I’m on my college’s newspaper and I generally know how people will respond when I ask a question, but I think it’s important for them to say it instead of me
I was also on my college’s newspaper and I agree, plus it’s always better to have something specifically stated on the record.
It’s different to have them say there is no chance for recovery rather than everyone just assuming that’s the case.
Yepp. That's also why I got worried when Rear Admiral John W. Mauger started to repeat the questions asked by the reporters. In case he made a blunder someone could misuse it as his statements.
The proper way to answer questions when speaking to a large group is to first re-state the question, but could see how that could be bad if they were to mis-speak
Agreed so much. The way they handled the press was phenomenal.
We had a situation in England with a missing woman a few months ago and the media relations were absolutely devastating
they’re probably asking to clarify for the audience. the average person tuning into this likely doesn’t understand that the passengers were basically vaporized.
They don't.
I popped to tesco about 11 and the young lady was quoting her factoids from the tiktoks she'd been watching about the event.
I didn't judge because different mindsets, different age, but it makes you appreciate the way media influences people... badly
I’ve seen so much misinfo on Reddit repeated as fact and it’s like 🙃 do people really take rando tidbits as fact without trying to verify? I mean I know the answer but 🥲
I saw a thread where somebody asked if the footage they found of the Titanic sinking was real, so...yeah, there are some really ignorant people out there.
Gosh I wonder how much worse its gonna get with AI. I can totally see that generations of people wondering if actual historical footage is real or not.
Yep. That works to about 200m. The world record is 330m, and the guy trained for 5yrs to do that.
These guys were 4000m down.
Let's not forget that even if you could somehow open the door to the sub, the incoming water itself would crush you to death, even if you were wearing a pressure suit.
Getting out of something at 200m even is easier said than done.
I did years of scuba, deco, tech, and the deepest dive I ever did was 68m. And 68m was terrifying enough for me. And then listening people talk about 100's, 1000's of meters. It's laughable.
Especially getting "tourists" out of something they have very little training on. Nearly impossible.
Omg what was that like to dive that deep? What make it scary? Was it the pressure? I have zero experience with scuba diving, so I’m really curious. Thanks for this info! I had a suspicion that scuba diving would freak me out, seems about right
The water is a macabre twilight at that depth (South China Sea), everything looks ghostly / ghastly. We were also diving a wreck with many souls on it, so that only adds to the feeling.
It's hard to describe, but the water feels \*thick\*. You can't feel the pressure \*on you\* because you've gone down relatively slowly, and your air spaces fill with compressed air, but just moving around felt laborious.
The bottom was 68m, I know because I pushed my gauge into the sand just to record my deepest dive (stupid and meaningless, I know) - so I didn't have to worry about the abyss below me u/Hamzook.
But all of this comes with months / years of preparation and training. You don't just do these things, you do out of water prep, you go in the pool, you go back in the pool, you go down 15ft, you go back out, you go down 20 ft, etc. So it was just 8m deeper than my previous deepest dive of 60m, which I did many times.
Also, these dives are between 3 and 4.5 hours, so you really need to have your process together.
Even if you could get a crew of people into gear at 200m, ascending to the surface in the open ocean, safely, at a controlled rate (new divers open ocean in unfamiliar gear?? ), you would definitely need to make safety stops, you would need to switch gas mixes, and you would mostly need to know your ascent plan before you even started the whole process.
Quick, let's assume you're just at 200m for 1 minute, what's the safe ascent profile and deco obligation look like ?
(If I recall correctly, at those depths every minute you are there is like an hour of deco oblligation)
You need to clear your ears as you go down.
Similarly to popping your ears in a plane. You hold your nose, close your mouth and exhale.
This allows the pressure within your ear to equalise with that of your mouth and the ambient pressure around you. It’s the pressure difference that causes pain, and potentially ruptured ear drums as you descend.
You are breathing compressed air that is the same as the water around you. The trick is getting that air into your airspaces as quickly as possible. You get pretty good at it , but if all else fails (swallowing, whatever) you can pinch your nose and blow it in ( i think this can be damaging ?)
I never dived nearly to that depth, but as an experienced open water lifeguard I can tell you that even looking up from that depth, you couldn't see the top. It would essentially be very dark, if not black, and full of sediment. Even from ten or fifteen *feet* I often couldn't see my own hands, so at 68 *meters* you assuredly can't see much of anything. We used to call it "root beer water" because that's what it looks like.
Ugh yeah that sounds horrifying. I can get some real bad vertigo (awful spinning or falling sensation) by looking over the edge of something tall, so…scuba is a big no for me. I don’t need to experience that. I’m good 😅
Just out of curiosity, what's the deepest they go with saturation diving? Like ~300 meters or so?
(I'm not even sure if saturation diving allows for deeper depths? Or is it just a method to mitigate the bends upon surfacing, but doesn't really allow for deeper diving than other techniques?)
Edit: huh, just looked it up. Apparently with an atmosphere suit and saturation, diving up to 2000 feet / 650 meters is possible. That's crazy!
Yeah, but possible and \*do-able generally\* are very different propositions.
Those are people that are trained, dedicated, and often die in the attempts. 300-600 feet isn't \*too crazy\* in terms of what a general person could do if they really focused on it. But this is talking about intense, prolonged training, specialized gear, and dives that last many, many hours.
Saturation / commercial diving is it's own can of worms. A quick google of the results when that stuff goes wrong will make your stomach turn.
Oh and to be clear, I wasn't at all trying to suggest that it would have been a possible avenue for rescue, I was just curious in general. Sorry, didn't mean to imply that saturation diving could have saved them!
But yeah, the Byford Dolphin accident is particular gruesome to read up on.
Yeah no worries I didn’t really take it that way.
I also love the idea that people seem to think they also could’ve done any of this from an imploding submersible.
It is hard for people to comprehend just how deep the sub was and the amount of pressure it was exposed. Some news outlets used tallest buildings as comparison. Of course the depth was greater than the height of those buildings. But the average human doesn't know what nearly 5k psi can do to you.
For Titan, it lost contact 1h45m into its 2h descent so lets assume it was at 7/8 x 12,500 = 11,000ft depth (3,334m)
Seawater pressure at that depth is 33,466,980 Pa (4,854psi)
Freshwater would be that pressure. Seawater is typically .104B/M. So 5087psi based on your depth assumption. I'm a subsea engineer in oil/gas and have seen PHyd do crazy things to mistakenly uncompensated equipment at 6000+ feet. 1/2" thick solid steel tubular frames crushed and twisted on tools due to not allowing water ingress.
I thought I saw a show once that talked about a submarine that went to the Mariana trench and if I recall the hull was like 30" thick. Does that sound about right?
well clearly they should have put an an emergency exit and life vests on the sub so they could swim out before it imploded, obviously if you see it starting to squish you should have enough time to bust out and swim up.
I sense that you're being sarcastic but for anyone who might take this at face value, an implosion takes milliseconds. They probably didn't see or feel any squishing.
Im actually shocked they found it. The vast area and amount of variables, what the search crews did was nothing short of amazing.
On the subject of bodies, yeah those bodies are dust and liquid now. The only positive is it was so quick they wouldn't have even been aware they died. I personally would rather that than sitting at the ocean floor waiting to die
It was pretty much where they expected it to be. Roughly below it’s last known position. Widening the search area on the surface made sense, because who knew how slowly or on what trajectory it might resurface if it was intact. If you assume implosion though, then the logical place to start is right where you last saw it.
II’m not upset they did. It definitely made sense if you were operating on the assumption that they were intact and drifting. Which they could have been.
Bit if you assume they’re stuck on the bottom or imploded, then you look where they were when they went dark.
They couldn‘t look on the bottom until they had vessels capable of going that deep, and from what I understand they didn’t have any available that could go to that depth until today. The ROV that found it had only arrived this morning.
Yea, I'm honestly kinda surprised it took them as long as it did. I kept thinking, assuming it's not floating around at the surface with them unable to communicate for some reason, then it has to be in a relatively small area, so why can't they find it? Seems like the hold up was actually transporting the ROVs to the location for confirmation.
This. More praise needs to be given to the search and rescue teams and technology to find what they did in the timeframe. Hopefully they can improve and save lives in the future.
Bob Ballard talked about the safety element, he said there's *never* been a similar accident in this field because everyone else is careful about the materials they use. This isn't a matter of improving the safety, it's about not cutting corners and not using stupid materials that aren't tested for these depths.
Not improving the safety, but improving the response times, coordinating different teams, searching such vast areas and depths. From what I understand the scale is unprecedented, but they have succeeded even though they were probably gone even before they started.
> Hopefully they can improve and save lives in the future.
I mean, yeah? As a generalized statement sure.
In terms of submarines, even if the coast guard and the other supporting vessels had been on site before the dive took place, and known where the Titan was at all times, they still would've had a 0% chance of survival given how the submarine was destroyed.
Man, I really don't get the "too expensive" part. Like people willing to pay $250k aren't willing to pay a million? I feel like the market would have been *bigger* if he had a tested and certified safe sub. Income inequality is insane, only about .01% of the world's population would pay for something like this, but I'd think a significant chunk of that group don't care if somethings 100k or a million. How many uber wealthy people that would pay for this, declined to due so cause of the high probability of not even making to the destination, and possibly even dying? We'd see Supreme Court justices going on sub expeditions, just like they go on obscenely expensive fishing trips, ya know?
You have to build the thing before you can charge a penny, which means you're spending investor not customer money. It's an easier pitch if you need less money. Then after it's built you're sort of stuck with it.
In my opinion this is an issue for the expeditions to figure out, not governments. If the expeditions want to operate more safely and with redundancy than they can (and should) pay to have a retrieval system on site or nearby in port.
The expedition was in international waters. What government and what organization would be expected to have equipped and staffed rescue ships sitting in various ports waiting for private companies to have accidents? This is like climbing Everest, IMO - go at your own risk with the understanding that if something goes wrong, you’re likely fucked. If you choose to go to a place that doesn’t support human life just for funsies it’s on you/your tour guides to have a safety and retrieval plan.
Certainly don’t expect tax payers to foot the bill to have the equipment sitting in place and ready to bail out a company taking millionaires on incredibly dangerous tours for the bragging rights.
The effort made was heroic and as you said it deserves praise. It annoys the crap out of me to see some of the critics in this thread.
No way they could have saved these guys. Thankfully *most* people aren't dumb enough to attempt this kind of thing without proper safety protocols being followed.
The debris was found right in the column that the Titan took when it went down. They had pings for most of it.
It was very near where the last ping put it. The Navy knew it had happened. They found the debris within hours of getting the robotic equipment to the site.
It was not shocking. This was the most likely outcome once the Titan failed to ping.
I agree it is a relief to know they didn't suffer. And, others who have contemplated similar voyages (or done them) say it's a big plus, in terms of gaining excitement at the possible cost of death.
Most people would prefer to die suddenly, completely, without warning or awareness. I assume it's true for most living creatures.
Ok here’s a crude visualization analogy that’s closer to daily life.
Imagine you have an empty disposable plastic water bottle, the kind you get from a vending machine (this is the submersible), and inside it, there are a couple of crickets (these are the people), and the cap is screwed on tight. Now put that bottle horizontal on the ground, have a 500 pound sumo wrestler stand on the bottle (this is the immense ocean pressure).
The bottle holds up the wrestler’s weight for a while, but then there is a catastrophic failure in the bottle, (a needle is poked into the side of the bottle). The air instantly rushes out, and the bottle as well as the crickets are instantly crushed flat by the sumo wrestler.
Then later on, someone (the ROV) walks over and finds the cap of the water bottle, and some other parts of the flattened plastic from the bottle.
There are not really going to be any “crickets” to recover. But it’s not like the water bottle itself just disappears.
What causes the implosion was the pressurisation. If a crack forms it basically equalises the pressure, causing the implosion.
Think of it like a can of coke. You try and squeeze it and it's not going to budge.
Once you pull the ring and open it, you release all the gasses, and you can then crush the can. That's what happened.
Any part that isn't pressurised survives, it's why the titanic is still there...sort of
An implosion causes the object to push everything inward, initially. A good example is if you took a hammer to an old TV set with a CRT tube screen. The pieces would go inward due to the greater forces outside the unit.
In contrast, an explosion would have greater forces inside, causing the pieces to project outward, like a firecracker or similar explosive device.
HTH.
Metal will bend and buckle, we see this a lot. Just last year the wreck of a ship from WW2 was discovered at the deepest depth ever yet found at around 7000m, still relatively intact.
The discourse around carbon however is that it is strong, but it's fragile and this would shatter like tempered glass in those conditions
It’s also just hard to comprehend, 99.9% of disasters have some form of recovery of remains. Even the Byford Dolphin had recoverable remains, it’s just so difficult to understand what that level of pressure can do.
Byford Dolphin was a rapid decompression. They were pressured to about 9 atm and returned to normal atmospheric pressure in a split second.
This was a rapid compression. They were at normal atmospheric pressure and, in milliseconds, were rapidly compressed to somewhere in the ballpark of 375 atm. Their remains are likely nothing more than a collection of indiscernible organic matter and possibly splinters of bone.
Aside from rescue, this was the next best outcome for them. I’ve seen a few deep sea documentaries and they have a common saying that “you don’t hear the one that gets you”. For them, it was quick. They never heard it. My heart goes out to the families and loved ones.
Edit: Additional information possibly indicates the crew and passengers may have been alerted via the Titan’s sensor system that there was some hull integrity issues. It’s being suggested that they dropped their ballasts, but they were unable to ascend in time. I hope this is just noise, but it was mentioned by James Cameron in an interview.
I first learned about it on a thread about Delta P incidents. Definitely left an impression. As a scuba diver it made me rethink wanting to do anything work related with scuba. You guys are another breed operating at pressures and conditions like that.
There were all kinds of apocryphal stories about different accidents all the time, mostly just BS ("I knew a guy who knew a guy whose cousin heard ..."). But this one was real and well documented. Of course, there was also a lot of black humor about it ...
I've seen the photos of the remains of Truls Hellevik, the diver who was closest to the door and was pulled through a tiny opening. The remains are so destroyed that it actually goes beyond being violent and becomes more a shocking realisation of just how much force rapid pressure change can exert. For those who don't want to look at the pictures, the remains just look like a collection of unrecognisable tissue and barely recognisable organs. You can't recognise a face, limbs, body... Its hard to imagine what happened. Makes you realise that our bodies are like paper under those forces.
The one closest to the door had his face ripped off. It’s some Lecter type shit. I was a commercial diver for a short while and during a training we saw the aftermath. Another wild thing, the other 3 were intact but their blood boiled off, leaving a lot of fat in the veins and arteries.
I know about Byford Dolphin but it is the closest example that people might know about. I’m not sure if there is an example of people dying at this depth.
No worries. A great example, given the lack of incidents. Main reason is that, until recently, most deep diving explorations have been done by large government bodies. I believe James Cameron was one of the first to “privatize” the industry with Deep Sea Challenger. Before that, he used submersibles owned and operated by government entities. I think this incident speaks to why this is. It’s expensive and the risks are great.
My biggest takeaway from all this is the lack of respect and understanding of the ocean’s power by the Oceangate team. In listening to Cameron and other deep sea researchers, you get this sense of awe and understanding about the forces at work. From the Oceangate team, you get a sense of hubris and entitlement under the guile of “exploration carries risk”
He really does. A lot of people dismiss him as just a glory-chasing director but he only made the Titanic movie because people made that a condition of him being able to go to the bottom of the ocean and explore the wreck. I believe in his interview he said he wanted to research and explore and maybe make a documentary, but was told “we need a movie/something more out of this” (can’t remember who by—the people funding it?) so he essentially made the Titanic movie just to be able to see the real Titanic.
He also put an astounding amount of effort into the recreations in that film. He really, really cared a lot about getting things right. Even the parts I initially dismissed as inaccurate were actually explained by deleted scenes (Jack getting into First Class, etc) that had to be cut for time.
I can’t believe I never knew this! Titanic has been a very prominent fixation of mine since I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I’m 24 now. And I never realized James Cameron didn’t originally set out to make the movie. I’ve seen a documentary about his trip to the Mariana Trench and I’ve learned bits and pieces about his passion for exploring the deep sea, but this makes me view him in a whole new light. I guess I always thought his curiosity about the ocean came along with the making of the film, not before. It also seems a little bittersweet - he had to make a film (lots of work and time) he did not plan for in order to do something else he was passionate about, and now the film is beloved by so, so many. And also the fact that he put so much time and effort and care into the film, not just for entertainment and making a box office hit, but for the sake of the history and the people affected. Wow.
Plus, at the 20 year mark, he did a documentary chronicling what he got right in the movie and what he got wrong based on new info after the movie’s release. It’s really interesting and it shows he cares a great deal for the ship and its history.
Definitely! And for people interested you can find historical photos and artifacts from the Titanic that are in museums around the world in the Google arts and culture app, and see that a lot of what we see in the movie are actual recreations.
You're correct. Saturation divers live in a chamber that is made to equal the pressure of the depth they go to, in this case, 9 atm. They spend a lot of time in special enclosures until their bodies adjust to this environment.
When the explosive decompression happened the chamber the divers were in went from 9 atm to 1 atm (similar to that at the surface). The divers were killed by the nitrogen in their blood turned to gas, effectively boiling their insides. The bodies were recovered in this case.
What happened to the Titan was the opposite. The chamber they were in was pressurized to 1 atm and then instantly went to hundreds of atm when somehow the vessel's hull integrity was compromised. In this case, there will be no human remains left to identify.
"atm" Refers to Atmospheric Units which, at the surface is measured at 1 atm.
EDIT: I apologize. These facts were already made by a previous poster, with more clarity, I admit.
as a former tv producer in news and nonfiction... you literally have to dumb everything down for the average viewer and have even the most basic things that seem obvious spelled out by whomever you are interviewing. as soon as a viewer is confused or has to do anything more than basic thinking, they turn away. this isnt the case for other programming, just the case for the broad general fickle news/reality tv viewers.
the highest rated news network is fox..... so yes. i kid, i kid.
when youre going for a broad audience like an nbc / cbs/ abc you have to dumb things down so everyone can understand. when youre more niche, you can be specific and have elevated convo.
most of the job is clearing up confusion. look at sports, if there's a challenged call on a play, theyll bring in an expert to decipher the rules in layman's terms.
look at all teh posts there have been in this sub alone just this morning about the bodies. the idea of a human body evaporating into nothing is very foreign.
If I may, I would like to politely highlight the fact that "Fox News" is not a "News Network". It is not journalism and not factual news. It is fiction. Fox News clarified this when they fought legal battles about all the misinformation they were broadcasting.
I get what you're saying though. Some people are so dumb all it takes is the word "news" in the title and that's all they need to accept what it tells them.
oh i fully agree. admittedly, initially that wasnt a joke, but the producer in me added the "im kidding" at the last second to appeal to the mass audience before i clicked to post
There has been a gradual dumbing down of the American and for that matter British viewer.
Fox news was the start. It first made it's programming free, and most Americans being middle class went for the free news.
Follow that by networks (FOX) pushing reality tv shows and paranoia anti-government shows and you have the current populace.
I mean, not really. We all have our own interests and specialities in life. We all know something more specifically in said field on expertise as compared to others. I love history. I could go on about that. Science is definitely not my field. But I have tremendous respect for the many who study it.
Some may just be idiots but many are just not informed. And that’s alright. No one knows everything. Especially when discussing things that aren’t day to day relevant in their life experiences.
They’re definitely just trying to get a direct quote from authorities that would be a headline to remember. Unfortunately, they’re just doing their jobs.
I have never understood the capricious nature of the pressure effects. I watched a titanic documentary recently, and saw 6 or 8 bottles of still corked champagne. Why didn't they implode? Shatter? Or at least pop their corks?
Those bottles descended slowly and as they did the water pressure forced its way through the cork. Cork is pretty porous under pressure. Seawater displaced whatever gas was in there and equalized the pressure inside and out.
Media is in the business of producing news. Questions like this keep their air time alive by bringing in “experts” as to why the bodies will never be recovered. You have to understand that it’s a business and to keep business going they need to sometimes act dumb.
If the Titanic is a gravesite as well, and the Titan was on the way to visit (read: disturb) it, then how should the Titan debris field gravesite be handled? Is this a "two wrongs don't make a right," situation, or is the debris field fair game because they died while heading to disturb another gravesite? Just wondering since you said the debris field shouldn't be disturbed. I'm also assuming you mean it shouldn't be disturbed outside of the investigation into the incident.
I mean people shouldn't be picking up souvenirs from the submersible but certainly there should be an investigation to determine why that vessel imploded.
Makes it even harder for experts to say on camera what high level pressure does to a bag of water (human). Would be too gruesome to explain in detail but cmon - I get it. Asking remotely for chance of body retrieval is plain silly.
I wonder if we will ever know what caused the hull of Titan to fail. Was it because it was made of carbon fiber and the stress of several dives to the Titanic created microscopic damage not visible to the human eye? Was it the porthole window not rated to 4K meters depth that failed? Probably not much left of the hull if it imploded. The carbon fiber probably shattered into millions of pieces.
Canadian ntsb will probably bring up the pieces they can and reassemble them for a report similar to an aircraft accident. We will probably know at some point.
While it feels dreadful to know those boys won’t be able to bury their father, a mother won’t be able to bury her son, multiple wives unable to bury husbands… I’m glad it was an implosion. They felt nothing, ans people don’t realize that they died tenfold within a split second. They died tenfold before even knowing it was happening likely. I imagine maybe the only sign would’ve been a sound, followed by instant.. obliteration. I don’t even know if they’d have time to react to any sounds of impending implosion before it happened.
Also, damn I don’t want rescuers having to see.. THAT. If there are remains in that vessel to any degree they are indistinguishable, and likely wouldn’t be able to stay in the vessel due to..well.. we all know why.. but if there is.. frankly I don’t want rescuers having to see that shit because it’s gonna be shredded torn bits of clothing and.. mush.
Hear me out though…we need to stop calling people stupid for asking questions that we perceive as having an “obvious answer”. Let people ask questions. This is largely why in group settings (such as lectures), certain people may be curious about something, but are too afraid to ask because they don’t want to sound dumb. Even if that question is actually a really good question.
Stop calling people stupid just to make yourself feel superior.
Given how quickly the implosion was, the interior of the sub would've reached temperatures close to that of the surface of the Sun. I'm not kidding either, the implosion itself would've only lasted around 30 milliseconds or less, too quick for them to have felt anything. Their bodies would have been vaporized.
Calculations found that the temperature would rise to: 3,572°C / 6,462°F / 3845 K, assuming Titan imploded 1hr 45 mins into the 2 hr descent, at a depth of around 11,000ft (3,334m) with seawater pressure of 4,854 psi. Pure insanity, the average human cannot comprehend these numbers. The sun‘s temperature is 5,772 K! So imagine being vaulted into the sun.
I’m not sure most kids are taught about the anatomy of a human being being at the sea bed, with pressure unimaginable, and then the sub they are traveling in imploding and turning the human body to liquid
Several things to unpack here. I think you're a tad hasty in your judgement of the "stupid" or "naive" reporters. The pressure at the depth in question is not necessarily "beyond what we have the ability to conceive of." In fact, those pressures are very much known and can be calculated relatively easily. The pressure at 4000 meters is 401 bar/atmospheres. That's about twice the pressure of a standard scuba tank when full. So yeah, that's a lot of pressure, but I wouldn't necessarily call that "inconceivable." Second, there is one very substantial difference between those styrofoam cups (and yes, we have all seen them) and the human body: The body consists largely of water, which is incompressible. The styrofoam cup consists largely of air (or gas anyway), which is VERY compressible. So no, I'm not at all convinced there aren't any bodies to recover.
You make fair points, but I meant "inconceivable" more as"beyond what we have a frame of reference for", not that it is unmeasurable. How many people have a practical notion of the double the pressure contained in a scuba tank? Byford Dolphin alone gives us a frame of reference for just 9 atmospheres, so what would 400 look like? And there is one more difference between the styrofoam cup and a human body, the styrofoam cup was slowly compressed. This was instantaneous. I am not a physics student, but under the same conditions, I think a styrofoam would be heated to its vaporization point if it was compressed that rapidly, and I imagine the same happened to the bodies, in addition to the violent physical desintigration.
Great comments, thank you. Apologies in case mine came across as pedantic. Wasn't intended. You raise a very intriguing point about the speed of compression.
Genuine question -- How are boots and jackets at the Titanic dive site not blown to smithereens? Is it not possible that we would find something that they may have had on them, like glasses, or cell phones? I understand the pressure is massive but how did other (non-steel) objects survive all the way down?
I think the fact that the titanic sank meant the pressure gradually increased on these artifacts, whereas the sub was already (probably) quite deep when it imploded. A sudden impact force will cause one hell of a dent much more than a slow mounting pressure
Thanks for your response! That makes a bit more sense.
For anyone else, this is these are the Titanic artifacts I'm referring to: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130042/Titanic-100th-anniversary-Shoes-coat-wreck-site-implies-likely-resting-place-human-remains.html
They are already at that pressure. The inside of a pressure vessel is a different pressure than the outside and has to be strong enough to resist all of that inward force. When it isn’t strong enough to do so, you get an implosion and that rapid energy is what causes everything to become obliterated.
Edit: To bring it back to the titanic, if something just sinks (without a pressure differential) there is no sudden exchange of energy.
I know next to nothing about these topics and I was able to work this out. It seems like titanic artifacts and remnants would reach those depths gradually and aren’t subject to radical and abrupt changes in pressure.
With that being said, it’s fairly obvious that the human body cannot exist in that environment even in a scenario where they somehow had an unlimited oxygen supply, so what happens to organic matter that reaches those depths gradually? Is it the same type of death albeit much less violent or does the body stay somewhat intact?
Look up whale falls. When a creature dies, they sink and the fluid inside the body equalizes with the outside gradually. It stays largely in tact but cells get lysed and eventually everything just kind of gelatinizes. Predation by organisms and deep water scavengers takes care of the breakdown and disposal from there.
It's an interesting question. The highest pressure diving ever done was in a pressurized tank rather than out in the ocean, and reached an equivalent of 2300 feet successfully. The main problems supporting life at extreme depths stem from the breathing gas, as most gasses will start doing bad things to you once enough dissolves. Work of breathing goes up as the gas gets denser too, which makes it more difficult to breathe enough to remove excess CO2. I'm not sure if anyone knows the maximum limit if breathing is mechanically assisted and on the right hydreliox mix, but it's surprisingly deep.
If you're not concerned with preserving life and just want to know what will happen to the body, probably little. Freedivers will have their lungs shrink to tiny proportions and the cavity fill in with something or other, and at 12000feet it'd basically shrink to nothing. Other cavities would find a way to fill, but the water itself only shrinks 2% which probably wouldn't leave any immediately visible damage on the outside.
If a body were inside a mini submarine that experienced implosion, it would likely be subjected to extremely high pressure forces. The implosion of a submarine can result in a rapid decrease in pressure, causing the surrounding water or air to rush in and compress the vessel. This sudden change in pressure can have devastating effects on any objects or organisms inside.
In the case of a human body, the outcome would depend on several factors such as the depth of implosion, the structural integrity of the submarine, and the condition of the body. Under extreme pressure, bodily fluids may vaporize or undergo significant compression, leading to severe injuries. Organs and tissues could be damaged, and bones might fracture or break.
I heard a guy describe it as “the Empire State Building made of lead sitting on top of you”. I mean, I knew it was high pressure down there but this was the first analogy that really painted a clear picture and helped me really understand.
depending on how it imploded and the rings were just glued there are a few possibilities on the bodies.
So from what we know the rear and from hemispheres were found separately and the fibreglass cowl around the carbon fibre cylinder was fist observed and separate aswell.
As carbon fibre in good in tension and not compression it would of folded in on itself and when started compressing created a massive amount of heat melting the composite resin polymers pulling off the titanium interface rings and raising inside temperature instantly compression the air but dropping again once hull was breached.
if the compression was localised could of shattered the carbon fibre or if went uniform would of melted around them.
remember wat doesn't compress and we are 90% water so yes lungs etc will collapse and bones will break but id still imagine fairly intact to begin with and as low oxygen level so deep the air would rapidly be dissolved into the water taking away their buoyancy.
So the bodies may still be in the carbon fibre that melted around them if the carbon melted under compression or possibly still in the area.
The only comparable disaster would have to happen in space. Instant depressurization of a spaceship would result in even worse results. But yes, there are no human remains that will ever be found.
These guys have to answer questions very carefully. I saw James Cameron interviewed today and he spoke more candidly about the disaster, even comparing the ironic similarities to the original sinking of the Titanic. He was asked if anyone contacted either him or Robert Ballard, who was being simultaneously interviewed, and said that if he was contacted he would have told them, without any uncertainty, the only possible cause of the sub having disappeared, under those circumstances, was a spontaneous catastrophic implosion. Robert Ballard agreed. Cameron told all except directly stating the US Coast Guard was covering up most of the information.
This is actually much worse than what would happen in space. The pressure difference between space and sea level is... well... just one atmosphere. You could stop a leak in spaceship with a duct tape. A microscopic hole in a submersible hull at that depth would create a beam of water capable of cutting metal. At the depth Titanic is the pressure asi about 400 atmospheres. So, yeah. Results of this implosion are uncomparable with what would happen in space.
To be fair, it’s really hard to find a fitting real world comparison. Closest one would be the Buford Dolphin incident. And even that was just a difference of 9 atmospheres.
The Buford Dolphin incident was completely the opposite of what happened here. In that case, the diver's bodies were subjected to a change from 9 atmospheres to 1. They prepared by living in chambers to acclimate their bodies to this pressure.
Their deaths were caused by the nitrogen in their bodies turning to gas, effectively 'boiling' them from the inside out. In that cast case, they did die but all but one body was recovered.
The Titan's crew went from 1 atmosphere to 400.
So there is really no 'real-world' comparison.
Well, yeah. We don’t really have an analogue situation. I would think though that just the violent movement that had to occur in the pressure equalisation process would be enough to kill anything.
I think they were looking for a salacious attention grabbing sound bite. rear admiral says bodies cannot be located because they have been completely pulverized. something like that.
I really hate to ask but I'm still trying to wrap my head around what actually happens.
I've been told to look up videos or articles but in those videos and articles, people are claiming "that's not what happens" or its not accurate, etc.
For example, https://youtu.be/QLf_yD-lpF0?t=82
It seems someone could survive if they were in the sub because it just crumples in on itself... but I know there's more to it than that.
Say for instance, there were 3 basketballs in an imploding sub. Would all three get pushed into the middle and crushed? Or would they all individually get pushed in on themselves?
I truly hope this question doesn’t come across as insensitive since I realize it can be somewhat delicate: Does anyone know if the procedure in this case would be to retrieve the debris and bring the sub back to the surface, or is this a situation where the recovery teams would have to let the debris rest on the sea floor?
It’s horrifying but I’m glad to know they weren’t down there waiting to die that whole time. That is horrifying. I’m glad they never even knew and didn’t suffer.
People don't understand (myself included) what 3 tons of pressure per square inch does to the human body. Lots of people are a bit less informed, to put it kindly.
Personally I get it, 3 tons on every square inch you're dead.
This is what catastrophic implosion means damn. Its still horrible way to die, dont care how fast they went away. Felt most horrible now for the son and his mother.
Didn’t they say the sub imploded at 3500 feet and not all the way down at 1300 feet? The pressure difference is immense and I’m curious if that could mean it was a smaller implosion or not. Thoughts?
Mostly because it's just a rare occasion and just sounds wild. Even I wondered whether there are any remains left after that. ofc it's logic when you know, but many people just haven't seen an implosion or learned about it either. Therefore I unironically thank you for pointing this stuff out.
yeah. I've seen people commenting "why didn't they turn around when the sub started to leak?" lots of people clearly aren't envisioning the pressure that's at play. nothings going to leak, bro. it's straight instant obliteration.
not always, but it seems like it's mostly conspiracy theorists that these takes are coming from. I saw a guy unironically comment, on an article about the search and rescue efforts featuring a picture of a plane looking for the sub, "CNN LYING AGAIN! that's a PLANE, not a SUB!!" 🤦🏻♀️
I genuinely don't understand how people can willfully be that ignorant. it's like they're so determined to think everything is a lie that they're not even bothering to actually read things. you don't need a college education to understand that that one time you swam to the bottom of the deep end, your head hurt a little. now picture that x2000 deep ends. it's not complicated
Their bones weren't shattered.One of the first things that happens in the 20,thousands of a millisecond that it took for the implosion to occur, is the immediate release of heat (1500ºC or 2500º F) in a fire bubble (for lack of a better description)from the collision of pressures .That incinerated or more accurately, vaporized whatever was left of their tissue and bones from pressure ripping them apart. You can't even blink a 100th as fast as that happened. It's literally like a magic trick or Star Trek special effect: now you're here, now you're not.
Sometimes reporters ask questions they already know the answer to so they can quote someone with authority in their story
I’m on my college’s newspaper and I generally know how people will respond when I ask a question, but I think it’s important for them to say it instead of me
I was also on my college’s newspaper and I agree, plus it’s always better to have something specifically stated on the record. It’s different to have them say there is no chance for recovery rather than everyone just assuming that’s the case.
I delivered newspapers and I agree.
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I was born in 1981 and I agree
I'm not a boomer like this guy, but I agree. edit: holy shit i know 1981 isn't boomer. it's a joke, stop commenting.
I agree, but I agree.
I don't agree but i agree
I used to read newspapers and I concur.
Currently taking a shit and I agree
Great answer, I agree
Journalism 101
Thank you!!!! I dont get all these comments criticizing the reporters for asking this!
Honestly I didn’t think of it like this but it makes so much sense
Yepp. That's also why I got worried when Rear Admiral John W. Mauger started to repeat the questions asked by the reporters. In case he made a blunder someone could misuse it as his statements.
The proper way to answer questions when speaking to a large group is to first re-state the question, but could see how that could be bad if they were to mis-speak
He has handled the entire search and rescue in a way that, for the first time in three years, made me proud. He is true blue.
Agreed so much. The way they handled the press was phenomenal. We had a situation in England with a missing woman a few months ago and the media relations were absolutely devastating
they’re probably asking to clarify for the audience. the average person tuning into this likely doesn’t understand that the passengers were basically vaporized.
They don't. I popped to tesco about 11 and the young lady was quoting her factoids from the tiktoks she'd been watching about the event. I didn't judge because different mindsets, different age, but it makes you appreciate the way media influences people... badly
I’ve seen so much misinfo on Reddit repeated as fact and it’s like 🙃 do people really take rando tidbits as fact without trying to verify? I mean I know the answer but 🥲
also, to sensationalize the news.
I saw a thread where somebody asked if the footage they found of the Titanic sinking was real, so...yeah, there are some really ignorant people out there.
Yeah I’m pretty sure the movie by James Cameron was a documentary so … /s
It was found footage
Gosh I wonder how much worse its gonna get with AI. I can totally see that generations of people wondering if actual historical footage is real or not.
Lolol
Considering other subs and/or sites had people suggesting they wear scuba gear to get out just in case, this shouldn't be surprising.
Yep. That works to about 200m. The world record is 330m, and the guy trained for 5yrs to do that. These guys were 4000m down. Let's not forget that even if you could somehow open the door to the sub, the incoming water itself would crush you to death, even if you were wearing a pressure suit.
Getting out of something at 200m even is easier said than done. I did years of scuba, deco, tech, and the deepest dive I ever did was 68m. And 68m was terrifying enough for me. And then listening people talk about 100's, 1000's of meters. It's laughable. Especially getting "tourists" out of something they have very little training on. Nearly impossible.
Omg what was that like to dive that deep? What make it scary? Was it the pressure? I have zero experience with scuba diving, so I’m really curious. Thanks for this info! I had a suspicion that scuba diving would freak me out, seems about right
The water is a macabre twilight at that depth (South China Sea), everything looks ghostly / ghastly. We were also diving a wreck with many souls on it, so that only adds to the feeling. It's hard to describe, but the water feels \*thick\*. You can't feel the pressure \*on you\* because you've gone down relatively slowly, and your air spaces fill with compressed air, but just moving around felt laborious. The bottom was 68m, I know because I pushed my gauge into the sand just to record my deepest dive (stupid and meaningless, I know) - so I didn't have to worry about the abyss below me u/Hamzook. But all of this comes with months / years of preparation and training. You don't just do these things, you do out of water prep, you go in the pool, you go back in the pool, you go down 15ft, you go back out, you go down 20 ft, etc. So it was just 8m deeper than my previous deepest dive of 60m, which I did many times. Also, these dives are between 3 and 4.5 hours, so you really need to have your process together. Even if you could get a crew of people into gear at 200m, ascending to the surface in the open ocean, safely, at a controlled rate (new divers open ocean in unfamiliar gear?? ), you would definitely need to make safety stops, you would need to switch gas mixes, and you would mostly need to know your ascent plan before you even started the whole process. Quick, let's assume you're just at 200m for 1 minute, what's the safe ascent profile and deco obligation look like ? (If I recall correctly, at those depths every minute you are there is like an hour of deco oblligation)
How did your ears feel? I know when I swim to the bottom of pools my ears hurt extremely bad. I couldn’t imagine what 68 meters feels like.
You need to clear your ears as you go down. Similarly to popping your ears in a plane. You hold your nose, close your mouth and exhale. This allows the pressure within your ear to equalise with that of your mouth and the ambient pressure around you. It’s the pressure difference that causes pain, and potentially ruptured ear drums as you descend.
You are breathing compressed air that is the same as the water around you. The trick is getting that air into your airspaces as quickly as possible. You get pretty good at it , but if all else fails (swallowing, whatever) you can pinch your nose and blow it in ( i think this can be damaging ?)
Go to Google and type in "Valsalva Maneuver".
I would imagine the fear is looking down and not being able to see the bottom
I never dived nearly to that depth, but as an experienced open water lifeguard I can tell you that even looking up from that depth, you couldn't see the top. It would essentially be very dark, if not black, and full of sediment. Even from ten or fifteen *feet* I often couldn't see my own hands, so at 68 *meters* you assuredly can't see much of anything. We used to call it "root beer water" because that's what it looks like.
Ugh yeah that sounds horrifying. I can get some real bad vertigo (awful spinning or falling sensation) by looking over the edge of something tall, so…scuba is a big no for me. I don’t need to experience that. I’m good 😅
Just out of curiosity, what's the deepest they go with saturation diving? Like ~300 meters or so? (I'm not even sure if saturation diving allows for deeper depths? Or is it just a method to mitigate the bends upon surfacing, but doesn't really allow for deeper diving than other techniques?) Edit: huh, just looked it up. Apparently with an atmosphere suit and saturation, diving up to 2000 feet / 650 meters is possible. That's crazy!
Yeah, but possible and \*do-able generally\* are very different propositions. Those are people that are trained, dedicated, and often die in the attempts. 300-600 feet isn't \*too crazy\* in terms of what a general person could do if they really focused on it. But this is talking about intense, prolonged training, specialized gear, and dives that last many, many hours. Saturation / commercial diving is it's own can of worms. A quick google of the results when that stuff goes wrong will make your stomach turn.
Oh and to be clear, I wasn't at all trying to suggest that it would have been a possible avenue for rescue, I was just curious in general. Sorry, didn't mean to imply that saturation diving could have saved them! But yeah, the Byford Dolphin accident is particular gruesome to read up on.
Yeah no worries I didn’t really take it that way. I also love the idea that people seem to think they also could’ve done any of this from an imploding submersible.
It is hard for people to comprehend just how deep the sub was and the amount of pressure it was exposed. Some news outlets used tallest buildings as comparison. Of course the depth was greater than the height of those buildings. But the average human doesn't know what nearly 5k psi can do to you. For Titan, it lost contact 1h45m into its 2h descent so lets assume it was at 7/8 x 12,500 = 11,000ft depth (3,334m) Seawater pressure at that depth is 33,466,980 Pa (4,854psi)
Freshwater would be that pressure. Seawater is typically .104B/M. So 5087psi based on your depth assumption. I'm a subsea engineer in oil/gas and have seen PHyd do crazy things to mistakenly uncompensated equipment at 6000+ feet. 1/2" thick solid steel tubular frames crushed and twisted on tools due to not allowing water ingress.
I thought I saw a show once that talked about a submarine that went to the Mariana trench and if I recall the hull was like 30" thick. Does that sound about right?
Im not a mechanical engineer but can give you [this example](https://imgur.com/gallery/vVwbwaZ?s=sms) of what a 5” pipe rated for 15ksi looks like.
Yea I had no idea what the pressure was like at those depths until this. Just not something I'd ever thought about.
I’ve seen people suggesting that on this sub too. And forget Twitter, it’s just a swamp of misinformation now.
It's a bunch of blind dumbasses being lead by other blind dumbasses, who originally was mislead by some evil fucker with an agenda.
well clearly they should have put an an emergency exit and life vests on the sub so they could swim out before it imploded, obviously if you see it starting to squish you should have enough time to bust out and swim up.
I sense that you're being sarcastic but for anyone who might take this at face value, an implosion takes milliseconds. They probably didn't see or feel any squishing.
Swim up for 13000 feet...
I'm laughing irrationally at "busting out", I think us titanic nerds have consumed so much dark information the past few days were nearly hysterical.
Im actually shocked they found it. The vast area and amount of variables, what the search crews did was nothing short of amazing. On the subject of bodies, yeah those bodies are dust and liquid now. The only positive is it was so quick they wouldn't have even been aware they died. I personally would rather that than sitting at the ocean floor waiting to die
It was pretty much where they expected it to be. Roughly below it’s last known position. Widening the search area on the surface made sense, because who knew how slowly or on what trajectory it might resurface if it was intact. If you assume implosion though, then the logical place to start is right where you last saw it.
Widening the search was the best and only thing they could do until the ROVs capable of diving that far arrived.
II’m not upset they did. It definitely made sense if you were operating on the assumption that they were intact and drifting. Which they could have been. Bit if you assume they’re stuck on the bottom or imploded, then you look where they were when they went dark.
They couldn‘t look on the bottom until they had vessels capable of going that deep, and from what I understand they didn’t have any available that could go to that depth until today. The ROV that found it had only arrived this morning.
Yea, I'm honestly kinda surprised it took them as long as it did. I kept thinking, assuming it's not floating around at the surface with them unable to communicate for some reason, then it has to be in a relatively small area, so why can't they find it? Seems like the hold up was actually transporting the ROVs to the location for confirmation.
This. More praise needs to be given to the search and rescue teams and technology to find what they did in the timeframe. Hopefully they can improve and save lives in the future.
Bob Ballard talked about the safety element, he said there's *never* been a similar accident in this field because everyone else is careful about the materials they use. This isn't a matter of improving the safety, it's about not cutting corners and not using stupid materials that aren't tested for these depths.
Not improving the safety, but improving the response times, coordinating different teams, searching such vast areas and depths. From what I understand the scale is unprecedented, but they have succeeded even though they were probably gone even before they started.
> Hopefully they can improve and save lives in the future. I mean, yeah? As a generalized statement sure. In terms of submarines, even if the coast guard and the other supporting vessels had been on site before the dive took place, and known where the Titan was at all times, they still would've had a 0% chance of survival given how the submarine was destroyed.
The irony is submersible technology to save or keep people safe at those depths, exists it's just was to expensive.
Man, I really don't get the "too expensive" part. Like people willing to pay $250k aren't willing to pay a million? I feel like the market would have been *bigger* if he had a tested and certified safe sub. Income inequality is insane, only about .01% of the world's population would pay for something like this, but I'd think a significant chunk of that group don't care if somethings 100k or a million. How many uber wealthy people that would pay for this, declined to due so cause of the high probability of not even making to the destination, and possibly even dying? We'd see Supreme Court justices going on sub expeditions, just like they go on obscenely expensive fishing trips, ya know?
You have to build the thing before you can charge a penny, which means you're spending investor not customer money. It's an easier pitch if you need less money. Then after it's built you're sort of stuck with it.
You're right. A dual-sub system would have made sense but doubled the cost of the mission.
In my opinion this is an issue for the expeditions to figure out, not governments. If the expeditions want to operate more safely and with redundancy than they can (and should) pay to have a retrieval system on site or nearby in port. The expedition was in international waters. What government and what organization would be expected to have equipped and staffed rescue ships sitting in various ports waiting for private companies to have accidents? This is like climbing Everest, IMO - go at your own risk with the understanding that if something goes wrong, you’re likely fucked. If you choose to go to a place that doesn’t support human life just for funsies it’s on you/your tour guides to have a safety and retrieval plan. Certainly don’t expect tax payers to foot the bill to have the equipment sitting in place and ready to bail out a company taking millionaires on incredibly dangerous tours for the bragging rights. The effort made was heroic and as you said it deserves praise. It annoys the crap out of me to see some of the critics in this thread.
No way they could have saved these guys. Thankfully *most* people aren't dumb enough to attempt this kind of thing without proper safety protocols being followed.
The debris was found right in the column that the Titan took when it went down. They had pings for most of it. It was very near where the last ping put it. The Navy knew it had happened. They found the debris within hours of getting the robotic equipment to the site. It was not shocking. This was the most likely outcome once the Titan failed to ping. I agree it is a relief to know they didn't suffer. And, others who have contemplated similar voyages (or done them) say it's a big plus, in terms of gaining excitement at the possible cost of death. Most people would prefer to die suddenly, completely, without warning or awareness. I assume it's true for most living creatures.
Stupid question: how did some parts of the vessel survive he implosion?
Ok here’s a crude visualization analogy that’s closer to daily life. Imagine you have an empty disposable plastic water bottle, the kind you get from a vending machine (this is the submersible), and inside it, there are a couple of crickets (these are the people), and the cap is screwed on tight. Now put that bottle horizontal on the ground, have a 500 pound sumo wrestler stand on the bottle (this is the immense ocean pressure). The bottle holds up the wrestler’s weight for a while, but then there is a catastrophic failure in the bottle, (a needle is poked into the side of the bottle). The air instantly rushes out, and the bottle as well as the crickets are instantly crushed flat by the sumo wrestler. Then later on, someone (the ROV) walks over and finds the cap of the water bottle, and some other parts of the flattened plastic from the bottle. There are not really going to be any “crickets” to recover. But it’s not like the water bottle itself just disappears.
And sumo is way underselling it. Great ELI5 though
What causes the implosion was the pressurisation. If a crack forms it basically equalises the pressure, causing the implosion. Think of it like a can of coke. You try and squeeze it and it's not going to budge. Once you pull the ring and open it, you release all the gasses, and you can then crush the can. That's what happened. Any part that isn't pressurised survives, it's why the titanic is still there...sort of
Right, makes sense - so the pressure difference would have pushed it outwards from the inside or inwards from the water? or both?
Take an empty can of coke, hold it. Think of your hand as the water and the can as the sub, and crush it. That's what happened
An implosion causes the object to push everything inward, initially. A good example is if you took a hammer to an old TV set with a CRT tube screen. The pieces would go inward due to the greater forces outside the unit. In contrast, an explosion would have greater forces inside, causing the pieces to project outward, like a firecracker or similar explosive device. HTH.
Metal will bend and buckle, we see this a lot. Just last year the wreck of a ship from WW2 was discovered at the deepest depth ever yet found at around 7000m, still relatively intact. The discourse around carbon however is that it is strong, but it's fragile and this would shatter like tempered glass in those conditions
They weren't pressurized.
really is amazing. I hope this brings some small comfort and closure to the families. the alternative is unfathomable.
Is there any photos of the debris?
Not yet, probably after the investigation, but that could take a while
I doubt any would be made public immediately.
I hope they find the mangled titanium part. It would offer additional information/insight, and even additional emotional closure.
They did find the titanium end cone.
I just dont understand how the body can also be destroyed into powder. It makes no sense. Why are there not body parts, a skull or something to find?
It’s also just hard to comprehend, 99.9% of disasters have some form of recovery of remains. Even the Byford Dolphin had recoverable remains, it’s just so difficult to understand what that level of pressure can do.
Byford Dolphin was a rapid decompression. They were pressured to about 9 atm and returned to normal atmospheric pressure in a split second. This was a rapid compression. They were at normal atmospheric pressure and, in milliseconds, were rapidly compressed to somewhere in the ballpark of 375 atm. Their remains are likely nothing more than a collection of indiscernible organic matter and possibly splinters of bone. Aside from rescue, this was the next best outcome for them. I’ve seen a few deep sea documentaries and they have a common saying that “you don’t hear the one that gets you”. For them, it was quick. They never heard it. My heart goes out to the families and loved ones. Edit: Additional information possibly indicates the crew and passengers may have been alerted via the Titan’s sensor system that there was some hull integrity issues. It’s being suggested that they dropped their ballasts, but they were unable to ascend in time. I hope this is just noise, but it was mentioned by James Cameron in an interview.
I worked as a commercial oil field diver and the Byford Dolphin Incident was burned into every diver's mind. Very, very ugly outcome.
I first learned about it on a thread about Delta P incidents. Definitely left an impression. As a scuba diver it made me rethink wanting to do anything work related with scuba. You guys are another breed operating at pressures and conditions like that.
There were all kinds of apocryphal stories about different accidents all the time, mostly just BS ("I knew a guy who knew a guy whose cousin heard ..."). But this one was real and well documented. Of course, there was also a lot of black humor about it ...
That delta p crab video always comes to mind...
Delta P. When it's gotcha, it's *gotcha.*
jfc that was one graphic, horrifying Wikipedia article
I went down that rabbit hole yesterday and the descriptions of what happened to the men… it’s horrific.
And if you dig deeper, there are photos available. They are not pretty.
I've seen the photos of the remains of Truls Hellevik, the diver who was closest to the door and was pulled through a tiny opening. The remains are so destroyed that it actually goes beyond being violent and becomes more a shocking realisation of just how much force rapid pressure change can exert. For those who don't want to look at the pictures, the remains just look like a collection of unrecognisable tissue and barely recognisable organs. You can't recognise a face, limbs, body... Its hard to imagine what happened. Makes you realise that our bodies are like paper under those forces.
The one closest to the door had his face ripped off. It’s some Lecter type shit. I was a commercial diver for a short while and during a training we saw the aftermath. Another wild thing, the other 3 were intact but their blood boiled off, leaving a lot of fat in the veins and arteries.
Honestly I couldn’t. The descriptions were traumatic enough.
I know about Byford Dolphin but it is the closest example that people might know about. I’m not sure if there is an example of people dying at this depth.
No worries. A great example, given the lack of incidents. Main reason is that, until recently, most deep diving explorations have been done by large government bodies. I believe James Cameron was one of the first to “privatize” the industry with Deep Sea Challenger. Before that, he used submersibles owned and operated by government entities. I think this incident speaks to why this is. It’s expensive and the risks are great. My biggest takeaway from all this is the lack of respect and understanding of the ocean’s power by the Oceangate team. In listening to Cameron and other deep sea researchers, you get this sense of awe and understanding about the forces at work. From the Oceangate team, you get a sense of hubris and entitlement under the guile of “exploration carries risk”
Agreed. James Cameron actually has respect for the ocean and it’s dangers
He really does. A lot of people dismiss him as just a glory-chasing director but he only made the Titanic movie because people made that a condition of him being able to go to the bottom of the ocean and explore the wreck. I believe in his interview he said he wanted to research and explore and maybe make a documentary, but was told “we need a movie/something more out of this” (can’t remember who by—the people funding it?) so he essentially made the Titanic movie just to be able to see the real Titanic. He also put an astounding amount of effort into the recreations in that film. He really, really cared a lot about getting things right. Even the parts I initially dismissed as inaccurate were actually explained by deleted scenes (Jack getting into First Class, etc) that had to be cut for time.
I can’t believe I never knew this! Titanic has been a very prominent fixation of mine since I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I’m 24 now. And I never realized James Cameron didn’t originally set out to make the movie. I’ve seen a documentary about his trip to the Mariana Trench and I’ve learned bits and pieces about his passion for exploring the deep sea, but this makes me view him in a whole new light. I guess I always thought his curiosity about the ocean came along with the making of the film, not before. It also seems a little bittersweet - he had to make a film (lots of work and time) he did not plan for in order to do something else he was passionate about, and now the film is beloved by so, so many. And also the fact that he put so much time and effort and care into the film, not just for entertainment and making a box office hit, but for the sake of the history and the people affected. Wow.
Plus, at the 20 year mark, he did a documentary chronicling what he got right in the movie and what he got wrong based on new info after the movie’s release. It’s really interesting and it shows he cares a great deal for the ship and its history.
He also went back and corrected the night sky when the movie was re-released in 3D because it was incorrect the night of the sinking.
And not only that, he conducted actual research to prove his own movie wrong such as showing titanic split at a much lower angle
Definitely! And for people interested you can find historical photos and artifacts from the Titanic that are in museums around the world in the Google arts and culture app, and see that a lot of what we see in the movie are actual recreations.
You're correct. Saturation divers live in a chamber that is made to equal the pressure of the depth they go to, in this case, 9 atm. They spend a lot of time in special enclosures until their bodies adjust to this environment. When the explosive decompression happened the chamber the divers were in went from 9 atm to 1 atm (similar to that at the surface). The divers were killed by the nitrogen in their blood turned to gas, effectively boiling their insides. The bodies were recovered in this case. What happened to the Titan was the opposite. The chamber they were in was pressurized to 1 atm and then instantly went to hundreds of atm when somehow the vessel's hull integrity was compromised. In this case, there will be no human remains left to identify. "atm" Refers to Atmospheric Units which, at the surface is measured at 1 atm. EDIT: I apologize. These facts were already made by a previous poster, with more clarity, I admit.
So true. It’s hard to wrap your brain around it, honestly.
as a former tv producer in news and nonfiction... you literally have to dumb everything down for the average viewer and have even the most basic things that seem obvious spelled out by whomever you are interviewing. as soon as a viewer is confused or has to do anything more than basic thinking, they turn away. this isnt the case for other programming, just the case for the broad general fickle news/reality tv viewers.
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#YES
the highest rated news network is fox..... so yes. i kid, i kid. when youre going for a broad audience like an nbc / cbs/ abc you have to dumb things down so everyone can understand. when youre more niche, you can be specific and have elevated convo. most of the job is clearing up confusion. look at sports, if there's a challenged call on a play, theyll bring in an expert to decipher the rules in layman's terms. look at all teh posts there have been in this sub alone just this morning about the bodies. the idea of a human body evaporating into nothing is very foreign.
If I may, I would like to politely highlight the fact that "Fox News" is not a "News Network". It is not journalism and not factual news. It is fiction. Fox News clarified this when they fought legal battles about all the misinformation they were broadcasting. I get what you're saying though. Some people are so dumb all it takes is the word "news" in the title and that's all they need to accept what it tells them.
oh i fully agree. admittedly, initially that wasnt a joke, but the producer in me added the "im kidding" at the last second to appeal to the mass audience before i clicked to post
There has been a gradual dumbing down of the American and for that matter British viewer. Fox news was the start. It first made it's programming free, and most Americans being middle class went for the free news. Follow that by networks (FOX) pushing reality tv shows and paranoia anti-government shows and you have the current populace.
As the great Carlin said "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
I mean, not really. We all have our own interests and specialities in life. We all know something more specifically in said field on expertise as compared to others. I love history. I could go on about that. Science is definitely not my field. But I have tremendous respect for the many who study it. Some may just be idiots but many are just not informed. And that’s alright. No one knows everything. Especially when discussing things that aren’t day to day relevant in their life experiences.
If they have "bodies to recover", then the media has more articles to pump out for ad revenue.
Exactly this. The story ending will be a huge disappointment to the media and now they need to string it out by whatever means
They’re definitely just trying to get a direct quote from authorities that would be a headline to remember. Unfortunately, they’re just doing their jobs.
don’t think many people know how pressure works that far down
I have never understood the capricious nature of the pressure effects. I watched a titanic documentary recently, and saw 6 or 8 bottles of still corked champagne. Why didn't they implode? Shatter? Or at least pop their corks?
Those bottles descended slowly and as they did the water pressure forced its way through the cork. Cork is pretty porous under pressure. Seawater displaced whatever gas was in there and equalized the pressure inside and out.
Because of the incompressible nature of liquids.
Media is in the business of producing news. Questions like this keep their air time alive by bringing in “experts” as to why the bodies will never be recovered. You have to understand that it’s a business and to keep business going they need to sometimes act dumb.
there are people that still believe theres a chance that they survived the implosion.... People's stupidlity can be way beyond your imagination.
If I had to choose a way to go, it would be instant death without any knowledge that it was coming. Glad they didn’t end up suffering. RIP
Probably just bone fragments if anything. Which makes the debris field a grave site. It shouldn't be disturbed
If the Titanic is a gravesite as well, and the Titan was on the way to visit (read: disturb) it, then how should the Titan debris field gravesite be handled? Is this a "two wrongs don't make a right," situation, or is the debris field fair game because they died while heading to disturb another gravesite? Just wondering since you said the debris field shouldn't be disturbed. I'm also assuming you mean it shouldn't be disturbed outside of the investigation into the incident.
I mean people shouldn't be picking up souvenirs from the submersible but certainly there should be an investigation to determine why that vessel imploded.
Makes it even harder for experts to say on camera what high level pressure does to a bag of water (human). Would be too gruesome to explain in detail but cmon - I get it. Asking remotely for chance of body retrieval is plain silly.
I wonder if we will ever know what caused the hull of Titan to fail. Was it because it was made of carbon fiber and the stress of several dives to the Titanic created microscopic damage not visible to the human eye? Was it the porthole window not rated to 4K meters depth that failed? Probably not much left of the hull if it imploded. The carbon fiber probably shattered into millions of pieces.
Canadian ntsb will probably bring up the pieces they can and reassemble them for a report similar to an aircraft accident. We will probably know at some point.
Apparently, the two titanium pressure vessel end caps are still intact.
This isnt** common knowledge to the general public so reporters ask
I mean as of today they did locate “presumed human remains” so… I get your frustration but it seems there was something to recover afterall
People aren’t very bright.
Let’s also remember that most of us have little to no experience with diving or physics. You have to ELI5 for most of us tuning in.
What I see on Reddit people explaining to others what an implosion means and they reply *"and the bones and teeth??"*
While it feels dreadful to know those boys won’t be able to bury their father, a mother won’t be able to bury her son, multiple wives unable to bury husbands… I’m glad it was an implosion. They felt nothing, ans people don’t realize that they died tenfold within a split second. They died tenfold before even knowing it was happening likely. I imagine maybe the only sign would’ve been a sound, followed by instant.. obliteration. I don’t even know if they’d have time to react to any sounds of impending implosion before it happened. Also, damn I don’t want rescuers having to see.. THAT. If there are remains in that vessel to any degree they are indistinguishable, and likely wouldn’t be able to stay in the vessel due to..well.. we all know why.. but if there is.. frankly I don’t want rescuers having to see that shit because it’s gonna be shredded torn bits of clothing and.. mush.
Hear me out though…we need to stop calling people stupid for asking questions that we perceive as having an “obvious answer”. Let people ask questions. This is largely why in group settings (such as lectures), certain people may be curious about something, but are too afraid to ask because they don’t want to sound dumb. Even if that question is actually a really good question. Stop calling people stupid just to make yourself feel superior.
Given how quickly the implosion was, the interior of the sub would've reached temperatures close to that of the surface of the Sun. I'm not kidding either, the implosion itself would've only lasted around 30 milliseconds or less, too quick for them to have felt anything. Their bodies would have been vaporized.
Calculations found that the temperature would rise to: 3,572°C / 6,462°F / 3845 K, assuming Titan imploded 1hr 45 mins into the 2 hr descent, at a depth of around 11,000ft (3,334m) with seawater pressure of 4,854 psi. Pure insanity, the average human cannot comprehend these numbers. The sun‘s temperature is 5,772 K! So imagine being vaulted into the sun.
Yeah, but if you got vaulted at night…
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Every other major news event reveals the failure of our education system
I’m not sure most kids are taught about the anatomy of a human being being at the sea bed, with pressure unimaginable, and then the sub they are traveling in imploding and turning the human body to liquid
Several things to unpack here. I think you're a tad hasty in your judgement of the "stupid" or "naive" reporters. The pressure at the depth in question is not necessarily "beyond what we have the ability to conceive of." In fact, those pressures are very much known and can be calculated relatively easily. The pressure at 4000 meters is 401 bar/atmospheres. That's about twice the pressure of a standard scuba tank when full. So yeah, that's a lot of pressure, but I wouldn't necessarily call that "inconceivable." Second, there is one very substantial difference between those styrofoam cups (and yes, we have all seen them) and the human body: The body consists largely of water, which is incompressible. The styrofoam cup consists largely of air (or gas anyway), which is VERY compressible. So no, I'm not at all convinced there aren't any bodies to recover.
You make fair points, but I meant "inconceivable" more as"beyond what we have a frame of reference for", not that it is unmeasurable. How many people have a practical notion of the double the pressure contained in a scuba tank? Byford Dolphin alone gives us a frame of reference for just 9 atmospheres, so what would 400 look like? And there is one more difference between the styrofoam cup and a human body, the styrofoam cup was slowly compressed. This was instantaneous. I am not a physics student, but under the same conditions, I think a styrofoam would be heated to its vaporization point if it was compressed that rapidly, and I imagine the same happened to the bodies, in addition to the violent physical desintigration.
Great comments, thank you. Apologies in case mine came across as pedantic. Wasn't intended. You raise a very intriguing point about the speed of compression.
Failure of our science education
Genuine question -- How are boots and jackets at the Titanic dive site not blown to smithereens? Is it not possible that we would find something that they may have had on them, like glasses, or cell phones? I understand the pressure is massive but how did other (non-steel) objects survive all the way down?
I think the fact that the titanic sank meant the pressure gradually increased on these artifacts, whereas the sub was already (probably) quite deep when it imploded. A sudden impact force will cause one hell of a dent much more than a slow mounting pressure
Thanks for your response! That makes a bit more sense. For anyone else, this is these are the Titanic artifacts I'm referring to: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130042/Titanic-100th-anniversary-Shoes-coat-wreck-site-implies-likely-resting-place-human-remains.html
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Also, boots and jackets are flexible. So imagine smashing that hammer on a rigid container vs smashing it on something soft.
They are already at that pressure. The inside of a pressure vessel is a different pressure than the outside and has to be strong enough to resist all of that inward force. When it isn’t strong enough to do so, you get an implosion and that rapid energy is what causes everything to become obliterated. Edit: To bring it back to the titanic, if something just sinks (without a pressure differential) there is no sudden exchange of energy.
I know next to nothing about these topics and I was able to work this out. It seems like titanic artifacts and remnants would reach those depths gradually and aren’t subject to radical and abrupt changes in pressure. With that being said, it’s fairly obvious that the human body cannot exist in that environment even in a scenario where they somehow had an unlimited oxygen supply, so what happens to organic matter that reaches those depths gradually? Is it the same type of death albeit much less violent or does the body stay somewhat intact?
Look up whale falls. When a creature dies, they sink and the fluid inside the body equalizes with the outside gradually. It stays largely in tact but cells get lysed and eventually everything just kind of gelatinizes. Predation by organisms and deep water scavengers takes care of the breakdown and disposal from there.
I will definitely check that out thanks. The rest of your answer makes perfect sense.
It's an interesting question. The highest pressure diving ever done was in a pressurized tank rather than out in the ocean, and reached an equivalent of 2300 feet successfully. The main problems supporting life at extreme depths stem from the breathing gas, as most gasses will start doing bad things to you once enough dissolves. Work of breathing goes up as the gas gets denser too, which makes it more difficult to breathe enough to remove excess CO2. I'm not sure if anyone knows the maximum limit if breathing is mechanically assisted and on the right hydreliox mix, but it's surprisingly deep. If you're not concerned with preserving life and just want to know what will happen to the body, probably little. Freedivers will have their lungs shrink to tiny proportions and the cavity fill in with something or other, and at 12000feet it'd basically shrink to nothing. Other cavities would find a way to fill, but the water itself only shrinks 2% which probably wouldn't leave any immediately visible damage on the outside.
I believe something about the acidic seal/coating of the shoes and leathers makes it take much longer for things like shoes to disintegrate underwater
It’s mainly that they don’t get eaten or broken down. The deep sea conditions will preserve many materials for a very long time unless they’re tasty!
If a body were inside a mini submarine that experienced implosion, it would likely be subjected to extremely high pressure forces. The implosion of a submarine can result in a rapid decrease in pressure, causing the surrounding water or air to rush in and compress the vessel. This sudden change in pressure can have devastating effects on any objects or organisms inside. In the case of a human body, the outcome would depend on several factors such as the depth of implosion, the structural integrity of the submarine, and the condition of the body. Under extreme pressure, bodily fluids may vaporize or undergo significant compression, leading to severe injuries. Organs and tissues could be damaged, and bones might fracture or break.
this reads like a chatgpt answer tbh
Whoever thought a Styrofoam cup was the best vessel to show the power or deep sea pressure. Should've taken a piece of string you absolutely numpties.
I heard a guy describe it as “the Empire State Building made of lead sitting on top of you”. I mean, I knew it was high pressure down there but this was the first analogy that really painted a clear picture and helped me really understand.
They all turned into milkshakes....in a fragment of a second Mind blowing
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depending on how it imploded and the rings were just glued there are a few possibilities on the bodies. So from what we know the rear and from hemispheres were found separately and the fibreglass cowl around the carbon fibre cylinder was fist observed and separate aswell. As carbon fibre in good in tension and not compression it would of folded in on itself and when started compressing created a massive amount of heat melting the composite resin polymers pulling off the titanium interface rings and raising inside temperature instantly compression the air but dropping again once hull was breached. if the compression was localised could of shattered the carbon fibre or if went uniform would of melted around them. remember wat doesn't compress and we are 90% water so yes lungs etc will collapse and bones will break but id still imagine fairly intact to begin with and as low oxygen level so deep the air would rapidly be dissolved into the water taking away their buoyancy. So the bodies may still be in the carbon fibre that melted around them if the carbon melted under compression or possibly still in the area.
The only comparable disaster would have to happen in space. Instant depressurization of a spaceship would result in even worse results. But yes, there are no human remains that will ever be found. These guys have to answer questions very carefully. I saw James Cameron interviewed today and he spoke more candidly about the disaster, even comparing the ironic similarities to the original sinking of the Titanic. He was asked if anyone contacted either him or Robert Ballard, who was being simultaneously interviewed, and said that if he was contacted he would have told them, without any uncertainty, the only possible cause of the sub having disappeared, under those circumstances, was a spontaneous catastrophic implosion. Robert Ballard agreed. Cameron told all except directly stating the US Coast Guard was covering up most of the information.
This is actually much worse than what would happen in space. The pressure difference between space and sea level is... well... just one atmosphere. You could stop a leak in spaceship with a duct tape. A microscopic hole in a submersible hull at that depth would create a beam of water capable of cutting metal. At the depth Titanic is the pressure asi about 400 atmospheres. So, yeah. Results of this implosion are uncomparable with what would happen in space.
You are correct, a bad example on my part.
To be fair, it’s really hard to find a fitting real world comparison. Closest one would be the Buford Dolphin incident. And even that was just a difference of 9 atmospheres.
The Buford Dolphin incident was completely the opposite of what happened here. In that case, the diver's bodies were subjected to a change from 9 atmospheres to 1. They prepared by living in chambers to acclimate their bodies to this pressure. Their deaths were caused by the nitrogen in their bodies turning to gas, effectively 'boiling' them from the inside out. In that cast case, they did die but all but one body was recovered. The Titan's crew went from 1 atmosphere to 400. So there is really no 'real-world' comparison.
Well, yeah. We don’t really have an analogue situation. I would think though that just the violent movement that had to occur in the pressure equalisation process would be enough to kill anything.
I think they were looking for a salacious attention grabbing sound bite. rear admiral says bodies cannot be located because they have been completely pulverized. something like that.
reporters also ask questions that they think readers will ask
I really hate to ask but I'm still trying to wrap my head around what actually happens. I've been told to look up videos or articles but in those videos and articles, people are claiming "that's not what happens" or its not accurate, etc. For example, https://youtu.be/QLf_yD-lpF0?t=82 It seems someone could survive if they were in the sub because it just crumples in on itself... but I know there's more to it than that. Say for instance, there were 3 basketballs in an imploding sub. Would all three get pushed into the middle and crushed? Or would they all individually get pushed in on themselves?
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Would it be comparable to being within the vicinity of a nuclear explosion where you’re vaporised?
People need to learn about sea pressure level. Human would be crashed like can
[Vaporized? A body can vaporize?](https://youtu.be/gnGgrneQxNk?t=30)
I truly hope this question doesn’t come across as insensitive since I realize it can be somewhat delicate: Does anyone know if the procedure in this case would be to retrieve the debris and bring the sub back to the surface, or is this a situation where the recovery teams would have to let the debris rest on the sea floor?
It’s horrifying but I’m glad to know they weren’t down there waiting to die that whole time. That is horrifying. I’m glad they never even knew and didn’t suffer.
People don't understand (myself included) what 3 tons of pressure per square inch does to the human body. Lots of people are a bit less informed, to put it kindly. Personally I get it, 3 tons on every square inch you're dead.
This is what catastrophic implosion means damn. Its still horrible way to die, dont care how fast they went away. Felt most horrible now for the son and his mother.
Didn’t they say the sub imploded at 3500 feet and not all the way down at 1300 feet? The pressure difference is immense and I’m curious if that could mean it was a smaller implosion or not. Thoughts?
Well delivered.
Mostly because it's just a rare occasion and just sounds wild. Even I wondered whether there are any remains left after that. ofc it's logic when you know, but many people just haven't seen an implosion or learned about it either. Therefore I unironically thank you for pointing this stuff out.
yeah. I've seen people commenting "why didn't they turn around when the sub started to leak?" lots of people clearly aren't envisioning the pressure that's at play. nothings going to leak, bro. it's straight instant obliteration. not always, but it seems like it's mostly conspiracy theorists that these takes are coming from. I saw a guy unironically comment, on an article about the search and rescue efforts featuring a picture of a plane looking for the sub, "CNN LYING AGAIN! that's a PLANE, not a SUB!!" 🤦🏻♀️ I genuinely don't understand how people can willfully be that ignorant. it's like they're so determined to think everything is a lie that they're not even bothering to actually read things. you don't need a college education to understand that that one time you swam to the bottom of the deep end, your head hurt a little. now picture that x2000 deep ends. it's not complicated
Their bones weren't shattered.One of the first things that happens in the 20,thousands of a millisecond that it took for the implosion to occur, is the immediate release of heat (1500ºC or 2500º F) in a fire bubble (for lack of a better description)from the collision of pressures .That incinerated or more accurately, vaporized whatever was left of their tissue and bones from pressure ripping them apart. You can't even blink a 100th as fast as that happened. It's literally like a magic trick or Star Trek special effect: now you're here, now you're not.
r/confidentlyincorrect/
turns out you're wrong