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Enormous Tunneling Machine 'Bertha' Blocked By 'The Object'
An anonymous reader sends word that 'Bertha,' the world's largest tunneling machine, which is currently boring a passage beneath Seattle's waterfront, has been forced stop. The 57.5ft diameter machine has encountered an unknown obstruction known as "the object."
"The object’s composition and provenance remain unknown almost two weeks after first contact because in a state-of-the-art tunneling machine, as it turns out, you can’t exactly poke your head out the window and look. 'What we’re focusing on now is creating conditions that will allow us to enter the chamber behind the cutter head and see what the situation is,' [said project manager Chris Dixon]. Mr. Dixon said he felt pretty confident that the blockage will turn out to be nothing more or less romantic than a giant boulder, perhaps left over from the Ice Age glaciers that scoured and crushed this corner of the continent 17,000 years ago. But the unknown is a tantalizing subject. Some residents said they believe, or want to believe, that a piece of old Seattle, buried in the pell-mell rush of city-building in the 1800s, when a mucky waterfront wetland was filled in to make room for commerce, could be Bertha’s big trouble. That theory is bolstered by the fact that the blocked tunnel section is also in the shallowest portion of the route, with the top of the machine only around 45 feet below street grade."
...The SCP Foundation.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm betting on a lost anchor or random pieces of cast iron from an old ship.
I bet it's a rectangular solids whose dimensions are in the precise ratio of 1 : 4 : 9....
Zoid.com
... a create of unsold Windows phones?
I'm sure I saw an old documentary about this kind of thing happening in the London Underground. Watch out for giant ants...
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Clearly The Object is an interstellar vehicle with a structure of super-dense composite materials built to withstand the vagaries of near-light-speed travel for thousands of years. It crashed here long before human tribes crossed the land bridge from siberia and has remained undiscovered until now. They are best off leaving it undisturbed, if they enter it, they risk releasing biomechanoid killing machines that will destroy all of humanity.
...and eight tanker trucks of coffee. That ought to do it.
That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.
This tunnel was locally controversial, with opponents arguing that
- it was expensive
- it wouldn't help with Seattle's traffic problems, AND
- these monster boring machines have a track record of getting stuck underground, and then what are you going to do? Call Roto-Rooter?
Sounds like it's starting to come true...
Civil Engineers, geologists, and mining specialists encounter the BFR phenomenon on a regular basis.
It's a Big Fucking Rock.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
It's hard to imagine a "piece of old Seattle" that would interfere with a tunneling machine. I'm guessing they're right, and it's an erratic from the ice age. I'd love to get to go in the tunnel and look, though - the tunneling equipment Seattle's been using both for this one and for the light rail extension fascinates me.
I'm a bit surprised Ivar's hasn't taken advantage of this though.
#DeleteChrome
Tis' a great blow for object oriented programming.
Upon further investigation they've determined the object has a hatch. The plan to spend the next couple of seasons trying top open it. They're not not the only ones in the tunnel...and they all know it!
... having a 57.5ft tunnel with only 45ft of material above it. Aren't they worried about a cave-in? Unless they're plowing through heavily clay-laden (damned near bunker-buster-proof) soil like we have around where I live, surely the vibrations will have an effect on that 45ft of soil overhead if they decide to proceed and Bertha begins grinding its way through The Object.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Wait, I thought the AllSpark was buried under the Hoover Dam.
Maybe they found the AllSpice.
"'Bertha,' the world's largest tunneling machine, which is currently boring..."
It's not THAT boring.
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
Clearly it is the Arkenstone. They digged too greedily and too deep.
Nope. God put it there 6000 years ago to test the faithful.
Dr. Who's phone booth.
Dr. Who has no phone booth. Everyone knows the TARDIS is a police box.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
No can do. As the machine moves forward the tunnel walls are built behind it. TBM's have no reverse.
Actually the machine isn't stuck, yet. They stopped the machine because it encountered resistance. If it actually does get stuck the machine can't be dismantled underground and removed. They would have to dig it out from above, remove the TBM and install a new one. If it does get stuck let's just hope it's not under a skyscraper.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2013/12/10_SR99tunnelingstatement.htm
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/what-could-possibly-go-wrong/Content?oid=4399657
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Unfortunately, they are going to find where we hide all of our dead Californians.
Here is a different link with a nice picture of concrete panels, scroll down.
http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-largest-drilling-machine-bertha/28311/
I guess the machine isn't boring after all.
13) A hour's worth of crack rock for Rob Ford
Look in the above comments.
Time to offend someone
Putting a camera or hatch on the front of the cutting head makes no sense. It presses hard against a rock face and would just get smashed or scuffed up. A number of these machines will have some forward looking capacity by taking a core sample ahead of the machine regularly but unless the sample managed to drill into the unknown object they wouldn't know it was there.
Time to offend someone
Will it blend?
Switch to creative mode temporarily to remove it.
all the boring stories lately?
encountered an unknown obstruction known as "the object."
Their framework can't handle a public static object?
If this was a Dr. Who episode, it would be a crashed spaceship from millions of years ago and everybody who went into the tunnel would come out covered in green slime and turning into a cave man.
It may be the fossilized remains of Ivar's prized proto-clam: http://www.komonews.com/news/offbeat/Ivars-Mystery-object-in-tunnel-may-be-giant-fossil-clam-236438221.html
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
This is an earth-pressure-balance type TBM built for soft sand and dirt, below water level. Compressed air is used to keep water out at the working face. That's what's needed for a tunnel under the Seattle waterfront. It can cope with rocks and boulders, but not a solid rock face. It's not a hard-rock TBM. Those have very different cutters, but can't handle waterlogged soil.
Tunneling is like that. Stuff like this happens. It will be handled.
It's the subterranean alien control station through which, via the extreme illuminati, the governments of the US are controlled. The tinfoil hat brigade have been warning us for years, and now we have irrefutable evidence.
John_Chalisque
Good idea, we'll send a giant tunnelling machine in to extract it!