For many years he dreamed of sinking to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, reaching its deepest point - the Challenger Trench. To make the dream come true, director and explorer James Cameron designed and built his own futuristic bathyscaphe named after the trench - the Deepsea Challenger. After seven years of research, design and testing, the engineers of Cameron's team had no answer to the main question: will the bathyscaphe be able to withstand the pressure at a depth of about 11 thousand meters? To get an answer, James Cameron risked his own life.
05:15, 26 March 2012
11 ° 22 "North, 142 ° 35" East Southwest Guam, western part The PacificMorning, not yet dawn. My Deepsea Challenger is tossed from side to side in the giant waves of the Pacific Ocean. From midnight we are all on our feet and after a couple of hours restless sleep we begin to prepare the equipment for diving. The whole team has an adrenaline rush. Today the diving conditions are not very favorable. Through external cameras, I see two divers circling next to my capsule, trying to prepare the bathyscaphe for the descent.
The cockpit is a steel ball with a diameter of 109 centimeters, I am packed in it like a walnut in a shell. I sit with my knees bent and my head resting on the ceiling. I will have to maintain this position for the next eight hours. My bare heels are pressed against the 180-kilogram manhole cover, battened down from the outside.
People often ask me if I get claustrophobic attacks in the bathyscaphe. Not at all: it is convenient and pleasant for me here. Before my eyes I have three video monitors, transmitting images from external cameras, and a touch control panel. The bright green bathyscaphe hung in the waves like a vertical torpedo aimed at the center of the Earth. I rotate my 3D camera attached to the end of the 1.8m hydraulic arm to see what is happening above the machine. The divers prepared to detach the bathyscaphe from the floating cylinder holding the device on the water surface.
“Dry land, this is the Deepsea Challenger. I'm at the bottom. Everything is fine". I could have prepared some pretentious phrase for this moment, something like "Another small step made by a man." But I have not prepared the phrase.I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, and in the past few weeks I've thought a lot about what would happen if things didn't go according to plan. But now I'm surprisingly calm. No worries, no fears - just determination to do what we have in mind, and childish impatience. I'm inside the bathyscaphe. I took part in the design of this device and thoroughly know all its capabilities and weak spots... After weeks of training, my hand is already reaching unmistakably for the right switches. Its time to begin. I take a deep breath and turn on the microphone, “OK, ready to dive. Let go, let go, let go! " The main diver pulls on the line and disconnects the floating balloon. The bathyscaphe falls like a stone, and after a few seconds the divers seem like toy figures far above. They are rapidly decreasing and disappearing; only darkness remains. I glance at the instruments and see that I am descending at a speed of about 150 meters per minute. After a lifetime of dreams, seven years of designing a bathyscaphe, difficult months of building it, tension and excitement, I finally approach the Challenger Trench, the deepest point in the oceans.
05:50, depth 3810 meters, sinking speed 1.8 m / s
In just 35 minutes, I go through the depth at which the Titanic lies four times faster than the Russian bathyscaphe Mir, which we used in 1995 to film the remains of the famous ship. At the time, it seemed to me that the Titanic was lying at an unimaginable depth and going to it was like going to the moon. Today I carelessly wave my hand, bypassing this depth, as if sliding down the letters in my e-mail... In another 15 minutes I pass 4,760 meters, the depth at which the battleship Bismarck lies.When I examined the remains of this ship in 2002, a searchlight exploded directly above the skin of our bathyscaphe. It was then that I first witnessed an underwater explosion. If the Deepsea Challenger's spotlight fails, I won't feel anything - a dark frame at the end of the film. But that won't happen. We have designed and meticulously assembled this miniature steel sphere for three years.
The water temperature outside dropped from thirty degrees Celsius to two. My cockpit is rapidly cooling down, its walls are covered with large drops of condensation. Bare legs resting on the metal hatch cover begin to freeze; It takes me a few minutes to put on wool socks and waterproof boots in this cramped space. Then I pull on a wool hat to shield my head from the cold, wet steel pressing from above, and yes! - to look more like a real researcher. In the darkness around me, the only hints of movement are particles of plankton flickering in the spotlight, as if I were driving in a snowstorm.
Mark Thiessen The Deepsea Challenger bathyscaphe is lifted to the deck after a test dive to 8221 meters. The orange balloon helps with the ascent, the gray ones move the bathyscaphe to a horizontal position.
06:33, depth 7070 meters, sinking speed 1.4 m / s
I have just passed the maximum depth to which a person has ever dived - the level of the Chinese "Zhaolong". A few minutes ago, I passed the depths to which the Russian "Mir", the French "Nautilus" and the Japanese "Shinkai" sank - six and a half thousand meters. Just think: all these devices were made in the framework of large-scale programs funded by the state. And our little green torpedo is privately built, indoors shopping center sandwiched between a plumbing wholesaler and a plywood pavilion on the outskirts of Sydney. This project was born out of the enthusiasm of dreamers who believed they could do the impossible. In a few hours, we will find out if our daring dreams have come true.06:46, depth 8230 meters, sinking speed 1.3 m / s
I just broke my own solo dive record three weeks ago in the New British Trench near Papua New Guinea. It's hard to believe that I have to go another 2740 meters. I passed all the points on my descents checklist, and now, during this long and quiet fall, I can only watch the numbers on the depth indicator increase. The only sound I hear is the rare hiss of an oxygen solenoid. If the bathyscaphe leaked, the water would shoot out with the force of a laser beam, slicing through everything in its path, including the thick steel walls of my cockpit and me. I think about how I will feel if this happens. Will it hurt? In any case, I will only live a couple of seconds after that.07:43, depth 10 850 meters, sinking speed 0.26 m / s
Another hour passed. At the last 2740 meters, the bathyscaphe slowed down. I dropped some metal ballast plates held by electromagnets on the case to level the apparatus. I descend very slowly, under the influence of pressure alone. Judging by the altimeter readings, there is still 46 meters to the bottom. All cameras are working, spotlights are directed downward. I grip the controls and stare at the black monitors. 30 meters ... 27 ... 24 ... 21 ... 18 ... Finally I see the light reflecting off the bottom. The bottom itself looks smooth, like an eggshell, no roughness, nothing to help determine the distance. I brake slightly with the vertical levers. Five seconds later, the bathyscaphe hits the bottom. I'm not sure yet if this is a solid surface. Water is clear as glass. I look far ahead: nothing. The bottom is absolutely flat. Having made more than 80 dives, I saw different seabed. But this - never. Never!07:46, depth 10 898.5 meters
I direct the bathyscaphe even lower. From an external camera, attached to a hydraulic arm, I see the support of the bathyscaphe fall another 10 centimeters before it stops. I did it. The descent took two and a half hours. A voice comes from above me: “Deepsea Challenger, this is land. Communication check". The voice is heard weakly, but very clearly. And we were worried that voice communication would not work at such a depth! 
Mark Thiessen LEDs illuminate the seabed during a test dive of the bathyscaphe. Previously unknown microorganisms were found in the suspended matter samples collected in the Mariana Trench.
I turn on the microphone. “Dry land, this is the Deepsea Challenger. I'm at the bottom. The depth is 10,898 meters ... the life support systems are working normally, everything is in order. " Only now it occurs to me that I could prepare some pretentious phrase for this moment, something like "Another small step made by a man." But I have not prepared the phrase. A few seconds pass before my words rise up from the underwater world at the speed of sound, and the answer reaches me: "Repeat." The former naval radio maintainer is even more prosaic compared to me. Military training. But I can imagine how, up there, on the ship, everyone is smiling happily and clapping their hands. I know that my wife Suzy cannot be taken away from the monitor now, and I can imagine how happy she is for me. And I'm proud of my team.
Most of those who built the bathyscaphe are now in the control room, and they do not yet fully understand what we have done. Ten thousand eight hundred ninety-eight and a half ... Damn it, at receptions I will round this figure to 11 thousand meters. Then I hear a voice that I didn't expect at all: "Good luck, kid!" Suzy says. She was by my side throughout the entire expedition, hiding my excitement and supporting me one hundred percent. I know what a test it was for her nerves.
But now I need to forget about the first success and get to work. We have planned that I will spend five hours at the day, and there is still a lot to be done. I turn the bathyscaphe and through the cameras try to look around the world I have arrived in. The bottom is flat. I turn on the motors, open the outer hatch of the science department, and unfold the arm to take the first sediment sample from the bottom. If all the equipment fails in ten minutes, at least I'll bring samples for the scientists.
It was not enough for me to simply build a bathyscaphe that would break the world record for the depth of the descent. It was important for me that this apparatus became a scientific platform. It is completely pointless to rush to the most inaccessible and unexplored point of the planet, without being able to collect samples.
Sludge sample on board. I take a moment to take a close-up photo of the Swiss company - partner of our expedition - Rolex Deepsea. Attached to the arm of the manipulator, they are still ticking despite the pressure of 1147 kilograms per square centimeter. In 1960, as part of a project, US Air Force Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss oceanographer Jacques Picard sank to the same depth in the massive Trieste bathyscaphe — the only two people who have ever done what I do today. They also took with them a specially made Rolex for the expedition - and it withstood the pressure perfectly.
But not everything works so flawlessly. A few moments after I took the picture of the watch, my gaze falls on the floating yellow oil balls. The hydraulic system is leaking. After a few minutes, I lose control of the sample collection crane and the science bay hatch. I can no longer collect samples, but the cameras are still working, and I continue to research.
09:10, depth 10 897 meters, speed 0.26 m / s
With the help of pushers, I move north through a flat plane dammed by sedimentary deposits. The surface resembles an empty parking lot where snow has just fallen. I do not see signs of stormy life at the bottom, only from time to time rare amphipods, tiny as snowflakes, float by.Soon I should hit the "wall" of the depression. I know from our sonar charts that this is not really a wall, but rather a rather gentle hill. Hopefully, I will find rock outcrops that may contain primitive organisms that are still unknown to us. While I am watching everything through the cameras. But, remembering the promise I made to myself before diving, I decide to look at everything with my own eyes.
It takes me a couple of minutes to move the equipment a little and get into a position where I can look directly into the porthole. This place had never been seen before: although Walsh and Picard reached the same depth, they plunged 37 kilometers west of the Challenger Basin, to a point that was later called the Vityaz-1 Basin.
Mark Thiessen Divers record on a 3D camera a test dive of a bathyscaphe into the New British Trench near Papua New Guinea. The bathyscaphe is equipped with searchlights and cameras.
Every other seabed surface I have visited, even at 8,230 meters in the New British Trench, has traces of worms and sea cucumbers. Here, there is not a single sign of developed - not primitive forms of life. I understand that the surface of the cavity is not actually lifeless - in the sample I took, we will almost certainly find new types of bacteria. But the feeling that I have descended to the border of life itself does not leave me.
Some scientists on our team believe that life really began in these bottomless depths about four billion years ago. This was made possible by the colossal amount of energy released during the subduction of the oceanic plate, resulting in the Mariana Trench. I feel insignificantly small before the infinity of all that is unknown to us. I understand how small the candle that I have lit here in these few minutes, and how much still remains to be done for the knowledge of our vast world.
10:25, depth 10,877 meters, speed 0.26 m / s
I found the northern slope and carefully climb its undulating ridge. I am almost a mile and a half north of my landing site. So far, no rock outcrops. While traveling along the flat bottom of the depression, I found and photographed two possible signs of life: a gelatinous ball lying on the bottom, smaller than a child's fist, and a dark strip one and a half meters long, which may be the home of some underground worm. Both finds are mysterious and unlike anything I've seen on previous dives. I took the photos in high resolution and will give scientists the opportunity to puzzle over them.But in the meantime, a pair of batteries powering the bathyscaphe are discharged, the compass is faulty, and the sonar has completely died. Plus, I lost two of the three engines on the starboard side, so the bathyscaphe is moving slowly and it has become more difficult to control it. All these are the consequences of the strongest pressure. I am in a hurry, realizing that there is little time left, but I hope to get to the steep cliffs - I saw something similar in the New British Trench: there they were inhabited by a population of living organisms completely different from those that lived on the gentle surface of the depression.
Suddenly I feel that the bathyscaphe is leaning to the right, and I check what is happening with the engines. The last engine on the starboard side failed. Now I cannot collect samples and take pictures, so it is useless to stay here. I spent less than three hours at the bottom. Reluctantly, I call land and tell the team that I'm ready to climb.
10:30, depth 10,877 meters, speed 3 m / s
You always hesitate a little before pressing the switch that is responsible for dumping the ballast. If the loads do not fall, you will not return home. I have been designing the release mechanism for several years, and the engineers who built and tested it worked thoroughly: it is perhaps the most reliable system in the entire bathyscaphe. But when you reach for the switch, you are always in doubt.The most mysterious and inaccessible point of our planet - the Mariana Trench - is called the "fourth pole of the Earth." It is located in the western part of the Pacific Ocean and is 2,926 km long and 80 km wide. At a distance of 320 km south of the island of Guam, there is the deepest point of the Mariana Trench and the entire planet - 11022 meters. In these little-studied depths, living creatures are hidden, the appearance of which is as monstrous as the conditions of their habitation.
The Mariana Trench is called the "fourth pole of the Earth"
The Mariana Trench, or the Mariana Trench, is an oceanic trench in the western Pacific Ocean, which is the deepest geographic feature known on Earth. The exploration of the Mariana Trench was laid by the expedition ( December 1872 - May 1876) of the English ship "Challenger" ( HMS Challenger), who carried out the first systemic measurements of the depths of the Pacific Ocean. This military sailing three-masted corvette was converted into an oceanographic vessel for hydrological, geological, chemical, biological and meteorological work in 1872.
In 1960, a great event took place in the history of the conquest of the world's oceans.
The Bathyscaphe Trieste, piloted by French explorer Jacques Picard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh, reached the deepest point of the ocean floor - the Challenger Abyss, located in the Mariana Trench and named after the English ship Challenger, from which the first data were obtained in 1951 about her.
Bathyscaphe "Trieste" before diving, January 23, 1960
The dive lasted 4 hours 48 minutes and ended at a mark of 10911 m above sea level. At this terrible depth, where the monstrous pressure of 108.6 MPa ( which is more than 1100 times the normal atmospheric) flattens all living things, the researchers made the most important oceanological discovery: they saw two 30-centimeter fish, similar to a flounder, swim past the window. Prior to this, it was believed that at depths exceeding 6,000 m, no life exists.
Thus, an absolute diving depth record was set, which cannot be surpassed even in theory. Picard and Walsh were the only people to have been to the bottom of the Challenger Abyss. All subsequent dives to the deepest point of the world's oceans, for research purposes, were already performed by unmanned robotic bathyscaphes. But there were not so many of them, since “visiting” the Challenger Abyss is both laborious and expensive.
One of the achievements of this dive, which had a beneficial effect on the ecological future of the planet, was the refusal of the nuclear powers from burying radioactive waste at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The fact is that Jacques Picard experimentally refuted the opinion prevailing at that time that at depths over 6000 m there was no upward movement of water masses.
In the 90s, three dives were made by the Japanese apparatus Kaiko, which was remotely controlled from the "mother" ship via a fiber-optic cable. However, in 2003, while exploring another part of the ocean, during a storm, a towing steel cable snapped, and the robot was lost. Submarine catamaran Nereus, became the third deep-sea vehicle to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
In 2009, mankind again reached the deepest point of the world's oceans.
On May 31, 2009, humanity again reached the deepest point of the Pacific, and indeed the entire world ocean - the American deep-sea vehicle Nereus sank into the Challenger sinkhole at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The device took soil samples and conducted underwater photo and video filming at the maximum depth, illuminated only by its LED searchlight. During the current dive, Nereus's instruments recorded a depth of 10,902 meters. The indicator was 10,911 meters, and Picard and Walsh measured a value of 10,912 meters. On many Russian maps, the value of 11,022 meters, obtained by the Soviet oceanographic vessel "Vityaz" during the 1957 expedition, is still given. All this testifies to the inaccuracy of measurements, and not to a real change in depth: no one carried out a cross-calibration of the measuring equipment that gave the given values.
The Mariana Trench is formed by the boundaries of two tectonic plates: the colossal Pacific plate goes under the not so large Philippine plate. This is a zone of extremely high seismic activity, part of the so-called Pacific volcanic ring of fire, stretching for 40 thousand km, an area with the most frequent eruptions and earthquakes in the world. The deepest point of the trench is the Challenger Abyss, named after an English ship.
The inexplicable and incomprehensible has always attracted people, therefore scientists all over the world are so eager to answer the question: “ What is hidden in the depths of the Mariana Trench?»
The inexplicable and incomprehensible have always attracted people
For a long time, oceanologists considered it madness to hypothesize that life could exist at depths of more than 6,000 meters in impenetrable darkness, under monstrous pressure and at temperatures close to zero. However, the results of research by scientists in the Pacific Ocean showed that even at these depths, well below the 6,000-meter mark, there are huge colonies of living organisms of the pogonophora, a type of marine invertebrates living in long chitinous tubes open at both ends.
Recently, the veil of secrecy has been lifted by manned and automatic, made of heavy-duty materials, underwater vehicles equipped with video cameras. The result was the discovery of a rich animal community, made up of both well-known and less familiar marine groups.
Thus, at depths of 6000 - 11000 km, the following were found:
- barophilic bacteria (developing only at high pressure);
- of the protozoa - foraminifera (a detachment of protozoa of the subclass of rhizopods with a cytoplasmic body dressed with a shell) and xenophyophores (barophilic bacteria from protozoa);
- from multicellular organisms - polychaete worms, isopods, amphipods, holothurians, bivalves and gastropods.
At the depths there is no sunlight, no algae, constant salinity, low temperatures, abundance of carbon dioxide, enormous hydrostatic pressure (increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters). What do the inhabitants of the abyss eat?
Studies have shown that there is life at depths of over 6,000 meters
The food sources of deep-seated animals are bacteria, as well as rain of "corpses" and organic detritus coming from above; deep animals are either blind or with highly developed eyes, often telescopic; many fish and cephalopods with photofluoroids; in other forms, the surface of the body or parts of it glows. Therefore, the appearance of these animals is as terrible and incredible as the conditions in which they live. Among them - a frightening-looking worms 1.5 meters long, without a mouth and anus, mutant octopuses, extraordinary sea stars and some soft-bodied creatures two meters long, which have not yet been identified at all.
Despite the fact that scientists have taken a huge step in the study of the Mariana Trench, the questions have not diminished, new mysteries have emerged that have yet to be solved. And the ocean abyss knows how to keep its secrets. Will people be able to reveal them in the near future? We will follow the news.
Diving "Trieste" in the Mariana Trench
The most mysterious and inaccessible point of our planet - the Mariana Trench - is called the "fourth pole of the Earth" (the North and South are geographic poles, Mount Everest and the Mariana Trench are geomorphological). The depression is located in the western part of the Pacific Ocean and is 2,926 km long and 80 km wide. At a distance of 320 km south of the island of Guam (Mariana Archipelago) is the deepest point of the Mariana Trench and the entire planet - 11,022 meters below sea level. Living beings also live in these little-studied depths.
Man's immersion in the ocean initially pursued purely practical tasks: repairing underwater parts of ships or port facilities, etc. And only many years later did man begin to dive into the depths for scientific purposes. But the fulfillment of this long-standing human dream was associated with extremely great difficulties. First of all, a person had to be isolated from the enormous pressure of water. With every 10 meters of depth, the pressure increases by 1 atm.
Bathyscaphe "Trieste"
The first human submersible, the so-called diving bell, was built in 1538 in the Spanish city of Toledo and tested on the Tagus River. In 1660, the German physicist I.X. Storm and in 1717 the English astronomer and geophysicist E. Halley built more advanced diving bells. Halley's bell, in spite of the fact that it was wooden, sank to a depth of 20 m and had a special hole for breathing out air. In 1719, a peasant from the village of Pokrovskoye near Moscow, Efim Nikonov, proposed the first autonomous diving equipment and created a project for the first submarine, which he called a "hidden ship". By order of Peter I, such a ship was built, but it was damaged during testing. After the death of Peter I, the government refused Nikonov the funds necessary to repair the ship, and the invention was forgotten.
Later, many new designs of diving equipment appeared, but only in the last quarter of the 19th century. managed to create such technical devices that allowed a person to work freely under water. In 1882, the first diving school in Russia was opened. In 1930, our divers were already descending to depths of 100–110 m in special spacesuits. Currently, space suits allow a person to dive to depths of more than 200 m. These heavy diving suits are designed for rescue, repair and other work.
Researchers of the seas and oceans needed light diving vehicles that would provide greater human mobility under water. Such devices - scuba gear - were created in the 40s of the XX century. French engineers. The record depth of human diving in scuba gear is just over 100 m.
But neither heavy nor even lightweight diving suits provide a person's immersion to great depths.
To solve this problem, engineers from many countries have developed underwater vehicles - hydrostats and bathyspheres, which were lowered from the ship on steel cables. Their disadvantage was unpleasant jerks during the descent, which threatened to break the cable.
In the USSR, the hydrostat was built in 1923, and for many years work was carried out on it in the Black Sea and the Gulf of Finland. In subsequent years, improved hydrostats GKS-6, Sever-1, etc. were built in our country. With their help, it was possible to dive to a depth of 600 m. Hydrostats were also built in the USA, Italy and other countries.
In the 40s, new underwater vehicles appeared - bathyscaphes, which could independently move, submerge and emerge from great depths. The bathyscaphe is a tank with a light incompressible liquid (gasoline), to which ballast and a thick-walled steel cockpit with people are suspended. Movements are provided by screws and electric motors. Buoyancy is controlled by dumping ballast and releasing gasoline. The first bathyscaphe was created in 1948 by the Swiss Auguste Picard and named FNRS-2.
An interesting fact is that O. Picard first conquered the stratosphere on the stratosphere he invented and reached an altitude of 16,370 m (1932), then became interested in the depths of the sea.
In August 1953, J. Guo and P. Wilm dived to a depth of 2100 m on the FNRS-3 bathyscaphe. This record lasted only a month and a half. At the end of September 1953, O. Picard and his son J. Picard on the Trieste bathyscaphe in the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa reached a depth of 3150 m. But in February 1954, J. Guo and P. Wilmes sank in the same area of the ocean. to a depth of 4050 m and set a new record.
In 1957, the US purchased and refurbished the Trieste, and in 1959 a new series of record dives began. On November 15, 1959, in the Mariana Islands of the Pacific Ocean, Trieste reached a depth of 5530 m, and on January 8, 1960 - 7025 m. Jacques Picard participated in both of these dives, in the first case with Andreas Rechnitzer and in the second with Don Walsham.
And January 23, 1960 was marked by the greatest event in the history of man's penetration into the depths of the ocean. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh sank in the Trieste bathyscaphe in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean and reached the bottom at a depth of 10,912 m (the maximum depth of the trough is 11,022 m). The Trieste remained at the bottom of the Mariana Trench for 30 minutes. Scientists have seen with their own eyes that, despite the enormous pressure (1100 atm.), The deepest layers of ocean water are inhabited by living organisms. The researchers measured the temperature (+3.0 o C) and radioactivity of the water at the very bottom of the depression.
In the USSR, the USA, Japan and other countries, scientists and engineers also worked on the creation of controlled underwater vehicles for exploring medium depths. Scientific oceanographic submarines and mesoscaps became such devices. So far, submarines have become more widespread. The first of them - the Soviet "Severyanka" - has been conducting research in the Barents Sea since 1958.
In the 1960s, the USA built two-seater baby boats "Kabmarin" and "Nautilette" for biological and geological research at shallow depths. The same is the capacity of the submarine "Alvin", the depth of its immersion reached 1850 m. With its help they explored the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The four-seater submarine "Aluminaut" could reach 4500 m. In 1968, the four-seater research submarine "Shinkai" was built in Japan. It was designed for oceanographic, fishing and geological observations at depths of up to 600 m.
Another type of underwater vehicle - the two-seat "diving saucer" "Denise" - was built in France. This apparatus is a compact, flat design with a diameter of only 2.85 m and a height of 1.4 m. It is transported by ship and submerged as needed. Deniza can sail at depths of up to 300 m and at a distance of 3 nautical miles (5.5 km).
In the USSR, the underwater manned vehicles "Argus" (depth up to 600 m) and the "Pysis-XI" built in Canada (depth up to 2000 m) became famous in the USSR. Paysis has reached the bottom of Lake Baikal.
The conquest of the ocean depths by man was extremely important, especially for the study of living organisms and the geology of the bottom. With the help of underwater vehicles, new data were obtained on the optical and acoustic properties of the water of the oceans and seas.
As for the Mariana Trench, according to some ichthyologists, due to the presence of active hydrothermal springs, colonies of prehistoric marine animals that have survived to this day can exist on its bottom.
There is evidence that in 1918 lobster fishers from Port Stephens (Australia) saw an amazing 35m long translucent white fish in the sea. It was clear that this fish emerged from a great depth. Many researchers believe that the Mariana Trench hides in its unexplored depths the last surviving representatives of the giant prehistoric shark of the Carcharodon megalodon species. Based on the few surviving remains, scientists have recreated the appearance of the megalodon. This predator lived in the seas 2-2.5 million years ago and was monstrous in size: about 24 meters long, weighing 100 tons, and the width of its mouth covered with 10-centimeter teeth reached 1.8-2.0 m - the megalodon could easily swallow automobile.
Recently, while exploring the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, oceanologists have found perfectly preserved teeth of a megalodon. One of the finds was 24 thousand years old, and the other was even younger - 11 thousand years old! So, not all megalodons became extinct 2 million years ago?
During one of the dives in the Mariana Trench, the German research apparatus “Highfish” with a crew on board, at a depth of 7 km, unexpectedly “refused” to surface. Trying to understand the reason for this, the hydronauts turned on an infrared camera. What they saw, at first seemed to them a collective hallucination: a huge creature resembling a prehistoric lizard gripped the body of the bathyscaphe with its teeth, trying to gnaw it like a nut ... Recovering, the crew activated a device called an "electric cannon." Struck by a powerful discharge, the monster unclenched its terrible jaws and disappeared into the darkness of the abyss ...
The submersion into the abyss of the Mariana Trench of the American unmanned submersible platform ended sensationally. Equipped with powerful floodlights, highly sensitive sensors and television cameras, it was lowered into the depths of the ocean using a 20 mm thick steel net woven from cables. After the bathyscaphe reached the bottom, cameras and microphones recorded nothing significant for several hours. And then suddenly on the screens of television monitors in the beams of spotlights the silhouettes of strange huge bodies flashed. When the device was hastily raised to the surface, some of its structures were bent.
And in 2004, the British magazine "New Scientist" spoke in detail about the mysterious sounds in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, detected by the underwater sensors of the American tracking system SOSUS. It was created during the Cold War to monitor Soviet submarines. Experts who have studied recordings of signals from highly sensitive hydrophones have identified against the background of the noise representing the "call signs" of various marine life, a much more powerful sound, clearly emitted by some creature living in the ocean. This mysterious signal, first recorded in 1977, is much more powerful than those infrasounds with the help of which large whales communicate with each other at a distance of hundreds of kilometers from each other.
For the first time, people sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (depth - 11.5 km), the deepest oceanic trench known on Earth, using the bathyscaphe Trieste on January 23, 1960. They were US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and engineer Jacques Piccard. Since then and until recently, man has not descended to this depth.
Hollywood director James Cameron in the bathyscapheDeepseaChallenger
After 52 years, the director of Avatar and Titanic, James Cameron, repeated this path to the deepest point of the ocean, who on March 25 successfully sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and returned to the surface. On a special vertical submersible Deepsea Challenger, two hours after the start of the dive, he reached the bottom by 7:52 am local time. There he stayed for three hours, taking pictures and collecting samples, after which he successfully returned to the surface.
BathyscapheDeepseaChallenge with James Cameron Goes Down to the Depths of the Pacific Ocean
The first people, who sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, stayed there for only 20 minutes, doing the minimum amount of work and almost nothing, except for the mud and silt that rose from the immersion, without seeing it. The past decades have not been in vain. Mr. Cameron's bathyscaphe was well equipped - this is to be expected from a man who has shot one of the most impressive stereoscopic feature films and many documentaries about the underwater world.
Deepsea Challenger was equipped with many stereoscopic cameras, a turret LED backlight, a sampling bottle, a robotic arm and a special device capable of capturing small underwater organisms by suction. The deep-diving vehicle itself was created in Australia and has a length of 7 meters and a weight of 11 tons. The compartment, in which James Cameron huddled, is a sphere with an inner diameter of just over a meter and assumes only a sitting position.
ApparatusDeepseaChallenge was sinking to the bottom with speed3-4 knots
The director said in an interview with the BBC before diving that it was his dream: “I grew up on science fiction at a time when people lived in sci-fi reality. People went to the moon, Cousteau studied the ocean. This is the environment in which I grew up, this is what I value since childhood. "
James Cameron welcomes ocean explorer US Navy Captain Don Walsh right after the dive
James Cameron in the hatchDeepseaChallenge prepares to dive
Another snapshot of director and ocean explorer Don Walsh (far right), who, with Jacques Picard, was the first person to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench 52 years ago
James Cameron's Journey in One Minute Animation
:: Bathyscaphe
The Bathyscaphe is a small submarine designed to dive to extreme depths. The main difference underwater bathyscaphe from the submarine lies in its design: the bathyscaphe is equipped with a lighter spherical hull and a float, the walls of which are filled with a liquid whose mass is less than water, usually gasoline. The movement of the underwater bathyscaphe is carried out due to the rotation of mushroom screws, driven by electric motors.
The history of the creation of the bathyscaphe
For the first time, the idea to build an underwater bathyscaphe came from the Swiss scientist Auguste Picard before the Second World War. He was the first to suggest replacing compressed oxygen cylinders with a float with a liquid whose mass is less than the mass of water. Picaru's engineering thought was a success, and already in 1948, the first prototype of the bathyscaphe was launched.
The creation of an apparatus of this class was influenced by the need to study the bottom of the seas and oceans at great depths. Classic submarines are only capable of sinking to a certain limited depth. Remarkably, the designers are able to build a sufficiently strong hull, even for a large submarine, that could withstand the pressure at extreme depths. However, it is still impossible to solve another problem that prevents submarines from sinking to significant depths.
Traditional submarines use compressed oxygen to float to the surface of the water, which forces the water out of the compartments. However, during a dive to more than one and a half thousand meters, under the influence of the gravity of the water, oxygen in the cylinders loses its properties, in other words, it ceases to be "compressed".
There are submarines capable of sinking to a depth of 2000 meters. However, the submersion depth of the bathyscaphe is much greater.
Submersion of the bathyscaphe
A float filled with gasoline or other liquid makes it possible for the underwater bathyscaphe to stay on the surface of the water and float up. After the tanks are filled with water, the process of submerging the bathyscaphe starts.
In cases where the underwater bathyscaphe hangs due to the excessive density of the water, in order to lower the vessel to the bottom, a propellant liquid is released from the float. After that, the process of immersion of the bathyscaphe is resumed.
It is not so difficult to lower the bathyscaphe to the bottom, but how to lift it back up? For this underwater bathyscaphes have special compartments filled with steel shot. When the ship needs to surface, the shot is thrown off, and the float pulls the bathyscaphe to the surface. There are also compressed oxygen cylinders on board to accelerate the ascent of the bathyscaphe to the surface of the water.
Immersion depth of the bathyscaphe
As mentioned above, the submersion depth of the bathyscaphe is much greater than that of other underwater vehicles. Back in 1960, a modified the bathyscaphe "Trieste" managed to dive to a record depth of 10,919 meters... To the surprise of the ship's crew, even at this depth, they saw fish.
Another interesting fact regarding the immersion of the bathyscaphe: the first person to sink to the very bottom of the world's oceans is the well-known director James Cameron.
Our shipbuilders also have something to brag about. The underwater bathyscaphe Mir, designed by Russian engineers, sank to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The submersion depth of the bathyscaphe was 4261 m. After that, the vessel and its crew spent about an hour at the bottom of the coldest and most dangerous ocean on earth.
