Posted on 05/12/2014 11:12:53 PM PDT by LibWhacker
One of the world's most capable deep-sea research subs has been lost.
The robotic vehicle Nereus went missing while exploring one of the ocean's deepest spots: the Kermadec Trench, which lies north east of New Zealand.
Surface debris was found, suggesting the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion as a result of the immense pressures where it was operating some 10km (6.2 miles) down.
Nereus was a flagship ocean explorer for the US science community.
"Nereus helped us explore places we've never seen before and ask questions we never thought to ask," said Timothy Shank, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which managed the sub's activities.
"It was a one-of-a-kind vehicle that even during its brief life brought us amazing insights into the unexplored deep ocean, addressing some of the most fundamental scientific problems of our time about life on Earth."
The $8m (£4.7m) robot was built in 2008 and could operate in an autonomous mode or remotely controlled via a tether to a support ship to explore the Earth's deepest oceanic trenches.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I think a Kraken got to it.
You mean it wasn’t the secret undersea base of the Flying Saucer invaders from Space, the secret undersea base of the escaped Lunar NAZIs, or the secret Navy-Air Force undersea beas for Advanced Alien Technologies? Shucks....
Mid 60s, yep. 8 miles or so from memory. Very cool and ugly as sun contraption, the Trieste was.
No, it probably stumbled on one of the things you list, and was destroyed by the space invaders to continue to hide their secret base.
Had to check Wiki on that. The Trieste reached the bottom of the Marianas trench; i.e., 6.78 miles down. So the Nereus didn’t make it that deep, which is a serious engineering embarrassment, as far as I’m concerned, given our 50 years’ metallurgical advancement over the old timers.
CF!
Should have been insured . Wonder if it was,in any event back to the drawing boards hope they can pull what’s left up to see what happened.
“So the Nereus didn’t make it that deep, which is a serious engineering embarrassment, as far as I’m concerned, given our 50 years’ metallurgical advancement over the old timers.”
Nereus also dived in the Marianus Trench and reached a comparable depth of 10,902 metres (35,768 ft) to the revised Triests dive of 10,916 metres (35,814 ft). So, Nereus did “make it that deep” given the inaccuracies of measuring the actual depths of the dives.
The Trieste used a cone shaped plexiglass to withstand the pressures, but it partially failed when it cracked on the way to the bottom of the Challenger deep. Nerues likely suffered a failure due to a component that had been overstressed one too many times by the repeated dives. The Trieste was rebuilt so many times it contained hardly any of the original parts. However, the steel diving sphere housing the crew of two and built by Krupp was reused in the construction of Trieste II.
Man-made global pressure.
i put the whole episode down to Stress.
The operators have been over working it lately ,due to being under a lot of Pressure.
Thank goodness there was nobody on board.
Not any more....
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