In 1968, the astronauts on their way to the moon took a stunning photograph of the Earth.
That photograph revealed the vastness of the oceans: 97 percent of the volume of space in which life exists lies deep beneath the water’s surface — a world devoid of light, a realm of eternal darkness.
Robert Ballard has written a gripping account of the history of deep-sea exploration, which has been republished with a new preface.
Deep-sea exploration began on June 11, 1930, when Charles William Beebe and Otis Barton descended 1,426 feet in a diving chamber known as a bathysphere. It measured 4 feet, 9 inches in diameter and would take in only two passengers who entered head first through a 15-inch circular opening. The interior was bare except for two small oxygen tanks, which kept the air sweet for eight hours.
Apparently, Beebe and Barton used palm-leaf fans to circulate the air during their first dives. The bathysphere attached to a 3,500-foot long steel cable was lifted and lowered by a steam-powered winch.
During the first attempt, Beebe felt totally crushed in the small capsule, but he remembered Houdini’s relaxation technique. He regulated his breathing and spoke in low tones – this calmed him down. When they reached a depth of 400 feet, Beebe noticed some water trickling beneath the door but he knew that the door was solid enough. He realized that higher pressure outside the bathysphere would only seal it more tightly and instead of canceling the dive, he ordered a quicker descent. At a depth of 600 feet, the water took a shade of blue, which Beebe described as “the blueness of the blue” and seemed to penetrate, materially through the eye, into our beings.”
On that first dive, they finally reached a depth of 1,426 feet. When Beebe and Barton ended their dives in 1934, they had achieved a depth of 3,028 feet. William Beebe later wrote: “When once it has been seen (the deep ocean), it will remain forever the most vivid memory in life.”
Twenty years would pass before a loss of momentum gave way to a renewed interest in the exploration of the deep abyss. Venturing at such great depths required a different kind of diving craft. It needed to be stronger and heavier to withstand greater pressure, and also easier to lift back to the surface.
In 1937, during a reception he was attending, the Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard told King Leopold III of Belgium that he was planning to build a bathyscaph to reach the bottom of the sea. The king was interested and asked for more information. The following day, Piccard met with his assistants. “I told the king yesterday that we are going to build a bathyscaph. We have no choice now but to do it.” While Picard was building “Trieste,” the French were also creating their own version of a bathyscaph. A race had begun. In 1948, both the French and Piccard’s bathyscaphs had reached a depth of more than two miles.
The Americans decided then to join Auguste and Jacques Piccard’s team and take part in the race. The US was already competing against the Soviet Union for the conquest of space and also wanted to dominate the race to the deepest spot in the world – Challenger Deep, 35,800 feet below the ocean surface. Challenger Deep was considered the Mount Everest of the ocean and a descent into the dark depths of the Mariana Trench was the ultimate goal within the small group of deep-sea explorers.
To make sure “Trieste” would be ready to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep, Jacques Piccard decided to build a new pressure sphere for the bathyscaph, which should be able to withstand up to nine tons of pressure per square inch. The day of the big dive had been set for Jan. 23, 1960. At 8 a.m. Piccard and his American co-passenger boarded the Trieste but they discovered that during the tow, pounding waves had washed away part of a surface telephone making it impossible to communicate with the support team once the two men were sealed inside. There was no time to repair because the return was planned before dark.
If they surfaced at night, the support crew might not locate them. At 8:23 a.m. the descent began. When they reached a depth of 36,000 feet, the “abyssal cold had penetrated the bathyscaph’s heavy Krupp steel, chilling everything. Tension rose inside the tiny capsule, which now seemed more like a spherical coffin dripping with water,” wrote Ballard. At last, the depth gauge showed 37,800 feet.
However, later Piccard and Walsh discovered that the gauge had been calibrated in Switzerland, in fresh water. Their real depth was 35,800 feet. Lying on the bottom, Piccard saw a flat fish resembling a sole, and that made him extremely happy. Life exists at such a depth. Piccard and Walsh shook hands. They had succeeded. They began their ascent and reached the surface at 4:56 p.m. The race to the bottom of the ocean had come to an end and deep-sea exploration could begin.
In the 1960s, Jacques Cousteau, a writer, scientist, inventor, researcher and filmmaker would familiarize the world with deep-sea exploration thanks to an amazing diving saucer. Cousteau got the idea for this diving machine during a meeting in his ship’s mess.
While he was talking to the members of his team, he picked up two soup plates and held them together, explaining that a saucer with enough space for one or two people would be easy to maneuver, and it would also be light enough to be carried on board Calypso.
“Pay no attention to speed,” Cousteau said. “It isn’t needed in an exploring submarine. We want agility, perfect trim, tight turns and hovering ability. Let the men look out with their eyes and make them more comfortable than the awkward kneeling attitude in the bathyscaph.”
The “Soucoupe” took several years to make but it would become the prototype of all modern submersibles. It resembled no other vehicle on earth. It didn’t have any propellers, rudder or planes to drive the hull through water. This strange looking saucer was able to climb and dive at near-vertical angles unlike most deep submersibles to follow.
Cousteau was also a talented photographer.
He had known for a long time that it was necessary to separate the camera from its light source and this enabled him to produce some superb documents like “The Silent World,” which won a Palm d’Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Cousteau also produced a famous series of documentaries, “The Odyssey of the Cousteau Team.”
By the early 1980s, the majority of scientists in the oceanographic community had never been in a submersible. Thanks to a high-capacity fiber optic tether a large network of scientists can participate in deep-sea operations from shore-based satellite receiving centers simultaneously with the team in the control center aboard the research ship.
“Right now, in the deep sea, two eras overlap. Robots are sending views from the bottom with laser-light pulses through fibers of glass while humans are still descending in hard little spheres, surrounded by syntactic foam.
In the long run, those submersibles may be doomed, but I see no reason to rush them into early retirement,” concluded Ballard.
To this day, more than 95 percent of the world’s oceans remain unexplored, and less than 1 percent of all the seafloor has been observed. Yet a better understanding of the ocean is vital to ensure our survival.
The “Eternal Darkness, a Personal History of Deep Sea Exploration” is told by Robert Ballard who found the Titanic and ventured in the mid-Atlantic ridge. He has done more than any other person to shed light on the ocean depths.
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Email: [email protected]
Book Review: The final frontier
Book Review: The final frontier
Britain’s Stonehenge is yet again a source of fascination ahead of the winter solstice
LONDON: It’s that time of year when crowds of pagans, druids, hippies and tourists head to Stonehenge in Britain to celebrate the winter solstice, with the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere.
Thousands are expected on Saturday at the megalithic circle on a plain in southern England as the first rays of sun break through the giant stones that make up one of world’s most famous prehistoric monuments.
Rain has been forecast but there is no doubt it won’t be able to drown out the drumming, chanting and cheering.
Beyond the fascination of the ritual, the eternal question may still linger in the back of the minds of many visitors: What was the real meaning and purpose of Stonehenge?
The site has been the subject of vigorous debate, with some theories seemingly more outlandish, if not alien, than others.
This year, those gathering will have something new to discuss.
In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University say that the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had some unifying purpose in ancient times.
They base that on a recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site.
What was surprising was that it came from so far away. It was long known that the other stones come from all over Britain — including the so-called bluestones, the smaller stones at the site that came from Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) away.
That varied geology is what makes Stonehenge unique among over 900 stone circles in Britain.
“The fact that all of its stones originated from distant regions ... suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose,” said lead author Professor Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology.
It may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos,” Parker Pearson said.
Whatever its original purpose, Stonehenge today retains an important place in Britain’s culture and history and remains one of the country’s biggest tourist draws — despite the seemingly permanent traffic jams on the nearby A303 highway, a popular route for motorists traveling to and from the southwest of England.
Stonehenge was built on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in stages, starting 5,000 years ago, with the unique stone circle erected in the late Neolithic period, about 2,500 B.C.
English Heritage, a charity that manages hundreds of historic sites, including Stonehenge, has noted several explanations — from the circle being a coronation place for Danish kings, a druid temple, a cult center for healing, or an astronomical computer for predicting eclipses and solar events.
So as far as symbolism and unification go — maybe Stonehenge really was a Mount Rushmore of its day?
Starbucks workers’ union to strike in LA, Chicago, Seattle before Christmas
The workers’ union representing more than 10,000 Starbucks baristas said its members will strike at stores in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle on Friday morning during the busy holiday season.
Workers United, representing employees at 525 Starbucks stores across the United States, said that walkouts are expected to escalate daily, potentially reaching hundreds of stores nationwide by Christmas Eve, unless Starbucks and the union finalize a collective bargaining agreement.
The union and Starbucks created a “framework” in February to guide organizing and collective bargaining. Negotiations between the company and Workers United began in April, based on the framework, that could also help resolve numerous pending legal disputes.
“Since the February commitment, the company repeatedly pledged publicly that it intended to reach contracts by the end of the year, but it has yet to present workers with a serious economic proposal,” the union said in a statement late on Thursday.
Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The coffee chain is undergoing a turnaround under its newly appointed top boss Brian Niccol, who aims to restore “coffee house culture” by overhauling cafes, adding more comfortable seating, reducing customer wait-time to less than four minutes, and simplifying its menu.
Invasive ‘murder hornets’ are wiped out in the US, officials say
- There had been no detections of the northern giant hornet in Washington since 2021
- Northern giant hornets pose significant threats to pollinators and native insects
SEATTLE: The world’s largest hornet, an invasive breed dubbed the “murder hornet” for its dangerous sting and ability to slaughter a honeybee hive in a matter of hours, has been declared eradicated in the US, five years after being spotted for the first time in Washington state near the Canadian border.
The Washington and US Departments of Agriculture announced the eradication Wednesday, saying there had been no detections of the northern giant hornet in Washington since 2021.
The news represented an enormous success that included residents agreeing to place traps on their properties and reporting sightings, as well as researchers capturing a live hornet, attaching a tiny radio tracking tag to it with dental floss, and following it through a forest to a nest in an alder tree. Scientists destroyed the nest just as a number of queens were just beginning to emerge, officials said.
“I’ve gotta tell you, as an entomologist — I’ve been doing this for over 25 years now, and it is a rare day when the humans actually get to win one against the insects,” Sven Spichiger, pest program manager of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, told a virtual news conference.
The hornets, which can be 5 centimeters long and were formerly called Asian giant hornets, gained attention in 2013, when they killed 42 people in China and seriously injured 1,675. In the US, around 72 people a year die from bee and hornet stings each year, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.
The hornets were first detected in North America in British Columbia, Canada, in August 2019 and confirmed in Washington state in December 2019, when a Whatcom County resident reported a specimen. A beekeeper also reported hives being attacked and turned over specimens in the summer of 2020. The hornets could have traveled to North America in plant pots or shipping containers, experts said.
DNA evidence suggested the populations found in British Columbia and Washington were not related and appeared to originate from different countries. There also have been no confirmed reports in British Columbia since 2021, and the nonprofit Invasive Species Center in Canada has said the hornet is also considered eradicated there.
Northern giant hornets pose significant threats to pollinators and native insects. They can wipe out a honeybee hive in as little as 90 minutes, decapitating the bees and then defending the hive as their own, taking the brood to feed their own young.
The hornet can sting through most beekeeper suits, deliver nearly seven times the amount of venom as a honeybee, and sting multiple times. At one point the Washington agriculture department ordered special reinforced suits from China.
Washington is the only state that has had confirmed reports of northern giant hornets. Trappers found four nests in 2020 and 2021.
Spichiger said Washington will remain on the lookout, despite reporting the eradication. He noted that entomologists will continue to monitor traps in Kitsap County, where a resident reported an unconfirmed sighting in October but where trapping efforts and public outreach have come up empty.
He noted that other invasive hornets can also pose problems: Officials in Georgia and South Carolina are fighting yellow-legged hornets, and southern giant hornets were recently detected in Spain.
“We will continue to be vigilant,” Spichiger said.
Re-discovered tapes bear witness to Somaliland identity
HARGEISA: In a library in Somaliland, Hafsa Omer presses play on a small cassette player. The sound of a Somali lute interwoven with a woman’s soft singing fills the room.
Tapping her keyboard, Omer bobs with the rhythm of the pentatonic melody typical in the northern region of the Horn of Africa.
Since 2021, the 21-year-old has been painstakingly archiving and digitising a collection of some 14,000 cassettes at the Cultural Center in Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital.
Bought back, found or donated, the tapes contain more than half a century of the musical, cultural and political life of the region.
Somaliland has run its own affairs since unilaterally declaring independence from Somalia in 1991 but remains unrecognized by any country.
That makes cultural heritage — like the tapes — vital.
“Many people don’t consider these things to be important, but they contain the whole history of my country,” Omer told AFP.
“My people don’t write, they don’t read. All they do is talk.”
Somalis have traditionally been primarily nomadic shepherds, with culture transmitted orally from one generation to another.
What is now Somaliland has long been a center of music and poetry — art that plays a crucial, even political, role in this corner of Africa.
The public radio station, Radio Hargeisa, also has a collection of over 5,000 reels and cassettes, programs and music recorded in its studios since its founding in 1943.
The tens of thousands of hours of tapes in the cultural center tell a less official story — ranging from 1970s counterculture “Somali funk,” to unreleased recordings of play rehearsals and accounts of people’s daily lives.
With small tape recorders becoming widely available in the 1970s and 1980s, Somalilanders got into the habit of corresponding with exiled relatives via cassette.
Gathered around a tape recorder, they would recount intimacies of family life but also survival during a decade-long war that culminated in the declaration of independence in 1991.
The conflict between rebels and the Mogadishu-based military regime of Siad Barre saw around 70 percent of Hargeisa destroyed in 1988.
Jama Musse Jama, director of the cultural center, described how troves of cassettes were recorded “underground” as people met clandestinely to chat, chew the stimulant khat and talk politics.
“They cannot say (these things) in public,” he said. “You find all what didn’t end up in the ordinary, formal recordings of the state — what was happening in the streets.”
Fewer than 5,000 cassettes have been catalogued and only 1,100 digitised, leaving a titanic task for Omer and her team of four friends.
But it has become a fitting cultural odyssey in a place still searching for recognition.
“It’s proof against those who say Somaliland doesn’t exist,” said Jama.
He believes his and Omer’s work will guide younger generations searching for their past — a storied history that stretches beyond their regional conflict to its time as an Italian and British colony and beyond.
“We need to give them an identity,” he said.
“All these stories that make up the identity of the Somaliland people are in these recordings.”
Drones, planes or UFOs? Americans abuzz over mysterious New Jersey sightings
- The saga of the drones reported over New Jersey has reached incredible heights
- ‘How can you say it’s not posing a threat if you don’t know what it is?’
CHATHAM, New Jersey: That buzzing coming out of New Jersey? It’s unclear if it’s drones or something else, but for sure the nighttime sightings are producing tons of talk, a raft of conspiracy theories and craned necks looking skyward.
Cropping up on local news and social media sites around Thanksgiving, the saga of the drones reported over New Jersey has reached incredible heights.
This week seems to have begun a new, higher-profile chapter: Lawmakers are demanding (but so far not getting) explanations from federal and state authorities about what’s behind them. Gov. Phil Murphy wrote to President Joe Biden asking for answers. New Jersey’s new senator, Andy Kim, spent Thursday night on a drone hunt in rural northern New Jersey, and posted about it on X.
More drone sightings have been reported in New York City, and Mayor Eric Adams says the city is investigating and collaborating with New Jersey and federal officials. And then President-elect Donald Trump posted that he believes the government knows more than it’s saying. “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!” he posted on his social media site.
But perhaps the most fantastic development is the dizzying proliferation of conspiracies, none of which has been confirmed or suggested by federal and state officials who say they’re looking into what’s happening. It has become shorthand to refer to the flying machines as drones, but there are questions about whether what people are seeing are unmanned aircraft or something else.
Some theorize the drones came from an Iranian mothership. Others think they are the Secret Service making sure President-elect Donald Trump’s Bedminster property is secure. Others worry about China. The deep state. And on.
In the face of uncertainty, people have done what they do in 2024: Create a social media group.
The Facebook page, New Jersey Mystery Drones — let’s solve it, has nearly 44,000 members, up from 39,000 late Thursday. People are posting their photo and video sightings, and the online commenters take it from there.
One video shows a whitish light flying in a darkened sky, and one commenter concludes it’s otherworldly. “Straight up orbs,” the person says. Others weigh in to say it’s a plane or maybe a satellite. Another group called for hunting the drones literally, shooting them down like turkeys. (Do not shoot at anything in the sky, experts warn.)
Trisha Bushey, 48, of Lebanon Township, New Jersey, lives near Round Valley Reservoir where there have been numerous sightings. She said she first posted photos online last month wondering what the objects were and became convinced they were drones when she saw how they moved and when her son showed her on a flight tracking site that no planes were around. Now she’s glued to the Mystery Drones page, she said.
“I find myself — instead of Christmas shopping or cleaning my house — checking it,” she said.
She doesn’t buy what the governor said, that the drones aren’t a risk to public safety. Murphy told Biden on Friday that residents need answers. The federal Homeland Security Department and FBI also said in a joint statement they have no evidence that the sightings pose “a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”
“How can you say it’s not posing a threat if you don’t know what it is?” she said. “I think that’s why so many people are uneasy.”
Then there’s the notion that people could misunderstand what they’re seeing. William Austin is the president of Warren County Community College, which has a drone technology degree program, and is coincidentally located in one of the sighting hotspots.
Austin says he has looked at videos of purported drones and that airplanes are being misidentified as drones. He cited an optical effect called parallax, which is the apparent shift of an object when viewed from different perspectives. Austin encouraged people to download flight and drone tracker apps so they can better understand what they’re looking at.
Nonetheless, people continue to come up with their own theories.
“It represents the United States of America in 2024,” Austin said. “We’ve lost trust in our institutions, and we need it.”
Federal officials echo Austin’s view that many of the sightings are piloted aircraft such as planes and helicopters being mistaken for drones, according to lawmakers and Murphy.
That’s not really convincing for many, though, who are homing in on the sightings beyond just New Jersey and the East Coast, where others have reported seeing the objects.
For Seph Divine, 34, another member of the drone hunting group who lives in Eugene, Oregon, it feels as if it’s up to citizen sleuths to solve the mystery. He said he tries to be a voice of reason, encouraging people to fact check their information, while also asking probing questions.
“My main goal is I don’t want people to be caught up in the hysteria and I also want people to not just ignore it at the same time,” he said.
“Whether or not it’s foreign military or some secret access program or something otherworldly, whatever it is, all I’m saying is it’s alarming that this is happening so suddenly and so consistently for hours at a time,” he added.
