The news: During a four-hour exploration of the
Victor Vescovo, an American explorer and retired naval officer, and his team at Five Deeps Expedition have successfully completed the world's deepest dive. They made the descent to Challenger Deep within the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, which is commonly known as the deepest point on Earth.
Only three people have ever done that, and one was a U.S. Navy submariner. In the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Guam and the Philippines, lies the Marianas Trench, also known as the Mariana Trench. At 35,814 feet below sea level, its bottom is called the Challenger Deep — the deepest point known on Earth.
Victor Vescovo descended nearly 11km (seven miles) to the deepest place in the ocean - the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench.
Submarines can generally dive to a depth of around 300m - for context, the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, the Mariana Trench, is 11,000m deep. US Los Angeles-class submarines have a test depth of around 450m, but their maximum dive depth is believed to be around 675–900m.
OceanGate's submersible, The Titan, is the only five-person sub in the world capable of reaching the Titanic wreck, which sits about 2.4 miles below the sea surface.
What is the Longest a Submarine Has Stayed Submerged? The longest a submarine has ever stayed submerged is 111 days.
Last year an expedition to the Mariana Trench made history by conducting the deepest crewed dive ever completed as it descended 10,927 metres into the Challenger Deep.
A submarine implosion occurs when the vessel goes beyond its stipulated dive depth. The extreme pressure caused by the water becomes too much for the vessel's superstructure to handle, which in turn crushes the vessel.
Yes! Escape plans and tools are almost as old as submarine technology itself. Although the odds may always be stacked in favor of the merciless, cold depths of the sea, a few dozen lucky people have taken that unintentional ride down to the ocean floor and lived to see daylight again.
Most nuclear submarines cannot rest on the seabed floor for long, as silt and other debris can block the intakes that draw in water to regulate the reactor's temperature. The new submarine likely features some mod that moves the intakes higher up on the hull to avoid foreign object ingestion.
Nine nuclear submarines have sunk, either by accident or scuttling. The Soviet Navy lost five (one of which sank twice), the Russian Navy two, and the United States Navy (USN) two.
Even at this depth, the lungs of many humans collapse as they are unable to move against the pressure. The immense amount of ambient pressure from the water is so much greater than the body's internal pressure, so the lungs would collapse completely, resulting in instant death.
Even if the submarine dives to 300 meters (I'm picking something at random), you'll feel mostly the same. It will be just like enjoying a cup of tea in a windowless room at sea level. This is because the interior of the vessel is kept at an approximate pressure of 1 atmosphere, which is what you feel at the surface.
The source explained: "Because it's a working environment everything gets positioned and the body will be lifted and put in the fridge, not in the torpedo tube like on Vigil, photographs are also taken as it's classed as a crime scene.”
Sunlight does not penetrate the eternal darkness below 1,000 meters (3,280 feet), an area known as the aphotic zone, which includes the midnight zone (or bathypelagic zone) between 1,000 and 4,000 meters (3,280 and 13,123 feet), the abyss (or abyssopelagic zone) between 4,000 and 6,000 meters (13,123 and 19,685 feet), ...
More than eighty percent of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. Much remains to be learned from exploring the mysteries of the deep.
On 26 March 2012, Cameron reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. The maximum depth recorded during this record-setting dive was 10,908 metres (35,787 ft). Measured by Cameron, at the moment of touchdown, the depth was 10,898 m (35,756 ft).
Early submersibles were meant to cruise on the surface and submerge only for short periods. Because of anti-submarine warfare, modern subs need speed under water to escape attack. Although the actual top speed of American naval vessels is a secret, modern submarines travel faster than 30 knots underwater.
Oxygen is supplied either from pressurized tanks, an oxygen generator (which can form oxygen from the electrolysis of water) or some sort of "oxygen canister" that releases oxygen by a very hot chemical reaction.
As a result, the submarines are capable of diving to depths of up to two thousand feet, and crush depth estimates run from 2,400 to 3,000 feet.
In the first sixty years after the end of World War II, no one was able to find any of the 52 American submarines lost during the War whose exact locations were not already known. In most cases, the submarines were lost with all hands, and the exact locations of their sinkings were lost to history.
How much does it cost to tour the Titanic? The OceanGate Titanic expedition cost $250,000 per person, which excludes transportation to and from St. John's, Newfoundland, where the journey starts and ends before traveling about 400 miles to the wreck. The company's website says expeditions to the wreck last eight days.
Cramped quarters are the norm, and sailors must have the right technical know-how as well as determination to spend months underwater at a time. To even be eligible to be a crewman aboard a submarine, applicants must pass a series of grueling tests, psychological evaluations, and intensive courses.