{"id":1188,"date":"2012-03-26T00:45:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T22:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.albamar.net\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2012-03-27T15:43:17","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T13:43:17","slug":"james-cameron-esta-en-el-fondo-de-la-fosa-de-las-marianas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/?p=1188","title":{"rendered":"James Cameron est\u00e1 en el fondo de la fosa de las Marianas"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ahora que James Cameron ha sido la primera persona en alcanzar el punto m\u00e1s profundo del planeta, comienza el aut\u00e9ntico trabajo . Cameron ha empleado varias horas de su estancia en el fondo en recolectar muestras, observar especies y, por supuesto, filmar lo que estaba viendo.<\/div>\n
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-noticia en espa\u00f1ol en los comentarios<\/a>– <\/p>\n

James Cameron<\/strong> ? @<\/s>JimCameron<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n

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 @<\/s>DeepChallenge<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

(Recien llegado al punto m\u00e1s profundo de los oc\u00e9anos. Nunca se ha sentido mejor el tocar fondo. No puedo esperar para compartir con vosotros lo que estoy viendo)<\/p>\n

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<\/em>Retwitteado por DeepSea Challenge<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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11:59 pm – 25 mar 12 v\u00eda TweetDeck<\/a> \u00b7 Detalles<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As of 5:52 p.m. ET Sunday (7:52 a.m. Monday, local time), <\/strong>James Cameron<\/strong><\/a> has arrived at the <\/strong>Mariana Trench<\/strong><\/a>‘s Challenger Deep, members of the National Geographic expedition have <\/strong>confirmed.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n
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His depth on arrival: 35,756 feet (10,898 meters)\u2014a figure unattainable anywhere else in the ocean<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reaching bottom, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker typed out welcome words for the cheering support crew waiting at the surface: \u00abAll systems OK.\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n

Folded into a sub cockpit as cramped as any Apollo capsule<\/a>, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker is now investigating a seascape more alien to humans than the moon. Cameron is only the third person to reach this Pacific Ocean valley southwest of Guam (map)<\/a>\u2014and the only one to do so solo.<\/p>\n

(James Cameron es la tercera persona en alcanzar este punto, y la \u00fanica en hacerlo en solitario)<\/p>\n

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Hovering in what he’s called a vertical torpedo, Cameron is likely collecting data, specimens, and imagery unthinkable in 1960, when the only other explorers to reach Challenger Deep<\/a> returned after seeing little more than the silt stirred up by their bathyscaphe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After as long as six hours in the trench, Cameron\u2014best known for creating fictional worlds on film <\/em>(<\/em>Avatar<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Titanic<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>The Abyss<\/em><\/a>)<\/em>\u2014is to jettison steel weights attached to the sub and shoot back to the surface. (See pictures of Cameron’s sub<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the expedition’s scientific support team awaits his return aboard the research ships Mermaid Sapphire <\/em>and Barakuda,<\/em> 7 miles (11 kilometers) up. (Video: how sound revealed that Challenger Deep is the deepest spot in the ocean.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u00abWe’re now a band of brothers and sisters that have been through this for a while,\u00bb marine biologist Doug Bartlett<\/a> told National Geographic News from the ship before the dive.<\/p>\n

\u00abPeople have worked for months or years in a very intensive way to get to this point,\u00bb said Bartlett, chief scientist for the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE <\/a><\/em>program<\/a>,<\/em> a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)<\/p>\n

\u00abI think people are ready,\u00bb added Bartlett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. \u00abThey want to get there, and they want to see this happen.\u00bb<\/p>\n

(Video: Cameron Dive Is an Exploration First.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Rendezvous at Challenger Deep<\/strong><\/p>\n

Upon touchdown at Challenger Deep, Cameron’s first target is a phone booth-like unmanned \u00ablander\u00bb dropped into the trench hours before his dive.<\/p>\n

Using sonar, \u00abI’m going to attempt to rendezvous with that vehicle so I can observe animals that are attracted to the chemical signature of its bait,\u00bb Cameron told National Geographic News before the dive.<\/p>\n

He’ll later follow a route designed to take him through as many environments as possible, surveying not only the sediment-covered seafloor but also cliffs of interest to expedition geologists.<\/p>\n

\u00abI’ll be doing a bit of a longitudinal transect along the trench axis for a while, and then I’ll turn 90 degrees and I’ll go north and work myself up the wall,\u00bb said Cameron, also a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence<\/a>. (Listen: James Cameron on becoming a National Geographic explorer<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Though battery power and vast distances limit his contact with his science team to text messaging and sporadic voice communication, Cameron seemed confident in his mission Friday. \u00abI’m pretty well briefed on what I’ll see,\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n

(Video: Cameron Dive First Attempt in Over 50 Years.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Bullet to the Deep<\/strong><\/p>\n

To get to this point, Cameron and his crew have spent seven years reimagining what a submersible can be. The result is the 24-foot-tall (7-meter-tall) DEEPSEA CHALLENGER.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Engineered to sink upright and spinning, like a bullet fired straight into the Mariana Trench, the sub can descend about 500 feet (150 meters) a minute\u2014\u00bbamazingly fast,\u00bb in the words of Robert Stern, a marine geologist at the University of Texas at Dallas.<\/p>\n

Pre-expedition estimates put the Challenger Deep descent at about 90 minutes. (Animation: Cameron’s Mariana Trench dive compressed into one minute.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

By contrast, some current remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, descend at about 40 meters (130 feet) a minute, added Stern, who isn’t part of the expedition.<\/p>\n

Andy Bowen, project manager and principal developer of the Nereus<\/a>, an ROV that explored Challenger Deep in 2009, called the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER<\/em> \u00aban extremely elegant solution to the challenge of diving a human-occupied submersible to such extreme depths.\u00bb<\/p>\n

\u00abIt’s been engineered to be very effective at getting from the surface to the seafloor in as quick a time as possible,\u00bb said Bowen, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who also isn’t part of the current expedition.<\/p>\n

And that’s just the idea, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE<\/em> team says: The faster Cameron gets there, the more time for science. (Read more about DEEPSEA CHALLENGE <\/em>science<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Pursuing speed and science in tandem makes the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER<\/em> test dives\u2014and even the Mariana Trench mission\u2014perhaps as unorthodox as the sub itself.<\/p>\n

Typically \u00abyou conduct a sea trial for a vehicle, you pronounce it fit for service, and then<\/em> you develop a science program around it,\u00bb Cameron said before heading to the trench. \u00abWe collapsed that together into one expedition, because [we were] fairly confident the vehicle would work\u2014and it is.\u00bb<\/p>\n

Techno Torpedo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, at the bottom of the trench, the sub’s custom-designed foam filling and the pressure-resistant shape of the \u00abpilot sphere\u00bb\u2014are helping protect Cameron from the equivalent of 8 tons pressing down on every square inch (1,125 kilograms per square centimeter). (Video: how sub sphere protects Cameron.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Among the sub’s tools are a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a \u00abslurp gun\u00bb for sucking up small sea creatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges.<\/p>\n

While that might sound like a gearhead’s paradise, Cameron knows he’ll \u00abhave to be able to prioritize.\u00bb<\/p>\n

\u00abIs my manipulator working properly? Do I still have room in my sample drawer? And do I still have the ability to take a [sediment] core sample? … I only have [tools for] three sediment cores available on the vehicle, so I have to choose wisely when to use them.\u00bb<\/p>\n

By contrast, the sub’s multiple 3-D cameras will be whirring almost continually, and not just for the benefit of future audiences of planned documentaries.<\/p>\n

\u00abThere is scientific value in getting stereo images,\u00bb Cameron said, \u00abbecause … you can determine the scale and distance of objects from stereo pairs that you can’t from 2-D images.\u00bb<\/p>\n

But, Scripps’s Bartlett said, \u00abit’s not just the video.\u00bb The sub’s lighting of deepwater scenes\u2014mainly by an 8-foot (2.5-meter) tower of LEDs\u2014is \u00abso, so beautiful. It’s unlike anything that you’ll have seen from other subs or other remotely operated vehicles.\u00bb<\/p>\n

(Video: Cameron Dive Is an Exploration First.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The Search for Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right now it’s a mystery what Cameron is seeing, sampling, and filming at depth, in part because so little is known about the Challenger Deep environment.<\/p>\n

The only glimpses scientists have had of the region, via two ROV missions, showed a seafloor covered in light gray, silky mud.<\/p>\n

Cameron may be detecting subtle signs of life\u2014burrows or tracks or fecal piles\u2014said DEEPSEA CHALLENGE<\/em> biological oceanographer Lisa Levin, also of Scripps, who’s monitoring the expedition from afar.<\/p>\n

If the water’s clear, she added, Cameron may be seeing jellyfish or xenophyophores\u2014giant, single-celled, honeycomb-shaped creatures already filmed in other areas of the Mariana Trench. (See \u00abGiant ‘Amoebas’ Found in Deepest Place on Earth.\u00bb<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u00abIf we get lucky,\u00bb Cameron said before the dive, \u00abwe should find something like a cold seep, where we might find tube worms.\u00bb Cold seeps are regions of the ocean floor somewhat like hydrothermal vents (video)<\/a> that ooze fluid chemicals at the same temperature as the surrounding water.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, during a test dive near Papua New Guinea<\/a>, Cameron brought back enormous shrimplike creatures from five miles (eight kilometers) down. At 7 inches (17 centimeters) long, the animals are \u00abthe largest amphipods ever seen at that kind of depth,\u00bb chief scientist Bartlett said. \u00abAnd we saw one on camera that was perhaps twice that size.\u00bb<\/p>\n

At Challenger Deep depths, though, the calcium animals need to form shells dissolves quickly. It’s unlikely\u2014though not impossible\u2014that Cameron is finding shelled creatures, but if he does, the discovery would be a scientific jaw-dropper.<\/p>\n

Even if he uncovers \u00aba rock with a shell limpet or some kind of bivalve in the mud\u00bb\u2014such as a clam, perhaps\u2014\u00bbthat would be exciting,\u00bb Scripps’s Levin said.<\/p>\n

Aliens of the Abyss<\/strong><\/p>\n

Expedition astrobiologist Kevin Hand<\/a>, of NASA<\/a>, imagines that the life-forms Cameron might be encountering could help fine-tune the search for extraterrestrial life.<\/p>\n

For instance, scientists think Jupiter’s moon Europa could harbor a global ocean beneath its thick shell of ice\u2014an ocean that, like Challenger Deep, would be lightless, near freezing, and home to areas of intense pressure. (See \u00abCould Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life?\u00bb<\/a>)<\/p>\n

By studying the wavelengths of light, or spectra, reflected off life-forms and sediments brought up by Cameron, Hand should get a better idea of which minerals are needed for life in such an environment. This, in turn, might help him design a space probe better able to detect signs of life on Europa.<\/p>\n

\u00abThere’s an old adage in geology that the best geologist is the one that’s seen the most rocks,\u00bb said Hand, a National Geographic emerging explorer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00abI think astrobiology could have a similar adage, in that our best capability for finding life elsewhere\u2014and knowing it when we see it\u2014will come from having a comprehensive understanding of all the various extremes of life on Earth.\u00bb<\/p>\n

And for UT Dallas’s Stern, DEEPSEA CHALLENGER’<\/em>s rock-sampling capability offers the opportunity to better understand our planet’s inner workings.<\/p>\n

\u00abChallenger Deep is the deepest cut into the solid Earth,\u00bb Stern said, \u00aband this gives us a chance to see deeper into the Earth than anywhere else.\u00bb<\/p>\n

Once the trench-dive data, specimens, and imagery have been analyzed,\u00a0National Geographic <\/em>magazine<\/a> <\/em>plans to reveal the full results in a special issue on next-generation exploration in January 2013.<\/p>\n

\u00abA Turning Point\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n

By returning humans to the so-called hadal zone\u2014the ocean’s deepest level, below 20,000 feet (6,000 meters)\u2014the Challenger Deep expedition may represent a renaissance in deep-sea exploration.<\/p>\n

While ROVs are much less expensive than manned subs, \u00abthe critical thing is to be able to take the human mind down into that environment,\u00bb expedition member Patricia Fryer<\/a> said, \u00abto be able to turn your head and look around to see what the relationships are between organisms in a community and to see how they’re behaving\u2014to turn off all the lights and just sit there and watch and not frighten the animals, so that they behave normally.<\/p>\n

\u00abThat is almost impossible to do with an ROV,\u00bb said Fryer, a marine geologist at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics & Planetology.<\/p>\n

In fact, Cameron is so confident in his star vehicle that he started mulling sequels even before the trench dive.<\/p>\n

Phase two might include adding a thin fiber-optic tether to the ship, which \u00abwould allow science observers at the surface to see the images in real time,\u00bb he said. \u00abAnd phase three might be taking this vehicle and creating a second-generation vehicle.\u00bb<\/p>\n

DEEPSEA CHALLENGE, <\/em>then, may be anything but a one-hit wonder. To <\/em>Bartlett, the Mariana Trench expedition could \u00abrepresent a turning point in how we approach ocean science.<\/p>\n

\u00abI absolutely think that what you’re seeing is the start of a program, not just one grand expedition.\u00bb<\/p>\n

National Geographic<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahora que James Cameron ha sido la primera persona en alcanzar el punto m\u00e1s profundo del planeta, comienza el aut\u00e9ntico trabajo . Cameron ha empleado varias horas de su estancia en el fondo en recolectar muestras, observar especies y, por supuesto, filmar lo que estaba viendo. -noticia en espa\u00f1ol en los comentarios– James Cameron ? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscelanea","category-records"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.albamar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}