Wow! Is this picture accurate? The Wikipedia article on the Deepwater Horizon says it only went to 10 685 m. But it makes me wonder, if we can drill to that deep, why can’t we dive that deep easily? And what’s that bit about Freddie Mercury?
Him and David Bowie are…
…Under Pressure
Goddammit, I’ve got that cartoon as a large poster, and I have the song on my iPod - and I never made the connection.
:smack:
It’s not terribly hard to dangle a drill bit that deep in the water; it’s much more difficult to build a large, hollow vessel that doesn’t implode when exposed to several thousand psi of water pressure on its hull. It’s been done, but not for practical purposes.
In other words: possible, but not profitable.
Aww, I thought they were buried at that depth. My current practical dream burial is to have my cremated remains sealed in a tungsten tube and dropped over the Marianas Trench. The impractical one is shot into a black hole.
It’s not? I’ve heard that that depth, the drill bit is like a strand of spaghetti. Or was that an analogy for something else? Hmm…
The cartoon depicts a bore hole roughly 10,500 meters long starting from the bottom of the ocean (which in turn is roughly 1500 meters below the surface of the ocean). That’s fairly close to reality.
Perhaps that’s caused by higher erosion above the surface, or underwater growth (coral). I don’t know about Mauna Kea in particular, but I do know that for atolls, the mountain has long since eroded, and what remains is primarily coral growth on top, covered by residue from upslope erosion, plus whatever the local ecology adds.
A steel rod that length would be like a strand of spaghetti, regardless of where it was – it doensn’t have to be underwater or under pressure.
So it’s not THAT easy, but it’s certainly a lot more profitable than sending someone down there.
RE: the XKCD cartoon. there’s an unlabelled white line below the gap between Titanic and Aircraft Carrier. Any idea what that is?
Bin Laden in a sheet?
Weird. That little line is not present on the full-size poster print.
The water lapping at the shore of an island may be eroding it, but it is not holding it up.
WTF?! I tried the same link again and still didn’t get any virus alerts, maybe it only happens with a particular AV because it was detected as a threat in the past (I have MSE). Either from the Google image link (http://www.google.com/imgres…) or the actual web site (a link to Google should be safe, shouldn’t it?).
That would be incredibly unpopular with David Bowie since he’s still alive.