![]() ![]() For every dollar the federal government shells out on ocean exploration, it gives hundreds to NASA. The ocean isn't less accessible than space we simply haven't prioritized it. We've named practically every large moon crater yet thoroughly charted just 25 percent of the seafloor. Nearly a century after the bathysphere's voyage, it's often said that we know more about deep space than about the depths of our own planet. ![]() The deep was a realm both inhospitable and lively, a place where fear and awe coexisted- “an ungovernable territory,” as Casey puts it, “that begins where the sunlight stops.” The vividness of the blue light transcended language: “more like an emotion than a color,” writes Susan Casey in The Underworld, her entertaining account of the technologies and scientists who have shaped deep-sea exploration. Yet the people inside it-naturalist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton-were as enchanted as they were frightened. A broken cable would send the bathysphere plummeting into oblivion. ![]() The plunge was terrifying: leaks could spring, air could dwindle, portholes could collapse. The vessel was a crude metal sphere pocked with tiny quartz windows, akin to finger holes in a bowling ball. The first bathysphere made its initial descent off an island in Bermuda on June 6, 1930, lowered into the Atlantic Ocean by a shipboard winch. The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean Nonfiction Exploring, and Exploiting, the Ocean’s DepthsĪ new history of the deep sea-and the forces that threaten it ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |