Science: Mar 8, 2012

James Cameron, the man behind the water-logged in blockbusters such as Titanic and The Abyss, announced his intention to dive only to the deepest point in the ocean in the next few weeks and bring back some of the alien creatures that live there.

Cameron has already dived deeper than any other human on a solo mission, when he fell five miles along the New Britain Trench off Papua New Guinea during the test in his one-man seacraft earlier this week.

His next scan is scheduled for the Mariana Trench Challenger Deep, seven miles below the ocean, where strange alien ways no one had ever seen before thinking to live, the National Geographic Society said in his journal.

And he is not the only completely sealed celeb attempting the trip. Richard Branson is also built two-seater under which he believes can make the Challenger Deep descent, but on the current timescale, it looks like Cameron will be first.

People just to the bottom of Challenger Deep at a time, back in 1960, when two men team went down in the U.S. Navy submersible Trieste, but they could only stay there for 20 minutes and did not see much because of the mud stirred up when they landed on the bottom.

Cameron, who is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, is on its way to the depths in his car drawn solo submersible Deepsea Challenger, which should give him about six hours on the seafloor.

Naturally, because it is Cameron, the whole thing will be captured for the future in 3D with multiple high-def cameras, supported by 8ft-high array of LED lights. The subgroup will also be equipped with a robotic arm for drawing up rocks, animals, and seafloor samples for study.

Cameron hopes that the dive will answer some basic questions about ocean trenches, such as whether a real fish can live there and what other strange species can survive in perpetual darkness in water chilled to near freezing.

"We're going to go there with our cameras, our lights, and find the answers to some of these issues," Cameron said.

Cameron built his mini-sub secret in Australia over eight years and is already the deepest-diving submersible in operation and the deepest-diving only driver in history.

Deepsea Challenger is 24 feet tall, but only 12 metric tons, making it more than 10 times lighter than the last sub-group to visit the Mariana Trench, a feat achieved with specially designed foam.

Despite its size, the trip is not going to be a comfy one to Cameron. The pilot "sphere" is a 43-inch wide space where he can not even extend his arms or legs, and Cameron will be sharing this space with their food, room, joysticks, and some warm clothes.

"It's like a clown car in there," Cameron said. "You barely have room to enter, and then they gave you another 50 pounds of equipment."

The subgroup also had to be designed to take the pressure will experience in their seven mile descent, when it will shrink by about 2.5 inches as the water pressure about 1,125 kg per square centimeter.

"Every single fastener, every single form of binding structures on the sub had looked at carefully, because otherwise stainless steel bolts would only cut the under compressed," Cameron said.

Once the sub ready to resurface, Cameron will flip a switch and an electromagnetic system jettison the heavy steel plates that allow it to sink, sending him bobbing to the surface.

Among the security measures in the sub is a wire connecting the weights to the under which corrode in 12 hours if the weights do not disengage for any reason. If there is a power failure in the sub, the weights also dropped out, sending it to the surface.

Despite these precautions, it will still be a dangerous trip.

Cameron said that he was a little worried.

"Worry is a good thing when you are a researcher," he added. "I think when you are a gentleman, when you take a risk for gifts - this is when you are going to get bitten."

Science

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Titanic director James Cameron prepares for deep sea dive

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