Enormous Tunneling Machine 'Bertha' Blocked By 'The Object' 339
An anonymous reader sends word that 'Bertha,' the world's largest tunneling machine, which is currently boring a passage beneath Seattle's waterfront, has been forced stop. The 57.5ft diameter machine has encountered an unknown obstruction known as "the object."
"The object’s composition and provenance remain unknown almost two weeks after first contact because in a state-of-the-art tunneling machine, as it turns out, you can’t exactly poke your head out the window and look. 'What we’re focusing on now is creating conditions that will allow us to enter the chamber behind the cutter head and see what the situation is,' [said project manager Chris Dixon]. Mr. Dixon said he felt pretty confident that the blockage will turn out to be nothing more or less romantic than a giant boulder, perhaps left over from the Ice Age glaciers that scoured and crushed this corner of the continent 17,000 years ago. But the unknown is a tantalizing subject. Some residents said they believe, or want to believe, that a piece of old Seattle, buried in the pell-mell rush of city-building in the 1800s, when a mucky waterfront wetland was filled in to make room for commerce, could be Bertha’s big trouble. That theory is bolstered by the fact that the blocked tunnel section is also in the shallowest portion of the route, with the top of the machine only around 45 feet below street grade."
Time to call in... (Score:5, Funny)
...The SCP Foundation.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How do we know that the SCP Foundation wasn't already aware of this object, and the whole tunneling project wasn't actually a cover for securing it? Rest assured that whatever "it" is, "they" have a suitably mundane explanation already prepared.
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Just make sure that at least 3 people have eyes on it at all times, and announce before blinking.
Near the waterfront? (Score:3)
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Yeah, pretty much. But in this case, I will put my money on the hull of a schooner. Old piece of garbage got dumped there wholesale I'll wage.
150 years ago:
Person A: "Hey, we need landfill. Do you want this leaky decrepit hulk any more?"
Person B "Give me 20 bucks and it's yours."
Person A: "Here you go, thanks! That'll make great landfill and as long as anyone doesn't try to dig a giant tunnel through here, we're set!
Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Funny)
hull of a schooner
IT'S A SAILBOAT!
Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm betting on a lost anchor or random pieces of cast iron from an old ship.
I'm betting it's a fragment of the House. As we have seen, it can obstruct almost anything it puts its mind to.
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Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Informative)
They couldn't build an Earth tunneling machine that cant deal with a giant boulder ?
The cutter heads break apart stationary rock and other objects. The theory in the local press here in Seattle is that the bolder is being spun with the cutter head, thus the cutter teeth canâ(TM)t grip it, and itâ(TM)s too big to fall through the openings in the cutter head that channel debris to the exit conveyor.
Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Funny)
So we really have moved past "Too big to fail" then. Good to know.
Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Funny)
... while the timid one is standing off to one side looking at its shoes.
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So they ran into the location where they buried all the bowling balls from the great bowling blight of the 1700's.
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the bolder is being spun with the cutter head
I'm not sure why I find the mental image of that so funny.
Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Funny)
They got a photo [nocookie.net] of it already.
Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't sound like anything a bit of dynamite couldn't handle.
How's that paradigm working out for you Mr. Coyote?
Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Funny)
Not plausible. More likely a large nugget of Adamantium.
Armok's Whisker. (Score:2)
If it is Adamantium, they should try to mine it all out.
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Re:Near the waterfront? (Score:5, Informative)
An anchor that can block a five-story-high tunneling machine? I've seen some massive anchors from old battleships, but to block this it would have to be an order of magnitude larger.
Best bet is either on a giant boulder of some hard rock, or maybe a buried building of some sort. It's not ship debris - this thing is the *size* of some large ships.
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My money is on the compacted bones of several generations dead Indians, dead Chinese, assorted dead hookers, and several former mayors who wouldn't play ball.
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The problem is that while current grade level is forty five feet above the machine, historical grade is twenty feet above the machine... Who'd dig a thirty or forty foot deep hole in a swamp to discard an anchor or piece of cast iron? While this is the lowest point of the tunnel, this isn't the lowest point of the historical grade (relative to the tunnel bore), that's a block or two ahead of where the machine is currently stopped.
I bet it's a rectangular solid (Score:5, Funny)
I bet it's a rectangular solids whose dimensions are in the precise ratio of 1 : 4 : 9....
Re: I bet it's a rectangular solid (Score:5, Funny)
And that appears to be...my God...it's full of stars!
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All in all it will be another boring story with boring results after some digging.
Maybe the machine ran into (Score:5, Funny)
... a create of unsold Windows phones?
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Even in death, they annoy.
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Re:Maybe the machine ran into (Score:5, Funny)
Subsurface tablets....
Re:Maybe the machine ran into (Score:5, Funny)
To block a giant tunneling engine? It'd have to be old-school Nokia.
Re:Maybe the machine ran into (Score:5, Funny)
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Paging Dr Quatermass... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Grasshoppers...large, telekinetic grasshoppers...
Alien pod (Score:2)
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Alien Origin (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly The Object is an interstellar vehicle with a structure of super-dense composite materials built to withstand the vagaries of near-light-speed travel for thousands of years. It crashed here long before human tribes crossed the land bridge from siberia and has remained undiscovered until now. They are best off leaving it undisturbed, if they enter it, they risk releasing biomechanoid killing machines that will destroy all of humanity.
Re:Alien Origin (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly The Object is an interstellar vehicle with a structure of super-dense composite materials built to withstand the vagaries of near-light-speed travel for thousands of years. It crashed here long before human tribes crossed the land bridge from siberia and has remained undiscovered until now. They are best off leaving it undisturbed, if they enter it, they risk releasing biomechanoid killing machines that will destroy all of humanity.
Yes, but thousands of years? Try billions. The pilot was killed on impact and eaten by their own gut microbes, which quickly escaped and went looking for more things to eat. Failing to find a single suitable eatery, the microbes went on to destroy most existing anaerobic life [wikipedia.org], become sentient, create eateries, and re-discover their long lost progenitor's ship thus activating its homing beacon through very efficient electromagnetic induction. Unfortunately, Earth's inhabitants could no longer serve the role as gut microbes due to a gross miss calculation in scale, and were instead eaten by a transdimensional dog named Jeebus after fetching them. Within said belly they reside to this day battling his mentally corrosive digestive juice which is rich in charged retardation and litigation particles known locally therein as: Religions.
This has all happened before, and will all happen again; The process has been deemed "mostly harmless".
Need 150,000 pounds of Raisin Bran (Score:5, Funny)
...and eight tanker trucks of coffee. That ought to do it.
STOP THE PROJECT NOW! (Score:3, Funny)
That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.
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You're right to post as AC, people you know would start suspecting you're smoking some serious stuff.
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Whooshathotep!
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Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Hmmmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Jimmy Hoffa, encased in concrete? ;-)
Oh, and my car keys, hundreds of missing socks and the TV remote control. That's my theory.
And so it begins (Score:5, Informative)
This tunnel was locally controversial, with opponents arguing that
- it was expensive
- it wouldn't help with Seattle's traffic problems, AND
- these monster boring machines have a track record of getting stuck underground, and then what are you going to do? Call Roto-Rooter?
Sounds like it's starting to come true...
Re:And so it begins (Score:4, Insightful)
The same type of tunneling machines managed to dig Seattle's University District light rail tunnel extension without getting stuck - and even ahead of schedule.
I don't think one incident (related to that sewer tunnel boondoggle) constitutes a "track record of getting stuck".
Scientific Term: BFR (Score:5, Funny)
Civil Engineers, geologists, and mining specialists encounter the BFR phenomenon on a regular basis.
It's a Big Fucking Rock.
Re:Scientific Term: BFR (Score:5, Funny)
Leverite there.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm no engineer but I'm guessing the machine was never meant to bore through solid rock like that. The procedure for rock is still drill-and-blast.
Actually; it CAN break up solid rock. The current guess is that the rock isn't staying stationary, but is instead spinning, preventing the drill from gaining purchase. By the time they're done, maybe it'll be a perfect cylinder :)
Probably boring (no pun intended) (Score:3)
It's hard to imagine a "piece of old Seattle" that would interfere with a tunneling machine. I'm guessing they're right, and it's an erratic from the ice age. I'd love to get to go in the tunnel and look, though - the tunneling equipment Seattle's been using both for this one and for the light rail extension fascinates me.
I'm a bit surprised Ivar's hasn't taken advantage of this [seattletimes.com] though.
A sad day (Score:3)
Tis' a great blow for object oriented programming.
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Don't worry, this actually proves that OOP is The Right Way. They should've built a machine that could handle the abstract class Object or at least stuffTypicallyFoundUnderground.
Of course, the object is clearly lacking a destructor, and is thus not cleaning up after itself. Shameful behavior.
The Hatch (Score:2)
Doesn't sound very stable... (Score:3, Interesting)
... having a 57.5ft tunnel with only 45ft of material above it. Aren't they worried about a cave-in? Unless they're plowing through heavily clay-laden (damned near bunker-buster-proof) soil like we have around where I live, surely the vibrations will have an effect on that 45ft of soil overhead if they decide to proceed and Bertha begins grinding its way through The Object.
Re:Doesn't sound very stable... (Score:5, Informative)
The machine puts up tunnel walls as it goes.
http://gizmodo.com/big-bertha-is-digging-seattles-massive-underground-fre-662469199 [gizmodo.com]
Concrete panels go in right behind the bore head. Infront of the maw is ground below the water table. The bore head forms a seal and the tunnel behind the bore head is pumped dry of water that leaks through.
Re:Doesn't sound very stable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Holly crap, it's almost like someone THOUGHT about this. Like maybe an engineer that gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to think about this shit every day!
AMAZING!
Re:Doesn't sound very stable... (Score:4, Informative)
Picture of concrete panels lining tunnel (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-largest-drilling-machine-bertha/28311/ [gizmag.com]
Re:Doesn't sound very stable... (Score:5, Funny)
They should totally get you in on this project. I imagine they have no idea they're doing it all wrong.
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Do you really think the engineers responsible for this project didn't fucking thing of that? And account for it? God, maybe you suck ass at your job, but try not to assume everybody else does.
And for the record, Bertha's stopped because it *can't* grind through the object. If it could, this wouldn't be in the news would it?
Re:Doesn't sound very stable... (Score:4, Informative)
They are concerned and not just about a cave-in. Vibration could cause lot's of damage. According to the WSDOT the machine is not actually stuck yet. They stopped it because they encountered resistance. The walls behind the machine are already built so there's not much risk of a cave-in. But there is a risk that nearby infrastructure could be damaged if they move forward. They can reinforce the infrastructure above but if they actually get stuck it could have enormous consequences. The machine would have to be dug out and replaced (at $80 million per borer). Add in the cost of reinforcements and digging a big hole, then consider that the $3.1 billion project is only bonded up to $500 million.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/what-could-possibly-go-wrong/Content?oid=4399657
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2013/12/10_SR99tunnelingstatement.htm
Re:Doesn't sound very stable... (Score:4, Informative)
I am not a tunnel excavating expert but my 5 year old thinks these are among the coolest machines that have ever been constructed and likes educational shows that are about tunneling where they use a TBM.
Boring? (Score:3, Funny)
It's not THAT boring.
Possible Objects (Score:2)
1) The TARDIS
2) An "ancient" alien ship.
3) Those ET 2600 cartridges from the '80s.
4) Microsoft Surfaces that were wrote off.
5) A big rock that nobody had the foresight to see.
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7) Secret government lab.
8) Giant iron-nickel core of an ancient meteor.
9) Broken cutting head.
10) The NSA tunneling machine busy tapping fiber cables.
11) An molecule-exact duplicate of the USS Eldridge.
12) Gandalf.
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Heart of the Mountain (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly it is the Arkenstone (Score:2)
David or Diane ?
They botht make great music
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"They delved too greedily" was for mithril in the Mines of Moria, the Arkenstone was buried in Tacoma.
leave it to humans.... (Score:2)
Wish I could credit properly (Score:2)
Zunes
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Simple... (Score:2)
Fossilized grounds from Starbuck's secret dumpsite.
Darn! (Score:3, Funny)
It's mom. (Score:2)
If they check history carefully, they will find that in prehistoric times the people living there wanted a tunnel and began to bore it from the other end before money ran out. Bertha is just running into the front end of Big Bertha and they are butting (spinning) heads.
The good news is that the tunnel will now be completed ahead of schedule and we will also learn more about the irresistible force paradox [wikipedia.org].
Why call it anything? (Score:2)
Giving it a vague title like "the object" implicitly connotes a sense of mystery and potential for some sort of unforeseen discovery.
It's an unknown obstruction... if they are going to call it anything, they should have just called it that.
No camera or observation hatch? (Score:2)
It seems pretty strange that there's no provision for looking in front of the machine. You'd almost expect that there would be some kind of camera or way to poke a camera out an opening to see what's in front of them.
I would assume than running into weird shit digging a tunnel would be typical, although maybe it's designed with so much boring power that they only really expect to look at the overburden on the conveyor behind the boring machine.
Re:No camera or observation hatch? (Score:4, Informative)
This is really interesting (Score:5, Funny)
I guess the machine isn't boring after all.
Microsoft's secret gold vault (Score:2)
The devil in the dark. (Score:2)
That's no 'Object', it's the Horta.
'The Object' (Score:3, Funny)
Will it blend?
It's obviously bedrock (Score:5, Funny)
What's with (Score:3)
all the boring stories lately?
Unmovable object (Score:3)
encountered an unknown obstruction known as "the object."
Their framework can't handle a public static object?
It's Clamosaurus (Score:3)
It may be the fossilized remains of Ivar's prized proto-clam: http://www.komonews.com/news/offbeat/Ivars-Mystery-object-in-tunnel-may-be-giant-fossil-clam-236438221.html [komonews.com]
It's a TBM for waterlogged sand and dirt (Score:5, Informative)
This is an earth-pressure-balance type TBM built for soft sand and dirt, below water level. Compressed air is used to keep water out at the working face. That's what's needed for a tunnel under the Seattle waterfront. It can cope with rocks and boulders, but not a solid rock face. It's not a hard-rock TBM. Those have very different cutters, but can't handle waterlogged soil.
Tunneling is like that. Stuff like this happens. It will be handled.
What they've found (Score:3)
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Wait, I thought the AllSpark was buried under the Hoover Dam.
Maybe they found the AllSpice.
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Close. It's a StarGate.
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This [imdb.com] or this [imdb.com] are already waiting for you. ;)
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Re:It is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dr. Who's phone booth.
Dr. Who has no phone booth. Everyone knows the TARDIS is a police box.
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If this was a Dr. Who episode, it would be a crashed spaceship from millions of years ago and everybody who went into the tunnel would come out covered in green slime and turning into a cave man.
Cannot back up (Score:5, Informative)
No can do. As the machine moves forward the tunnel walls are built behind it. TBM's have no reverse.
Actually the machine isn't stuck, yet. They stopped the machine because it encountered resistance. If it actually does get stuck the machine can't be dismantled underground and removed. They would have to dig it out from above, remove the TBM and install a new one. If it does get stuck let's just hope it's not under a skyscraper.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2013/12/10_SR99tunnelingstatement.htm
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/what-could-possibly-go-wrong/Content?oid=4399657
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I'm hoping for the library. Then this could become a beautification project.
Re:Cannot back up (Score:4, Insightful)
All the way.
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curious, how far down do skyscraper footings go?
It depends very much on the type of soil (or rock, or clay, or sand) underneath.
Other factors are: what's around it (footings can spread outward as they go down - like a pyramid); earthquake area/danger; height of the building, number of sub-floors needed.
Sometimes the footing can go deeper than the building is tall above-ground.