenth anniversary of his death but it was rejected -- glad to see he's finally being mentioned here.
We already have centitech suits that make diving as safe as a submarine. Actually probably a bit safer, considering they're rated for over three times the depth of a typical submarine. Not quite as fun though, since it's more like diving in your own personal submarine.
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