Google Earth To Include Google Deep Sea 37
mikejuk writes "You may have heard about the swashbuckling adventures to be undertaken by Virgin Oceanic -- visits to the bottom of the deepest parts of the oceans of the world. As Sir Richard Branson said at the launch of Virgin Oceanic, more men have been to the moon than have ventured further down than 20,000 feet. As long as everything goes according to plan, everyone should be able to experience a virtual trip to the bottom of the ocean, courtesy of Google Earth."
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Equipped with the FIN processor, amirite???
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtag (Score:3)
I've had 47 deg 9'S 126 deg 43'W bookmarked in Google Earth for years; can't wait for the deep sea view to be available!
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47 degrees South. Not North.
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I've had 47 deg 9'S 126 deg 43'W bookmarked in Google Earth for years; can't wait for the deep sea view to be available!
The Great One beckons. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/hummingearth/ [wired.com]
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Apparently they're having some technical difficulties with that location. Three Summer of Code interns have already been driven hopelessly insane by attempting to map the 3D Buildings layer to abnormal, non-Euclidean geometries loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.
The Bloop (Score:3)
Let's hope we can finally find out what The Bloop [wikipedia.org] really was then.
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Cool. Hadn't heard of that before, thanks.
Given how little we still know about the deep ocean, I wouldn't be surprised if Branson's efforts uncover more new questions than they answer. But it's nice to see techno-rich folks (such as Branson, Musk, etc) doing something useful with their megabucks.
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Obligatory: "I for one welcome our new deep-sea overlords."
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Link is goatse! (Score:2)
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You would...but wouldn't it annoy you to have people visiting your home to map it?
Spongebob. (Score:1)
A wonderful tool. Now we can locate places like Atlantis, Bermuda Triangle, and Davy Jones locker.
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As well as Bikini Bottom.
Black Box (Score:1)
How large is the viewing port? (Score:4, Interesting)
The computer renderings I've seen show a large dome over the cockpit (please hold the bloody seamen jokes).
Considering that the other submersibles have (relatively) tiny portholes that are 6"(?) thick, how is this large dome possible? Is it made out of a different material (I think I heard somewhere it was quartz) whereas the other submersibles were plexiglass? Has there been some major advance in creating large convex transparent structures that allow the pressure to be optiminally distributed? Or are the computer renderings just pretty pictures and the real vehicle will have much smaller ports to look out of? :(
By the way this reminds me of the underwater transport in one of the first Star Wars that Ben Kenobi uses to visit Jar Jar Bink's undersea city. They appear to travel to great depths in their small craft but when they surface, the "dome" turns out to be a forcefield that can be turned off with a switch! Some forcefield; if that kind of technology was readily available for other uses (personal armor, shields) it would seem that it should play a much bigger role in the series. But I digress, who ever expects commercial science fiction to be logically consistent?
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The computer renderings I've seen show a large dome over the cockpit (please hold the bloody seamen jokes).
My semen's not rendered bloody... unless she's at that time of the month. Sorry, I just couldn't hold it. ;)
Sorry, I just can't help it, but you've gotta admit you asked for that one. xD
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Jokes aside. I was wondering the same thing. As an object that's built to exclude water, I would've thought that flat surfaces would also be a weakness without some really strong supports inside. (If you allow the water in, with its pressure, you won't need to keep the pressure out, which is how deep sea life copes with the pressure.)
If it's composed of thick rounded pieces, then I think the pressure could be used to hold the thing together, but that would look totally different from the artists impressi
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First dive will be to the deepest place (Score:2)
That doesn't sound wise to me. I would recommend to leave the ambitious trips for later. Use a series of incrementally more challenging trips to test the design and gain experience with the controls of the vehicle. Chances are there is software involved and I don't want to see more bad news on Slashdot.
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