James Cameron reaches deepest spot on Earth

[obeygiant]

ap

Hollywood icon James Cameron has made it to Earth's deepest point.

The director of "Titanic," ''Avatar" and other films used a specially designed submarine to dive nearly seven miles, completing his journey a little before 8 a.m. Monday local time, according to Stephanie Montgomery of the National Geographic Society.

He plans to spend about six hours exploring and filming the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam.
"All systems OK," were Cameron's first words upon reaching the bottom, according to a statement. His arrival at a depth of 35,756 feet came early Sunday evening on the U.S. East Coast, after a descent that took more than two hours.

The scale of the trench is hard to grasp — it's 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon and more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

Cameron made the dive aboard his 12-ton, lime-green sub called "Deepsea Challenger." He planned to collect samples for biologists and geologists to study.

"It's really the first time that human eyes have had an opportunity to gaze upon what is a very alien landscape," said Terry Garcia, the National Geographic Society's executive VP for mission programs, via phone from Pitlochry, Scotland.

The first and only time anyone dove to these depths was in 1960. Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh took nearly five hours to reach the bottom and stayed just 20 minutes. They had little to report on what they saw, however, because their submarine kicked up so much sand from the ocean floor.

"He is going to be seeing something that none of us have ever seen before. He is going to be opening new worlds to scientists," Garcia said.
One of the risks of a dive so deep is extreme water pressure. At 6.8 miles below the surface, the pressure is the equivalent of three SUVs sitting on your toe.

Cameron told The Associated Press in an interview after a 5.1 mile-deep practice run near Papua New Guinea earlier this month that the pressure "is in the back of your mind." The submarine would implode in an instant if it leaked, he said.

But while he was a little apprehensive beforehand, he wasn't scared or nervous while underwater.

"When you are actually on the dive you have to trust the engineering was done right," he said.

The film director has been an oceanography enthusiast since childhood and has made 72 deep-sea submersible dives. Thirty-three of those dives have been to the wreckage of the Titanic, the subject of his 1997 hit film.

I'd like to see what he finds down there. 35,000 feet is hella deep.

 

[Apple OC]

next to some of the Caves on this planet ... Deep Sea holds the most secrets on Earth

 

[Heilage]

If I remember correctly, we haven't explored nearly close to all of the ocean life on this planet.

I would love to see some new discoveries of species and maybe even deep water environments. Science is awesome.

 

[pvmacguy]

Is this for his sequel to avatar? I heard he was waiting to get down there because he was going to use footage down there for the movie.

 

[MacNut]

AP is reporting that he just resurfaced.

 

[Abstract]

Ahhhhhhhhh, to be rich.....




Hope he found something interesting.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I have just read this on the news reports. Incredible. Agree with Heilage - science is indeed amazing, and absolutely extraordinary. It will be fascinating to be able to see what he saw and found at that depth - the dimensions alone are almost unimaginable.

I can only assume that whatever sort of creature has evolved to deal with such conditions will be astonishing to behold.

 

[steve2112]

Ahhhhhhhhh, to be rich.....




Hope he found something interesting.

Cthulhu. Cameron went and woke him him, and now we're all doomed.

 

[coder12]

I've always wanted to explore the deep ocean. It's so surreal down there.. So beautiful.

 

[MacNut]

I've always wanted to explore the deep ocean. It's so surreal down there.. So beautiful.

Cameron should have taken Celion Dion with him and just left her there. Her song ruined Titanic more than he did.

 

[Berlepsch]

Hollywood icon James Cameron has made it to Earth's deepest point.

I hope he buried all his plans for future movies there.

 

[Caliber26]

Cameron should have taken Celion Dion with him and just left her there. Her song ruined Titanic more than he did.

Lol, no! That movie would've never been the same without that song. That's right up there with Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".

PS: I am not a Celine Fan. For real, I'm not.

 

[obeygiant]

In 1997 James Cameron famously sent the RMS Titanic to the ocean floor. Now he has made an even deeper trip himself: in a submersible called the Deepsea Challenger, he descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench -- seven miles beneath the western Pacific Ocean, deeper than Mt. Everest is high.

And he lived to tell about it. Today, on a conference call to reporters from the research vessel Mermaid Sapphire, he enthused about the mystery and adventure of being all alone in the darkness, 35,576 feet beneath the surface of the sea.

"I just sat there looking out the window, looking at this barren, desolate lunar plain, appreciating," Cameron said.

"There had to be a moment where I just stopped, and took it in, and said, 'This is where I am. I'm at the bottom of the ocean, the deepest place on Earth. What does that mean?'"

Cameron, with backing from the National Geographic Society, spent about three hours in a barren spot called Challenger Deep, the deepest-known part of any ocean in the world. He shot video, some in 3-D, and tried to take samples of life forms and rocks, but he didn't see much, and his sub's robot arm failed because of what National Geographic said was a hydraulic fluid leak. National Geographic did not immediately release any undersea pictures from the expedition.

In the perpetual darkness south of the island of Guam, Cameron conceded there was not much to see. The temperature outside the Deepsea Challenger was around 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and the pressure outside his protective diving chamber was several thousand pounds per square inch.

"It was bleak," he said. "It looked like the moon."

"I didn't see a fish," he said. "I didn't find anything that looked alive to me, other than a few amphipods in the water." Amphipods are shrimplike creatures sometimes found in the deep ocean.

link

Sounds like being there was more exciting than seeing it. I guess its no surprise that Titanic 3D returns to theaters this week. Cameron, if anything, is deft in business.

 

[MacNut]

link

Sounds like being there was more exciting than seeing it. I guess its no surprise that Titanic 3D returns to theaters this week. Cameron, if anything, is deft in business.

It is the 100 year anniversary of the sinking.

 

[elmo151]

can see the seeds of his next movie
"deep water titanic"

 

[MacNut]

can see the seeds of his next movie
"deep water titanic"

Titanic 2, the search for missing treasure. Starting Jack a 115 year old ocean zombie.

 

[Digital Skunk]

It is the 100 year anniversary of the sinking.

On April 14th it will be.

 

[snberk103]

Here's another interesting bit of factoid...

So far 3 people have spent about 2.5 hours at the bottom of the ocean.... a "mere" 11 km down. "Merely" because about a dozen people have spent about 80 hours on the moon, about 400,000 km up.

Everything is relative, eh?

 

[rdowns]

My bad, I thought this was a thread on a Kardashian vagina.

 

[Boisv]

It's nice to see James Cameron doing something that I can root for again.

He was a hero of mine growing up.

----------

Here's another interesting bit of factoid...

So far 3 people have spent about 2.5 hours at the bottom of the ocean.... a "mere" 11 km down. "Merely" because about a dozen people have spent about 80 hours on the moon, about 400,000 km up.

Everything is relative, eh?

Very interesting. I know that the moon is more explored, but these numbers really put it in perspective.

 

[Raid]

My bad, I thought this was a thread on a Kardashian vagina.

You should know better, nothing about that woman could be considered 'deep'.


I'm really interested in seeing footage of the very bottom of the trench, even if there's not much around.... just kind of curious to see what earth's basement really looks like.

 

[MacNut]

I'm really interested in seeing footage of the very bottom of the trench, even if there's not much around.... just kind of curious to see what earth's basement really looks like.

A lot of old baseball cards that earth's mom thought were worthless and some cans of soup.

 

[obeygiant]

Some interesting footage here of the bottom.

 

[Abstract]

I'm glad he made it there, and made it back alive. It just goes to show that James Cameron's ego knows no bounds.

link

Sounds like being there was more exciting than seeing it. I guess its no surprise that Titanic 3D returns to theaters this week. Cameron, if anything, is deft in business.

"Awww s***, I forgot to charge my camera."

 

[localoid]

Where's my aquacopter?

Back in the 1960s (when virtually anything seemed possible) pundits confidently predicted that by the year 2000 sea farms would be able to feed the world a dozen times over while brightly lit cities under huge glass domes would spread across the sea bed connected by monorails running in giant acrylic tubes and supplied by submarine freighters and tankers. With this sort of future ahead, the General Motors Futurama underwater hotel model at the 1964 New York World's Fair seemed almost prosaic.

Sited at a depth of 10,000 feet and with the quest capacity of a the largest resorts, the Futurama hotel was a series of giant tear drops suspended into an undersea canyon with two-storey tall windows covering each tear drop to provide the guests with an unobstructed panoramic view of the local scenery–which would be fantastic if it wasn't as dark as a coal mine 10,000 feet down. But at least there was a fleet of “aquacopters” to scoot around in. (source)

A decade earlier, the Russians had dreams of an underwater hotel/ cruise ship, as depicted the 3rd photo below (photos nos. 1&2 are of the GM Futurama models).