James Cameron becomes first solo diver to visit Earth's deepest point

[Bangyai]

Director James Cameron has become the first solo diver to visit Earth’s deepest point - seven miles below the ocean's surface.


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James Cameron emerges from the hatch of Deepsea Challenger during testing of the submersible in Jervis Bay, south of Sydney, Australia in 2012. Photo: AFP



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James Cameron's Deepsea Challenger submersible begins its first 2.5-mile (4-km) test dive off the coast of Papua New Guinea on March 4, 2012. Photo: AFP



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James Cameron's Deepsea Challenger Photo: EPA



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Deep-sea scares: a flourescent Moray eel off the Philippines Photo: GETTY

By Rosa Prince, New York

11:24PM BST 25 Mar 2012



As he reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam, he sent out a Tweet reading: "Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you."

The Titantic director reached 26,700 feet around an hour into his bid to dive nearly seven miles (11 kilometres) below the ocean’s surface.

He hopes to become the first person to explore the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam.
The dive, in a specially designed submarine called the Deepsea Challenger, began at around 5.50am Monday local time, after being delayed for several days due to bad weather.
He gave his team the instruction to begin the dive and send the 12 tonne, lime-green vessel into the ocean by shouting: “Release, release, release.”
Once on the surface, Cameron, who also directed Avatar and The Abyss, plans to spend six hours collecting samples for biologists and geologists to study, before making the 70 minute journey back to the surface.
The Mariana Trench is 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon, and more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall.
The only other people to reach the bottom are Jacques Piccard, a Swiss Engineer, and Don Walsh, a US Navy captain, who ventured down in 1960.
However, their sub kicked up so much silt from the sea floor that they were unable to observe anything, and returned to the surface after 20 minutes.

James Cameron becomes first solo diver to visit Earth's deepest point - Telegraph

[kmart]

Interesting. The prohibitive cost and danger of deep dives means that very little is known about most of our oceans.
Cameron is a brave guy to man this sub. And also to fund it himself.

[robtherich]

The only other people to reach the bottom are Jacques Piccard,

Jean Piccard

This interesting.

[Mid]

waiting for the pic's .................

[harrybarracuda]

Cameron is a brave guy to man this sub. And also to fund it himself.

Oh come off it, the Trieste went there in 1960, and technology has advanced exponentially since then.

Cameron has done numerous dives on the Titanic wreck, so it's nothing new to him, as is underwater technology.

And how brave is he to fund it? He's probably sitting on a billion quid, so I don't think he's going to run out of beer money.

Fair play to him for squandering his wealth on his hobby I say, but let's not get carried away.

[kmart]

Cameron is a brave guy to man this sub. And also to fund it himself.

Oh come off it, the Trieste went there in 1960, and technology has advanced exponentially since then.

Cameron has done numerous dives on the Titanic wreck, so it's nothing new to him, as is underwater technology.

And how brave is he to fund it? He's probably sitting on a billion quid, so I don't think he's going to run out of beer money.

Fair play to him for squandering his wealth on his hobby I say, but let's not get carried away.

Funding for the technology has stopped since 1960. Virtually nothing has happened regarding deep-sea exploration since Piccard's time.

I don't particularly like his films, but considering the extreme pressures and hazards involved with diving this far down, plus actually getting back to the surface afterwards, I bet you wouldn't get in that sub, matey.

[harrybarracuda]

Cameron is a brave guy to man this sub. And also to fund it himself.

Oh come off it, the Trieste went there in 1960, and technology has advanced exponentially since then.

Cameron has done numerous dives on the Titanic wreck, so it's nothing new to him, as is underwater technology.

And how brave is he to fund it? He's probably sitting on a billion quid, so I don't think he's going to run out of beer money.

Fair play to him for squandering his wealth on his hobby I say, but let's not get carried away.

Funding for the technology has stopped since 1960. Virtually nothing has happened regarding deep-sea exploration since Piccard's time.

I don't particularly like his films, but considering the extreme pressures and hazards involved with diving this far down, plus actually getting back to the surface afterwards, I bet you wouldn't get in that sub, matey.

I can only assume you're fucking joking. I'd love to have the opportunity to do something like that.

As for "Virtually nothing has happened regarding deep-sea exploration since Piccard's time."

Hellooooooo! Titanic! Or is 12,000 feet down not "deep-sea" any more?

[kmart]

^2.3 miles vs 7 miles down? After you anyway harry. Claustrophobia would kill me as soon as they bolted the fucking hatch down.

[Mid]

and the pic's are where ?

[harrybarracuda]

and the pic's are where ?

In the first post on my screen.

[Mid]

Earth’s deepest point

kinda obvious I would of thought guess not

[harrybarracuda]

Well here's another useless fact I learned today:

The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about 2,550 kilometres (1,580 mi) long but has a mean width of only 69 kilometres (43 mi). It reaches a maximum-known depth of about 10.91 kilometres (6.78 mi) (35,800 ft) at the Challenger Deep, a small slot-shaped valley in its floor, at its southern end, although some unrepeated measurements place the deepest portion at 11.03 kilometres (6.85 mi).

At the bottom of the trench, where the plates meet, the water column above exerts a pressure of 1,086 bars (15,750 psi), over one thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level.

The trench is not the part of the seafloor closest to the center of the Earth. This is because the Earth is not a perfect sphere: its radius is about 25 kilometres (16 mi) less at the poles than at the equator. As a result, parts of the Arctic Ocean seabed are at least 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) closer to the Earth's center than the Challenger Deep seafloor.

[Thaihome]

waiting for the pic's .................

You think Cameron is just going to release them for free?

TH

[Mid]

youtube.com

[terry57]

There's not to many fukers that would have the balls to make that dive. I recon Harry would fill the sub with shit and bodily fluids with the first klm on the way down.