|
Alehkhs posted:If I recall correctly, it never finished clinical trials. Also, it doesn't work with pigs or sheep. So while it's a great way to induce hibernation in mice it doesn't look so hot for doing anything to humans other than poisoning them like cyanide does. Moridin920 posted:More than a few seconds (not much more though). You don't freeze and you don't boil blood out of all your pores. The pressure differential is much less than what scuba divers deal with. You probably won't be able to hold your breath as long as you'd think and you'll just suffocate. With some scuba equipment though? You'd probably last a bit before the radiation got you. A bit here having the meaning of 60 seconds or so maybe. Pure O2 would prevent most of the nastier ebullisms I guess. No, not at all. Any O2 in your bloodstream outgasses as it passes through your lungs, and then when that deoxygenated blood hits your brain it's lights out. If you're exposed to vaccuum, you have maybe 10 or 15 seconds of useful consciousness, then you pass out and start to die. A SCUBA tank won't help, because there's no *pressure*, the water wetting the alveoli in your lungs boils away, and no amount of oxygen delivered through a mask will allow you to respirate; you need a pressurized environment. If you did try to hold your breath, your lungs would probably rupture (SCUBA divers on ascent breathe out continuously for the same reason).
|
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 21:54 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2013 15:56 |
|
|
So is there any real chance that there are areas deeper than Challenger Deep? Like an area where there's a crack or a cavern system that goes even deeper down? I am so going to wait in line for that Challenger Deep 3D documentary.
|
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 23:36 |
|
, but it reflects poorly on the forums. 
|
Three-Phase posted:So is there any real chance that there are areas deeper than Challenger Deep? Like an area where there's a crack or a cavern system that goes even deeper down? The Challenger Deep was discovered by the HMS Challenger, circa 1875. However, the geography is pretty unique, so I think it is about like wondering if there is a mountain taller than Everest.
|
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 23:43 |
|
|
Slo-Tek posted:The Challenger Deep was discovered by the HMS Challenger, circa 1875. However, the geography is pretty unique, so I think it is about like wondering if there is a mountain taller than Everest. Yeah, you're right. That's too bad, it's not like there's some little unknown patch somewhere. Did you guys know there are places with electrical power cables (PDF link) under the ocean water?
|
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 23:53 |
|
|
Shadowhand00 posted:I'm having a hard time processing these images. Maybe its just the fact that its not in motion, but when I first saw them, I assumed they were CGI approximations for what the footage would look like. The lighting and reflections look like the Doom 3 engine.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 00:00 |
|
|
I wish there was some way to give a sense of scale compared to those squid, it's hard to comprehend how big they are when its just an organism floating in blackness. Of course, how the hell are they supposed to give a sense of scale?
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 01:21 |
|
|
Three-Phase posted:Yeah, you're right. That's too bad, it's not like there's some little unknown patch somewhere. Not only that but there is copper and fiber optic cables criss-crossing every where on the ocean floor, with a new one about to be laid going from London, through the Arctic Circle, and terminating in Japan.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 03:13 |
|
|
Terminal Entropy posted:Not only that but there is copper and fiber optic cables criss-crossing every where on the ocean floor, with a new one about to be laid going from London, through the Arctic Circle, and terminating in Japan. So what happens if something gets curious and takes a chunk out of a line?
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 03:37 |
|
|
How rich in edible matter is the silt of the sea floor?
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 03:49 |
|
|
Joeslop posted:So what happens if something gets curious and takes a chunk out of a line? Check out this PDF Three-Phase just posted. Three-Phase posted:Did you guys know there are places with electrical power cables (PDF link) under the ocean water? There's a bit in there about cable repair. The cables are rather well armored though, so it probably wouldn't be a critter that would cause damage.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 03:52 |
|
|
Joeslop posted:So what happens if something gets curious and takes a chunk out of a line? I'm more curious as to what happens if a fishing boat grabs a line or an anchor drops onto one. Do they have them marked on GPS or are they just placed in areas that wouldn't be trafficked by vessels or what?
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 04:22 |
|
|
Fun fact: More human beings have walked on the face of the Moon (12 people) than have been to the bottom of Challenger Deep (3 people). Another interesting thing is that the bathyscaphe Trieste was a bit of a fire hazard - it used 22,000 gallons of gasoline for flotation 
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 04:41 |
|
|
HondaRider271 posted:I'm more curious as to what happens if a fishing boat grabs a line or an anchor drops onto one. Do they have them marked on GPS or are they just placed in areas that wouldn't be trafficked by vessels or what? All of that is in the short pdf above. But yes to both.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 04:43 |
|
|
Joeslop posted:So what happens if something gets curious and takes a chunk out of a line? A boat with an optics lab has to be sent out. They first have to send an ROV out to find the cable and bring it to the surface (which can take all day), cut it, ping it in one direction and then the other, fix the part they just cut, and then follow the cable in the direction that didn't return a ping to find the served section. This happens a lot, most of the time it is because an anchor severed the line. Though because of the redundancy of lines, most end users will barely notice any difference. Would you like to know more? This site has a bunch of cool submarine cable maps for the past decade. Terminal Entropy fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 05:11 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 04:52 |
|
|
Cool thread. Deep sea fish are awesome. I'd poo poo myself with glee and terror at the same instant if a giant squid came at me.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 05:03 |
|
|
DeusExMachinima posted:Bookmarked thread, voted 5 because of the OP. You science types can't trick me, I've seen Pandorum.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 05:19 |
|
|
Terminal Entropy posted:A boat with an optics lab has to be sent out. They first have to send an ROV out to find the cable and bring it to the surface (which can take all day), cut it, ping it in one direction and then the other, fix the part they just cut, and then follow the cable in the direction that didn't return a ping to find the served section. For river and bay cables, there are often signs warning people not to anchor over the cable posted on shore. I believe this is how the US was able to discover several soviet cable lines to tap during the cold war.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 05:52 |
|
|
 Deep sea geology time! Why should we let deep sea biologists have all the fun? The deep ocean basins account for approximately 70% of the crust. While we geologists understand what's going on in the ocean depths better than say, a biologist, we have the same problem: it still pales in comparison to what we can see on land. Part of our better understanding comes from the fact that the objects we're studying are bigger and more permanent. Unlike biologists, who are confined to small patches of the ocean floor by ROVs, geologists can make use of more passive instruments like sonar and magnetometers. Why would geologists be interested in the oceans? The fact is that the oceanic crust is the main driver of almost all the geology you see on Earth. Their formation and destruction is what gets the continents from one place to another. How high the sea is determines what rocks get deposited where. The stuff dissolved in them determines the composition of rocks. The oceans are about as important as you'd expect something that covers 70% of the surface to be. Seafloor Topography Let's take a look at a depth chart for the oceans.  You'll notice four basic types of topography. First are broad swells that wind around the Earth like stitches on a baseball. These are spreading centers. Here, convective forces deep in the mantle are pulling apart the oceanic crust. The release of pressure on the mantle underneath the central rift zone allows the mantle to partially melt. Magma resulting from the partial melting is injected into and erupted on existing crust, forming new ocean floors. (I'll explain this part in a little more detail in a little bit.) Next, you'll see that there's a broad expanse of ocean where not much is going on. This is the abyssal plain. Geologically, not much of interest goes on here. As our new ocean crust is pulled away from the spreading center, it cools and becomes more dense. Hence, the ocean floor gets deeper as one moves away from a spreading center. As it traverses the vast distances between its birthplace and its final resting place, the seafloor acquires a coating of sediments. These sediments are very gooey and come from two sources: dead ocean life and clay carried out to sea by rivers. One usually is more prevalent than the other, but it really depends on where you are. Generally, the closer you are to the continents, the more likely it is that you'll have clays in your seafloor goo. The last stop of the oceanic crust's journey is the subduction zone. Here the now old, cold and dense oceanic crust is pushed underneath a more buoyant piece of crust, usually a continent (less dense portions of seafloor can also work in a pinch). This is where you find the deepest patches of real estate on the ocean floor, the deep sea trenches. Because you have very large pieces of crust moving against each other over very long distances, the biggest earthquakes are to be found here. These types of earthquakes, known as megathrust earthquakes, build up when long segments of the subducting crust become stuck on the overlying crust. The tension is suddenly released when the force of the subducting plate pulls the stuck segment past its failure point. The failure then propagates across long segments of the subduction zone. In the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the fault ruptured along 500 km of the subduction zone. Finally, you have seamounts and islands. Seamounts are isolated undersea mountains that form in three different ways, by a hot spot, as an island arc, or along the spreading center. Hot spot seamounts form above mantle plumes. Here, a pillar of hot mantle essentially torches through the seafloor, spewing basaltic lava all over the place. This forms a shield volcano, the best known example of which is the Big Island of Hawaii. As the overlying plate moves over the stationary hot spot, island chains form. Island arcs are formed just behind subduction zones. As the subducting crust descends back into the mantle, it releases a great deal of water that has saturated it over the course of its millions of years of journeying across the planet. Once released, this water melts the mantle, forming volcanic plumes that will reach the surface to form islands and seamounts. The Aleutian Islands and the Japanese archipelago are two very good examples of island arcs. Slightly less common than these two types are ocean-ridge seamounts. These form along the spreading centers where an exceptionally hot piece of mantle reaches the surface or faults in the spreading center reach exceptionally deep into the underlying mantle. These channel magma forming in the spreading center into localized areas, forming small volcanoes. The active volcanic phase of this type of seamount is much shorter than what you'll see in hot spot or island arc volcanoes, so they tend to be smaller. Structure of the Oceanic Crust Oceanic crust is generally layered. This was first discovered through the use of seismological studies. As it turns out, we can use pulses of energy to create images of the rock structures beneath the seafloor. This is widely used in the oil industry to find new drilling prospects. You can think of seismic surveys as sonar on steroids. Their basic principle of operation is the same, except instead of just measuring the time it takes for the energy pulse to travel to the seafloor and back, we also listen for additional reflections originating from structures within the rock. Reflections are created by density contrasts, the most obvious of which is the interface between the water column and the underlying rock. However, there are also more subtle reflections that form as the result of slight density contrasts within the rock itself. Now, actually putting the data we get from seismic surveys into an understandable format is a post in itself, but in the end you get something like so:  Notice the similarity of the resulting image with the traditional geologic cross-section. They're not exactly the same for a number of reasons, but with a bit of interpretation, we can get the general picture of what's going on. Based on a large number of these surveys, we get a general idea of how oceanic crust is layered. We can split it into four zones based on how velocities change between layers (a function of changing densities).  Layer 1 is the thin dusting of sediment that covers the ocean floor. This stuff is squishy and not very compact, so when the sound wave hits the boundary between the ocean and this layer, it speeds up a bit, but not quite as much as if it had hit the underlying rock. In very young crust, this layer might be non-existent; in old crust, it may be on the order of 100 m thick. Layer 2 is the first true rock in the oceanic crust. This layer is subdivided into two portions, based on the nature of the seismic reflections. Layer 2a is a relatively featureless layer on seismic records, formed by eruption upon eruption of pillow basalt from the rift area. Depending on the level of activity in the spreading center, this layer can reach nearly 1 km thick. Underneath is another layer that has a slightly higher velocity than the overlying rock, but not enough of a jump to split it into its own layer. This layer, layer 2b is the sheeted dike complex, a series of old feeder pipes that channeled the magma that would become the overlying pillow basalts to the surface. The reason that the velocity increases at the boundary of these two layers is the fact that pillow basalts create small pockets of gas due to the release of confining pressure at the surface. Gas pockets in turn lower the density of the rock slightly, meaning soundwaves travel more slowly. Layer 3 consists of gabbro, essentially the same thing as basalt except for the fact that it cooled more slowly and grew visible crystals. The gabbro layer is generally considered a "fossil magma chamber", where ascending magma from the melting mantle pools beneath the rift zone. From here, the magma escapes by forcing open cracks or flowing along existing cracks to form the overlying sheeted dikes. Like Layer 2, this layer is subdivided into two types, but this time it's not so much a reflection of the velocities, but on the character of the reflections returned from this layer. Layer 3a is relatively featureless. The underlying layer, 3b, has a series of flat-lying reflections. The difference in appearance is not really fully understood, but might be related to the process of extension itself. Extension creates shear, which makes crystals want to align themselves in the direction of movement. In the sheared portion of Layer 3, the elongated crystals of the gabbro may have aligned themselves horizontally. Layer 4 is the mantle itself. This layer is also referred to as peridotite based on the most most abundant mineral, olivine. (Peridot is the gem variety of olivine). At the boundary of Layers 3 and 4, we've crossed the Mohorovičić discontinuity, lovingly referred to by geologists as the Moho. Here, we've crossed the boundary from the core into the mantle. And we've done it in only 7km, unlike the continental crust, where we can expect to drill through 70km before we hit the Moho. Like Layer 3, Layer 4 is divided into two sections based on layered reflections. However, the roles are reversed! Layer 4a is the layered section, and represents sheared portions of the mantle, where the overlying crust is being dragged across it. Layer 4b is more rigid, and shows no sign of shearing. Layer 4 forms what is known as lithospheric mantle. This portion of the mantle is non-convecting, and is sort of along for the ride with the oceanic crust. The rigidity of the lithospheric mantle provides support to the overlying crust. We can go down a little further, but by this point our pulse of sound has faded nearly to the point where we can't pick up its reflections anymore. However, we can listen in on earthquakes, which give us some idea of what we find a little deeper. At approximately 20 km, we run into the asthenospheric mantle. Convection currents in the asthenosphere drag the overlying lithosphere around, driving plate tectonics. If we look even deeper, we see other discontinuities similar to the Moho, but we'll not get into that considering this is the ocean thread. There's some other weird geological stuff in the deep sea. Oceanic core complexes, hydrothermal systems, and more, but those will have to be topics for a later post. Venusian Weasel fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 06:22 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 05:54 |
|
|
zinc68 posted:All of that is in the short pdf above. But yes to both. I actually read the whole pdf but apparently my reading comprehension is pretty terrible tonight. The way they repair and maintain the cables is absolutely mind boggling to me. Edit: Oh drat that's an awesome post ^ HondaRider271 fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 06:02 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 05:57 |
|
|
Bishop posted:I'd poo poo myself with glee and terror at the same instant What monstrosity have I created? 
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 06:08 |
|
SoroScrew
|
This thread is amazing. I am fascinated with deep-sea stuff at a superficial level- it just looks so drat amazing. http://www.environment.gov.au/coast.../creature1.html This link has a bunch of pictures of deep sea creatures found near Australia. Yay, I can't wait to watch this thread grow!
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 06:40 |
|
|
 edited for content: Then allow me to supplement my post with deep sea fish with three foot long legs. Tripod fish spend the majority of their time standing still, facing the current and eating what drifts by. The two long fins on it's head sense what's edible. They can mate with a partner, but they're hermaphrodites who can reproduce alone if one isn't found. Fish that stand go against most people's definition of nature. The fact that it's literally a fish with out-of-place legs makes it all the more surprising and comical. 
rizuhbull fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 07:56 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 06:58 |
|
|
Alehkhs posted:Thread Rules/Guidelines: Come on dude, bigfin squid aren't scary. They just drift around for the most part.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95I25CATMx8
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 07:16 |
|
|
I thought it'd be ok if the monster is real. Sorry  Alehkhs posted:Come on dude, bigfin squid aren't scary. They just drift around for the most part.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 07:22 |
|
|
rizuhbull posted:I thought it'd be ok if the monster is real. Sorry Ah, it's fine  - your first, size-comparison chart is actually pretty cool. Now we'll need to track down the Colossal Squid and get some footage of it!But the second image really has no purpose other than to be "ooooh scary," and that's the sort of stuff I'd like to nip in the bud. rizuhbull posted:Drift around? Or is it hunting for innocents with it's nature-defying leggy thingies? We're not actually sure - we know next to nothing about them, in fact. Their jointed nature, compared to most squid with their swept-back appendages, is certainly interesting (and in fact, the lack of distinction between arms and tentacles is a rather prehistoric trait!). But are they simply jellyfish-like trawlers, or do they actively hunt with those arms?
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 07:32 |
|
|
I remember one goon who had an octopus as a pet and it displayed intelligence, curiosity, mimicry and even maybe jealousy, and its favorite toy was a plastic spatula. What I find amazing is that these traits evolved completely independently from us, considering our closest common ancestor with the cephalopod was maybe a tiny mollusc-like worm that lived more than half a billion years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if some octopuses use tools.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 10:28 |
|
|
A book to read: Starfish, by Peter Watts. Available for free on his website under the Creative Commons licence here. It's about deep sea divers who maintain a geothermal power plant. Set in the future, these divers have been modified to deal with the pressure. A mechanical "lung" that allows ocean water to flow through them to strip the oxygen out, saline solution fills their sinuses, etc. It's phenomenal, and is the "hardest" sci-fi book I've ever read. It's doesn't even seem like science fiction, it just seems like reality 50 years from now. If anybody knows of any other books like this please let me know! (I wouldn't bother too much about the rest of the trilogy, it takes some really weird turns, Watts makes some weird choices, and only a little bit is underwater). A note on pressure: Elsewhere in this forum I've seen some serious misunderstandings of how pressure affects humans and how we deal with it. (I've seen posts where people say we'll explode if we go too deep because of the gasses in our bodies, and wonder why submarine crews or James Cameron didn't get the bends). Anyway, as an earlier post said, every ten metres of water = 1 more atmosphere's worth of pressure on us. So at 20 metres deep, we have 3 atmosphere of pressure. (20 metres of water + 1 planet earth atmosphere). This pressure squeezes us down and make us compress. Since most of our body is water, which is pretty much incompressible, the only things we have to worry about compressing are the spaces in our body which is air. So our sinuses and lungs. Since the gas is compressed by the pressure of the water above us, and the deeper we go the more it compresses, SCUBA divers have to take in more and more gas to fill the same volume (eg, so their sinus cavities don't collapse). While we might be breathing the same volume of gas, there are more gas molecules filling that volume. A side effect of the pressure is that is causes Nitrogen to be kept in solution, in our fat cells. If we come up from depth too quickly, the pressure on our body is released too fast, and all the Nitrogen comes out of solution... in the form of nitrogen bubbles in our blood. This is decompression sickness, AKA the bends. Think of a new bottle of coke. No bubbles, right? Now crack the seal - all the carbonation forms from the sudden lack of pressure. Same thing happens with Nitrogen in our blood (if we come up too fast). Submarines do not work like this. Unlike our soft fleshy bodies, a submarine is made of a rigid structure - the gas inside a submarine isn't affected by the pressure outside, because the structure of the submarine takes all the pressure. The deeper they go, the stronger the structure has to be. But inside, it is kept at one atmosphere of pressure - so the crew are still only breathing the regular amount of gas molecules, as if they were on the surface. Nitrogen uptake at depth is exactly the same as the surface. That's why James Cameron didn't need to decompress. The submarine he was in had a strong enough hull to take 1,100 atmospheres. If you wanted to take all the pressure off the hull of a submarine, you could crank up the gas released from the tanks so that the pressure inside is the same as outside - but this would take a crazy amount of gas at the kinds of depths submarines go to, and it would kill anybody inside pretty drat quickly from Oxygen and Nitrogen toxicity. Alright, this isn't about the Deep-Sea so much, but Animals are the friggin best. SCUBA diving is amazing. You want to be on a different planet? Go 30 metres underwater. I've seen an octopus fighting off an attack from 5 fish, then running away, cramming itself into a tiny crack in a rock, and changing colour to exactly match the rock. Swam with 20 black tip reef sharks at a cleaning station, where the open their mouths and allow fish to swim in and clean their gums. Kind of creepy when it's swimming directly towards you. Had a Manta Ray with a 5 metre wingspan and a huge sharkbite in one of its wings skim half a metre above my head. Jumped off a boat, looked down, and saw a full size, 8 metre long Whale Shark swimming directly below me. Had a seal swim up to my mask, put its nose on it, then did a slow barrel roll. And I have only 40ish dives! stratdax fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 12:07 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 12:04 |
|
|
Great thread, I don't know much about the deep sea and the info in the OP is a great start. I'll be following the thread even though I don't have much to contributeSlightButSteady posted:I remember one goon who had an octopus as a pet and it displayed intelligence, curiosity, mimicry and even maybe jealousy, and its favorite toy was a plastic spatula.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 12:10 |
|
|
Always wanted a pet octopus. Hearing anecdotes about someone's pet spraying water at people that walked past it without feeding it just tickles me. We need octo-owners to come out and regale us with funny stories.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 14:23 |
|
|
Wasn't there some deep-sea creature that grew in a weird way, not exactly like a fractal but in some weird way that helped astro-physicists develop a new theory, possibly on space time? I remember seeing something about that where they were analyzing the geometry of some creature and it was kind of like origami but really they learned a new way to fold and/or twist a flat plane into a new shape that represented something else in a developing theory... I know that sounds vague and jibberish-ey but I can't remember it all, or any of the proper terms, which is why I can't google this correctly. But this thread reminded me and I remember it was interesting. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 16:18 |
|
|
stratdax posted:A book to read: Starfish, by Peter Watts. Available for free on his website under the Creative Commons licence here. It's about deep sea divers who maintain a geothermal power plant. Set in the future, these divers have been modified to deal with the pressure. A mechanical "lung" that allows ocean water to flow through them to strip the oxygen out, saline solution fills their sinuses, etc. It's phenomenal, and is the "hardest" sci-fi book I've ever read. It's doesn't even seem like science fiction, it just seems like reality 50 years from now. If anybody knows of any other books like this please let me know! (I wouldn't bother too much about the rest of the trilogy, it takes some really weird turns, Watts makes some weird choices, and only a little bit is underwater).  YES. As much as Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea cemented the ocean as a major interest in my brain at early childhood, reading Starfish way back in 6th grade really added a whole new level concerning human activity in the deep sea (and while I'll disagree slightly with stratdax and say that the Rifters Trilogy as a whole is worth reading, I will agree that Starfish is the best installment). Peter Watts in general is great too - hell, spaceflight people here (and/or anyone at all) should check out Blindsight while they're at it - and I've had some nice little email chats with him here and there about big squid, deep-sea protists, and the like. Occasionally his blog has some nice ocean-related posts, and I'll be sure to share if any new ones pop up. (That cover scan is from ~2008, after eight years of frequent re-readings. I really need to get a new copy nowadays...) Alehkhs fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 18:33 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 17:18 |
|
|
Marine Biology graduate here...I'll try answer stuff when I have the time For now though here's some squid related dissection goodness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHEc-VbPAk Check out those tentacles.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 20:05 |
|
|
zinc68 posted:All of that is in the short pdf above. But yes to both. If an electrical line is breached, relay protection would disconnect the line from each of the inverter stations. Basically like a more complicated version of a ground-fault circuit interrupter in your bathroom. ABB has a little video about their HVDC offshore connection to the Troll drilling platform and nearby oil field platforms. (2:15 starts to show cable fabrication, stacking, and deployment.) There's another one one the Ireland/Wales East-West Interconnect using an undersea cable to link the electrical grids of Ireland and Great Britain. (One of the additional problems mentioned is crossing other existing cables!) Here's a bit about the first-ever transatlantic communication cable. One hell of a feat for the time. Three-Phase fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 20:40 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 20:26 |
|
|
Discovery Channel has a really good documentary on cephalopods called "Aliens of the Deep Sea". You can watch it here. One of the best parts is at around the 37 minute mark where an octopus freshly caught from the wild learns how to open a box just by watching another octopus in a neighboring tank open it.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 20:39 |
|
|
Phanatic posted:No, not at all. Any O2 in your bloodstream outgasses as it passes through your lungs, and then when that deoxygenated blood hits your brain it's lights out. If you're exposed to vaccuum, you have maybe 10 or 15 seconds of useful consciousness, then you pass out and start to die. A SCUBA tank won't help, because there's no *pressure*, the water wetting the alveoli in your lungs boils away, and no amount of oxygen delivered through a mask will allow you to respirate; you need a pressurized environment. If you did try to hold your breath, your lungs would probably rupture (SCUBA divers on ascent breathe out continuously for the same reason). To clarify the point on pressure. During high school chemistry, you were taught the ideal gas equation (PV = nRT) which basically states that gas pressure equals the amount of molecules of gas. More pressure == more molecules of oxygen, less pressure == less molecules of oxygen. As humans, we're designed to breathe a mixture of 21% oxygen at a pressure of 1 atmosphere (760 mmHg). By increasing the oxygen concentration, you can decrease the amount of pressure needed. This was the theory behind using 100% oxygen in spacecraft - it decreased the pressures acting on the walls of the capsule. However, at some point, even with 100% pure oxygen, the pressure is too low to provide enough oxygen to sustain life. Somewhere around 1/5 of normal atmospheric pressure.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 21:23 |
|
|
Alehkhs posted:
Peter Watts is awesome, I love his stuff, but it really isn't as hard sci fi as you'd think. The machine that provides oxygen at those depths literally splits H2O into H2 and O2, this is thermodynamically absurd. It's still an awesome book, and I really enjoyed his cynical extrapolation on just how hosed up society can become. On Octopus chat, is there any evidence of Octopi passing on knowledge to one another? To my knowledge, Octopi are solitary animals, unlike primates. This would explain why they don't seem to be able to develop tool use to the extent we do, as we can draw on the discoveries of our ancestors while Octopi have to individually make discoveries on their own. Still smart as hell, but it's a disadvantage at the civilisation level.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 22:15 |
|
|
Phobophilia posted:Peter Watts is awesome, I love his stuff, but it really isn't as hard sci fi as you'd think. The machine that provides oxygen at those depths literally splits H2O into H2 and O2, this is thermodynamically absurd. Bwuh? Do you mean it's specifically H2O into H2 and O2, and the reaction doesn't balance and it should really be 2H2O into 2H2 and O2, or are you taking exception with the general process? Because splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is exactly how breathable air is generated for the crew on nuclear submarines.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 22:18 |
|
|
Phobophilia posted:On Octopus chat, is there any evidence of Octopi passing on knowledge to one another? To my knowledge, Octopi are solitary animals, unlike primates. This would explain why they don't seem to be able to develop tool use to the extent we do, as we can draw on the discoveries of our ancestors while Octopi have to individually make discoveries on their own. Still smart as hell, but it's a disadvantage at the civilisation level. Unfortunately, you've found their biggest hurdle towards shared learning and basal culture/"civilization," - the lack of a social octopus species. That and the fact that most species lack generation overlap, as each generation dies giving birth to the next. We're constantly finding new cephalopod species however (woot, deep-sea exploration!), and my dream is some day we discover a relatively social, multi-generation species. Observing such a species would be fun times, I have no doubt. Phanatic posted:Bwuh? Yeah, it's just electrolysis. Via his webpage for Starfish: Peter Watts posted:Surgical and Biochemical Modifications Alehkhs fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 22:52 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 22:46 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 22, 2013 15:56 |
|
|
All this talk about pressure reminded me of one of my favorite youtubes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f17abJOMel4 A crab gets too close to an undersea pipe that has a small hole cut in it. A nice demonstration of what the pressure at 6000 feet can do.
|
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 22:51 |
|
