With the escaping air and pressure, it included bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in fragmentation of his body, followed by expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.[3]: 95
That was at 8 atmospheres. Not the aproximately 375 atmosphers at Titanic debths. Unidentifiable soup would be all that is left of these unfortunate people.
The air would be superheated, but it’s such a short time that it wouldn’t really cook anything. The water would smash into the body before the air could burn it.
And to further get into the physics of this, it’s not the water pressure alone that would turn a body into paste. If you drop a weighted body overboard in this spot, it’s still going to be a recognizable human body when it reaches the bottom. The fluids in a body are effectively not compressible, so it’s only the air pockets that will collapse. And most of those air pockets will be filled with water being forced in through the holes of the body, rather than the body compressing.
If the person is holding their breath and is a trained free driver who can resist the gasping reflex, their rib cage might collapse before it fills with water (which is plenty gruesome, because it will probably include their abdominal organs being forced up into their chest). But in no circumstance is the person going to turn into a meat sphere or a blob of goo.
In a catastrophic implosion event, however, it’s not the water pressure that kills you. It’s the mass of water moving at hypersonic speed that completely crushes the body, either against the capsule wall opposite the breach or against the mass of water coming from the opposite direction. That can definitely make the body completely unrecognizable.
Is this the correct term, rather than “catastrophic compression”?
The Byford Dolphin was catastrophic decompression–the victims suddenly went from high pressure to low. The victims of this catastrophe suddenly went from low pressure to high.
Do we know that the implosion occured when they were already at the bottom, as opposed to partway down? I thought – I might be wrong – that they lost contact well before the submersible reached bottom.
Not that it seems to make much practical difference whether they were at 375 atmospheres or somewhat less. Whatever depth they were at, it was enough to crush the ship.
Next question: can we now get one tenth of the money, skill, technology, and attention that’s gone into looking for these 5 people turned instead to looking for, say, all those First Nations women and girls missing in Canada and the USA? or, I’m sure, the equivalent situation in a lot of other places?
(I’m not putting my own nose in the air about this. I’ve read this thread, bothered to comment in it, and read some of the news stories. But it’s nevertheless true that some people get lots and lots of attention if they disappear, and others . . . don’t.)
I had the same question, while thinking about an implosion closer to the surface that was less instantaneously fatal. But everything (including being able to characterize something as a “debris field”) suggests they were deep.
Don’t watch this if you’re easily made queasy. A MythBusters segment using pig meat and a simulated skeleton to investigate decompression in an old fashioned diving suit at 300 feet depth when surface air supply fails.
I saw an interview with Bob Ballard and James Cameron that included a passing comment, no details, implying that they’d seen pictures of the wreckage (they are world-class experts so it makes sense they’d be consulted) and based on something they didn’t specifically describe, there was reason to believe that the submersible operators had dropped their ballast and were attempting to ascend when the implosion occurred. This would be consistent with a scenario where they experience some sort of emergency situation that cuts off contact and puts them in a crisis-management mode requiring urgent ascent. Cameron specifically said the vehicle had interior sensors that were supposed to warn the occupants of imminent failure, so it’s possible they knew they were in serious trouble before they died, versus the alternative where there was zero warning. Awful to think about.
Edit to add: Obviously this is all super preliminary, based on very, very limited information. And their comment was very brief, made in passing. But it did seem like they knew something, however scanty.
Out of morbid curiousity, assuming the remains are/were at the depth of the Titanic, what scavengers would be there to feed on them? I assume sharks don’t go that deep, but do they? Is there life on the sea floor that would clean up the human remains?
Do life insurance policies have Exclusions for say, Experimental aircraft? This would be analogous. NASA Astronauts famously could not obtain life insurance coverage for the Apollo missions. Imagine that.
I would hope the billionaire submersibles were smart enough to at least inquire with their agent. Especially after looking at the waiver they signed. Hanging out in 12,000 feet of water is pretty risky. They may have purchased special policies due to the risk.
