Friday, June 12, 2009

Deep-Sea Robotic Veichles Drives to New Record Deapth


Pilots operate the unmanned Nereus remotely from a surface ship, using an extremely thin, fiber-optic line that allows the vehicle to dive to these incredible depths, while remaining highly maneuverable. The Nereus also has the ability to be switched to an autonomous, free-moving vehicle.

As you may imagine, diving to these kinds of depths pose a significant number of challenges, most of all from water pressure. Imagine having the weight of 10 kilometers of water above you. Imagine tying to pick up a wine barrel standing about 1 meter high filled with water... That in itself may be an almost impossible task for most people. Now imagine that 10,000 over. Incredible water pressure - reportedly more than 1000 times the standard atmospheric pressure measured at sea level.

The Mariana Trench is currently known to be the deepest part of the ocean. Project manager and principal developer of Nereus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Andy Bowen, believes that a vehicle like this will enable research to be carried out on just about any part of the world's oceans. Bowen believes that this vehicle marks the start of a new era of ocean exploration and research. Until now, underwater vessels were only able to explore up to about 6,500 meters (4 miles) below the oceans. The Nereus project reportedly cost in the region of about 8 million dollars to develop, and was sponsored mainly by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ocean Sciences Division.

The Mariana Trench is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a 40,000 kilometer (25,000 mile) area in the western North Pacific Ocean, to the east and south of the Mariana Islands, near Guam. the area is known as place where most of the earth's volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

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