Posted on 08/25/2007 5:26:41 AM PDT by decimon
WASHINGTON - Undersea explorer Robert Ballard leans back and smiles at the screens arrayed above his desk. One displays a view of a remote operating vessel, another scans along a seafloor never before viewed by humans.
It's the Black Sea, not far from Ukraine, a region long closed to outsiders and now yielding a treasure trove of Byzantine vessels that met their ends 1,000 or more years ago.
For Ballard the archaeologist, those vessels and their contents are a delight.
For Ballard the explorer, the modern technology he's testing for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is pretty exciting, too.
Thanks to the massive speed of modern communications, talking to him from a desk in Silver Spring, Md., while he is aboard the research vessel Alliance in the Black Sea is almost as simple as talking to him in person.
And that's the idea.
Ballard is testing a system planned for use aboard NOAA's new vessel Okeanos Explorer, scheduled to go to sea next year as the first U.S. government vessel dedicated to exploring unknown parts of the ocean.
"Its mission, literally, is to go where no one has gone before on planet Earth," Ballard said.
"That means that the exploration could encounter a biological discovery, a geological discovery, hopefully for many of us an archaeological discovery. So there is no way of knowing in advance what the discovery is going to be," he said.
The plan is to have dozens or hundreds of scientists participate without ever having to leave their homes and universities.
The ship will be in high-speed communications with a center at the University of Rhode Island, and from there via Internet2 to universities and science centers across the country, calling on whatever expertise is needed.
Ballard likens it to a hospital emergency room.
"An emergency room has no idea what the ambulance is going to deliver at 3 o'clock Sunday morning," he explained. "They don't know if it's going to be a head injury, a mother having a baby, a heart attack or whatever," so the hospital has a system for doctors to be on call.
"Now we're doing the same sort of thing in support of NOAA," he said.
The center in Rhode Island will operate like the NASA space center in Houston, which is constantly in contact with the astronauts in outer space, just as Rhode Island will be with the aquanauts in inner space.
Above Ballard's head, the underwater camera continues to move across the seafloor, passing mainly stones and sand and, suddenly, a series of straight lines and right angles.
Those most likely mark a wreck, the remains of some ancient vessel the explorers will turn and scan again.
Unlike other oceans, the deepest parts of the Black Sea contain no dissolved oxygen, so there are no sea worms to devour the wood of ancient vessels.
Off the coast of Turkey, Ballard said he has found a sunken Byzantine vessel so complete that even the 1,000-year-old masts still rise upward. Wreck sites are littered with containers once used for wine, oil, honey and other trade goods.
That's the kind of thing he looks for, underwater archaeology.
But what if he finds some unknown new creature, or strange bit of geology beneath the sea?
That's where the new communication system comes in.
"Scientifically, some of the remote expeditions would have benefited by having more experts on board and this is a way to get more experts," said Steve Gittings, scientific coordinator for NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program.
For example, he said, when researchers discovered hot-water vents deep in the ocean they had to mount additional trips to bring in experts to study the surprising worms and other life that existed in total darkness around the vents.
Now, with high speed communications, researchers would be called in to study high-definition images in real time.
Also, Gittings said, the system will be beneficial for education programs.
In the past, educational efforts were mounted after scientists returned, perhaps months after they completed a voyage. With the new system, students and teachers will be able to watch research as it happens.
___
On the Net:
NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration: http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov
Pretty cool. There used to be an internet site dedicated to Black Sea marine archaeology; I haven’t been able to find it since I returned to the net after a five year absence (complicated story).
“Scientifically, some of the remote expeditions would have benefited by having more experts on board and this is a way to get more experts,”
A. E. VanVogt’s, Voyage of the Space Beagle, comes to mind. It was about a space exploration vehical, the Beagle (Darwin’s ship), that was crewed by experts in every known scientific field. It was one of the best books ever written.
This should be good. When they say “Byzantine vessels” I assume they mean vessels of the Byzantine era (eon?).
Why do I picture a mass brawl? :-)
Thanks. Didn’t see that in a search.
Because that is exactly what happened. Either you have read the book or have the experience or foresight to know what happens when you throw together a bunch of “experts”. E. E. “Doc” Smith, in the Lemsmen series (also SF) portrayed a similar scene when scientific experts were commisioned to solve a particular problem. “Prima donnas they can be” - Master Yoda
I’m getting the feeling that the experts on the Beagle new more real facts than the brains today who take dollars from politicians to say what they are paid to say.
No, I haven’t read the book. Maybe I should have realized how the book went but I didn’t.
Read it as a teenager...
Part of the plea bargain agreement?
I read it about 35 years ago and may still have that copy, along with hundreds of other old SF books. After reading Beagle I read Slan, Null-A, and other VanVogts. I think I may have a copy of every book he has written, even one that wasn’t SF.
My goodness, aren’t you sassy! No. A nasty person invaded my computer via the net, and until my nephew became a computer nerd who banishes the crackers, I stayed offline. (Had to format my hard drive and it made me mad as Hell!)
Yes, I believe that’s what they mean.
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