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The Search For the Mount Everest of Caves
NoMeansYes writes "An interview with James Tabor, author of the new best-selling book Blind Descent, introduces a pair of accomplished scientists — American Bill Stone and Ukranian geologist Alexander Klimchouk — who are the two most prominent figures in extreme caving. Both have figured prominently in the ongoing quest to discover the deepest cave on earth. Tabor describes what conditions are like inside supercaves like Cheve (-4,869 feet) and Krubera (-7,188 feet), before discussing Stone and his far-reaching technological innovations. These include the Posideon Discovery Rebreather and NASA's ENDURANCE. Extreme caving probably won't remain underground (so to speak) much longer, however. The article notes that James Cameron is planning to release a 3D film next year about extreme cave divers."
Features blue characters much like his last film Avatar, however in this case it's due to a lack of oxygen.
Something as simple as stirring up some dust can mean death to a cave diver. It takes a special kind of person (nut) to do this. I watched a few specials on this and how easy it is to die. All I've got to say is that it must take a pair the size of the the former twin towers. I'm not fearful of enclosed spaces in the slightest, but this is just insane. On top of that, if you manage to get that deep, you have to account for the trip back, meaning if you exceed your air supply by getting lost in dirty water, or any other number of potential gotchas, you could easily end up overstaying your welcome and just not have enough time to get back out again.
I could actually see myself paying for a feature film about this. Not out of an interest in doing it myself, but seeing the extreme conditions man will venture into to quench an unstoppable curiosity.
Is that involved for extreme caving ?
Pre-Titanic, he used to get the story part right, too.
I wonder what Freud would say about such "extreme caving"?
The articles quite interesting, new antibiotics , a rebreather letting someone say underwater for 10 -12 hours at a time and then theres the nasa mission to europa...
making a movie is the least interesting thing mentioned.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Looks like Hollywood acknowledges that their movies are too superficial.
Jon Stewart interviewed the author a month back - http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-june-15-2010/james-tabor
No Sig for you.!
and you could really see it in avatar: all that beautiful day glo flora was obviously inspired by your average earth coral reef
and cameron has said avatar ii is going to be an aquatic adventure on pandora:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/04/james-cameron-talks-the-enironment-the-avatar-sequel-and-more.html
considering how cameron's diving hobbies inspire his creative works (look at titanic and the abyss), i welcome whatever comes out of the creative ferment of his mind from his interest in deep caves. perhaps the abyss ii? some sort of horror movie? avatar iii will be in a galactic cave? who knows...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Most of the world uses metric, and it now it is just plain distracting to articles in feet, miles etc.
Here's is a suggestion for Google: Have a translation option that converts these pages into metric on the fly!
46137
Will slashdot's far reach cause more people to get stuck in caves? People are always diving in caves. People seeking new passages through small holes get stuck all the time.
Will the movie result in an uptick in caving deaths? 60 percent of cave deaths in Florida are related to cave diving. I've always wanted to go caving, except that everything I read about it, is about someone dying.
Push-Pull.
They've gone down 2km. That's still about half the depth of the 3.9km TauTona mine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TauTona and far short of the 11km of the Challenger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_Deep. Now if there were some caves below the oceanic trenches...
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
I second the statement, "I'm not claustrophobic, but this is insane". It's the sheer un-rescue-ability of it all, if you simply get wedged, that gets to me.
A young man died cave diving in the Rockies not far from Calgary a few years back. The awful bit was that he got delayed coming back, wasn't sure how far it was, went to the limit of his air, turned the little knob that gives you the last five minutes, and used that time scratching out a goodbye to his family on the air tank.
Right around one more corner from where he would have seen the flashlights of his friends waiting for him.
Lessons I took from it:
1) Cave diving is insane.
2) If you're ever certain you're at that last moment of your life, nevertheless spend it trying to survive. Your family actually knew you loved them already.
The article notes that James Cameron is planning to release a 3D film next year about extreme cave divers.
And the year after that will see "Cavatar"
A man falls in love with a female from a tribe of green, subterranean lizard people, and helps her fight off the evil white American oppressors who want to drill her (wink wink) home for sub-crustal oil.
considering how cameron's diving hobbies inspire his creative works (look at titanic and the abyss), i welcome whatever comes out of the creative ferment of his mind from his interest in deep caves. perhaps the abyss ii? some sort of horror movie?
Maybe he can go spelunking in a library, and learn how to make an original plot and put that "3D" concept to work with his character construction.
galactic cave?
o_O
When my wife and daughter were out of town I watched Transformers 3 (or was it 2?) using the video projector she uses for her lectures and 5.1 system cobbled together from my stereo and the speakers and subwoofer from my home recording studio.. There were so many loud explosions it made by puppy pee on the carpet, which it hasn't done for six months.
I may have spotted a little bit too, but that was because of Megan Fox's impressive mating display.
The acting by the stars was brilliant, but the humans weren't nearly as good. Although Megan's heiny was acting up a storm. As a tuchus, it has remarkable expressive range.
If any of you mention to my wife that I watched a Transformers, I'll have to kick your ass. Her opinion of my intellect is already low enough, thank you very much.
I also watched The Sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky, and all things being equal, I liked the Transformers better, despite The Sacrifice's Palme d'Or at Cannes. What, you got a fuckin' problem with that? I don't care what you say, Tarkovsky should have used more explosions.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The endurance device looks really cool as an autonomous submersible that can find it's way back to the transducer dropped through the opening in the ice. Here are a few problems;
Getting to Europa the package needs to set down in an area where there is a "lead" in the ice where it is thinner. Trying to drill or melt your way through a kilometer of ice would be a serious challenge that we would even have a problem with today (an opening the size of Endurance).
To make a hole would either require an automated drilling system or a nuclear power source to melt it's way down to below the ice. Since RTG (radioisotope thermal generators) require a significant amount of plutonium or radioactive thorium to generate even a small amount of thermal energy it would require a "real" reactor to create enough heat to melt a hole. As the reactor and ENDURANCE melts their way down they would deploy a tether back up to the surface. As they melt downwards the water will freeze above them, leaving the tether encased in ice.Once they break free of the ice layer and make it into the depths of Europa's ocean the reactor can be powered back and act as a docking station, recharging station and communications hub for the ENDURANCE explorer. Data would be relayed back up the tether to a satellite relay station to send data back up to an orbiter.
With a "down hole" power source the ENDURANCE probe could carry out extended exploration missions down to the crush depth of the submursiable and missions could last for months (aka the Mars rovers).
Tisha Hayes
The other thing that bothered me about this book was the author's persistent implication that it's *possible* to find "the deepest cave".
Until we come up with a universal earth-scanning technology that can reveal all subterranean openings (that are passable to humans), this title can't be granted with any certainty.
Krubera has the current title, but then, many other caves have held the title in the past. It's not like a mountain, where height is (reasonably) verifiable with current technology -- finding the deepest human-reachable location requires lots of effort and luck.
Enjoy that McDonald's burger, and wash it down with a Bud Light! Popular=best!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
...describes how something can go horribly wrong in a cave dive (in this case, Bushman's Hole, one of the deepest freshwater caves in the world) even with the best planning efforts of experts in the field. It's a long, but incredibly sad, read. If you want to read something really haunting, Dave Shaw's website is still online. The video is out there too (aired on ABC in 2005). I leave the video links as an exercise to the reader. It's not something I really want to dig up again.
You'd think someone with a name like Lolth would have a sense of humor about it.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
If they can dive 7000 feet, then they could reach the BP wellhead.
Read this. The depth is measured relative to the cave mouth and the deepest cave involved a 46m dive at the bottom. You cannot dive 2000+m all the way in water because the pressure will be ~200 times atmosphere and you will be crushed. Since air is ~1,000 less dense a 2,000m heigh drop in air is about the same as being under 2m of water which is why cavers and potholers can make it to such depths but deep sea divers cannot.
The AUV that will be used to explore Europa will need to be much smaller than the ENDUANCE AUV, the large vehicle size is mostly for prototyping software and hardware. Also it allows room for an accurate inertial measurement system and relatively large science payload. The ice penetrating robot concept is currently being prototyped using power over fiber. The eventual Europa vehicle will, most likely, require an RTG to melt through the ice and power the AUV for months / years.
If funded this project will be able to answer one of the most important scientific questions of our lifetime: if there is life present outside places other than Earth and if life evolved in parallel on Europa and Earth (e.g. DNA / RNA strands are significantly different from each other or some other encoding method is used).
They call them spelunkers because that's the sound that you make when you fall into a chasm filled with water.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Exploring caves is the last adventure left to the proverbial "common man". Everything is mapped and surveyed except caves. Even if you climb a mountain as a first ascent, someone has photographed it and its height is known. There is no technology that allows to survey caves without going there and that is the excitement and fun of it. You can do it big as Bill Stone of you can find a few meters in a local cave and you can do it according your technical and physical ability. Just join the local Grotto and you have that chance! Nothing beats entering a passage where no other human being has walked before and where your light illuminates formations that nobody has seen before. You can do this only in space and on the bottom of the ocean but the costs and technology needed for that is beyond the reach of hobbyists.
There will never be the ultimate deepest cave as we know the highest mountain as there are no means of knowing this until all caves are explored. Estimates place the ratio of explored caves at some 5% of total caves. Some have not even an entrance... Of course, we know the theoretical limit which is the height difference of the limestone bedding that houses the cave but there might always be a higher entrance or a sump or something else
The reason why caving is not as popular with viewers is that it really is not a spectator sport. All you see is some cavers departing into a deep hole. Comparing this to seeing mountaineers where you can see the mountain, the cliff and where you can admire the challenge you have no such chance with a cave. And if you're not a caver you can not imagine the challenge, the joy, the cold and the misery and the excitement.
I disagree. Apples and oranges.
Quality and popular have never had much of a relationship as demonstrated by Wal Mart.
Cheap, low quality products are popular, but their consumers wouldn't normally consider them quality.
Similarly: Toyota vs. Ferrari
One is much more popular. One is much higher quality.
Where are my mod points when I need 'em? It doesn't matter whether some welfare- or parent-supported douche thinks they're the foremost authority on something. Ultimately, how successful and effective something is is the ultimate measure of quality. Just like the way low-budget arthouse films are generally absolutely crap (or if they're not, they rapidly become huge hits, reinforcing the "if it's popular then it's good, and if it's good it will be popular" theme).
It's the same reason that no matter how much your hacker's aesthetics cringe at using Microsoft Office, it's still used by so many businesses. It gets the job done with less fuss than anything else, and results in a better rate of return on investment, therefore however much you, personally, dislike it - it IS better.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You cannot dive 2000+m all the way in water because the pressure will be ~200 times atmosphere and you will be crushed.
You don't get crushed by the pressure as your body is mainly water/fluids and the air spaces you have are equalised whilst you are breathing.,
The reason for not being able (yet) to dive to these depths is the fact that even with extreme technical diving gas mixes the air becomes toxic well before these depths. The O2 in normal air "approx 21%" starts to become dangerous at depths below 60m with a rapidly increasing risk of central nervous system toxicity leading to convulsions, blackouts and drowning. This is why technical divers have to change gas mixes as they go deeper with each mix having a much lower % of O2. That's without even taking into account the problems of removing the massive amounts of Nitrogen absorbed by the body and the problems that the Helium added to replace the O2 gives to the body as well.
The current depth record of open circuit diving is around 300m and even that still included over 9 hours of stops on the ascent to off-gas safely.
Don't forget partial pressures of gases. In effect, putting the oxygen under to much pressure can result in a "dieseling" effect. When using exotic atmospheric gas mixtures, the goal is not only to remove potentially harmful gases, but also to control the partial pressure of oxygen itself.
Definition:
The pressure a gas would have if it alone occupied the space in which it is being measured.
For example: Air is 21% oxygen and therefore the partial pressure of oxygen in air at the surface is 0.21, meaning that it would occupy 0.21 of the space on the surface. As depth increases, pressure increases so that at 10 meters (33 feet) of sea water surface pressure is doubled and air pressure is also doubled. This means that while air still occupies 21% of the volume it is now twice as dense and it's partial pressure is now 0.42. The partial pressure of oxygen reaches 1.0 at approximately 37.6 meters (123 feet) and at this depth breathing air is the equivalent of breathing pure oxygen on the surface.
http://scuba.about.com/od/scubaterminology/g/partialpressure.htm
There are probably better links out there, feel free to use Google to satisfy your curiosity. ;^)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
No no; you don't get it. More small letters are used every day than big letters. They must be better. His post just sticks to the best all the time and ignores inferior "capital" letters. You and I are just misguided throwbacks.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
You would not be crushed. Your body largely consists of fluids, which are hardly compressible. All your gas-filled orifices and holes are connected to your breathing tract, so that, using some form of compressed air, you can counter balance the pressure.
What is more of a problem is the narcosis all gases cause. With normal compressed air, the effects start at about 30m of water column. At about 65m, you get to a depth where compressed air contains so much oxygen that it gets lethal.
So deep divers use different mixes for going down, when they are at depth and for decompression. Very deep dives have only limited amounts of oxygen, which would kill one at normal pressure due to hypoxy. There were experiments in pressure chambers, where all nitrogen was replaced by hydrogen, and one "diver" managed to go to 700m (>2000ft), but because of the decompression phase, the whole dive took >45 days to complete. This depth is also assumed the theoretical limit for current gases, although the deepest water dive was (only) to about 500m.
Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuba_diving#Effects_of_breathing_high_pressure_gas
Every SCUBA diver who is not enclosed in armour (some are) breathe gas at ambient pressure. As you can see in the link above, there are various risks associated with deep diving, but the truly limiting factor are the effects of the various gases at depth. Helium and hydrogen are used to replace oxygen and nitrogen to some extent, but they come with their own set of problems. All other gases are too heavy and/or toxic and will kill you in the short or long run. Argon is the only one light enough to be breathed, but it's a _massive_ hallucinogenic.
Too much oxygen: Cramps, reduced field of vision up to and including temporal blindness. Damage to cell tissue if exposed for prolonged time (starting at 8-24 hours, depending on who you ask)
Too much nitrogen: You become stupid. The effect is gone the second you go above your personal depth limit (of the day). Also, your metabolic rate goes through the roof. You feel your entire body panicking and need to fight to stay calm. Those effects become less if you dive deep on air regularly.
Too much helium: HPNS. Your nervous system goes into overdrive; often accompied by shivering.
Too much hydrogen: I think it was narcotic, if less so than nitrogen. As it's not really used in non-professional diving I don't know too much about it. Although it's cheaper than helium, it likes to go boom. Pair that with high-pressure oxygen and the tiniest fleck of grease or oil anywhere will make everything explode all by itself.
Various side effects like helium being able to get out of solution easier, forcing you to ascend even more slowly etc pp also come into play.
Also, as any caver will tell you, unless you _know_ a cave has constant supply of fresh air, you better bring your own gas. Your body detects higher-than-normal levels of CO_2, not the absence of O_2. Under the right conditions, a lung-full of zero (or less than 12%) oxygen gas will ensure that you are unconscious before you hit the ground. After that, you suffocate and die, but at least you won't know it.
Whoever modded you insightful has never seen a proper SCUBA diver. It's the least sexy sport, bar none.
Unless you build a pee valve into your dry suit, the only way to take a leak in a dry-suit are diapers. Yes, diapers.
Add the fact that you need to stay hydrated very well and that cold water will make your body pull blood into the torso. This, in turn, makes your bladder work overtime. Being perfectly still most of the time during ascent and the nice bubbly noises all around you adds extra fun!
Well someone could call 'spelunking' 'spelunkery'.
Oh an according to that James Tabor dude, serious cavers hate the term 'spelunking'; personally I love it but ten again I rarely go diving into moist caves.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Not to be confused with the Vin Dieseling effect, characterized as a downward pressure on movie quality due to actor selection -- "Pitch Black" not withstanding. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
3d for this, 3d for that, really , we need 3d like we need a third nipple...useless, especially for something like a documentary....
I tend to think hollywood just makes all these movies on purpose to waste money when we have a real problem with
our planet (oil spill) that could use all the help we can give....seems pointless to go to the movies when our planet is dying, and we are doing almost nothing for it...
159 comments, as of this writing, and not a *single* Colossal Cave reference? Narry an XYZZY to be found anywhere here? And you call yourselves geeks and nerds. Why, back in my day....now get off my lawn!
That said, I did a little bit, a very little bit, of cave diving in Hawaii, and while you have to trust your equipment completely when underwater, there was always (to me) the comfort that "escape" is just going straight up. In a cave, you don't even have that. It was quite unnerving and, while I'll always say I had a good time, I was glad when I was back on the surface, climbing into the boat.
Deep diving is extremely dangerous and requires exotic blends of gases that vary with depth range. The deepest ocean dive that has ever been recorded was in 1988 to a depth of 534 meters. It was done in the Mediterranean by a team of divers from COMEX using a mixture of Hydrogen, Helium, and Oxygen. The gas mixture must balance the physiological effects of each gas component in terms of narcosis and metabolic needs. All gases, even "inert" ones have effects on the nervous system. The physical nature of these effects is largely unknown, but they likely stem from the differing solubility of each component in various parts of the body. There is some literature that makes the case that the narcotic effect of a gas depends on its lipid solubility with the suspected mechanism being that the dissolved gas molecules lodge in cell membranes and change their physical properties affecting neuro-transmission. The deepest "chamber dive" was to 701 meters which took 43 days to perform the decompression. You get more into at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturation_diving and http://www.techdiver.ws/exotic_gases.shtml It is possible (likely?) that these records have been surpassed by the military, but as far as we know it is physically impossible for a diver to survive at the depth of Deepwater Horizon rig, let alone do useful work.