New Fish Species Discovered 4.5 Miles Under the Ocean 96
eldavojohn writes "The University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab (a partner in the recent census of marine life) has discovered a new snailfish. That might not sound very exciting, unless you consider that its habitat is an impressive four and a half miles below the ocean's surface (video). If my calculations are correct, that's over ten and a half thousand PSI, or about seventy-three million Pascals. The videos and pictures are a couple years old, as the team has traveled around Japan, South America and New Zealand to ascertain the biodiversity of these depths. The group hopes to eventually bring specimens to the surface. It seems the deepest parts of the ocean, once thought to be devoid of life, are actually home to some organisms. As researchers build better technology for underwater exploration, tales of yore containing unimaginable monsters seem a little more realistic than before."
About seventy-three million Pascals (Score:5, Funny)
Or over 3.6 trillion Cobols.
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Or half a Python?
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A true geek would use MiPa (MibiPascals)
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If he was about units that are easy to understand, he would use Metric.
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big deal (Score:2)
that's only like 8 perls
Re:About seventy-three million Pascals (Score:5, Funny)
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They went to some effort to convert the pressure to something large.
They could have said 10,587.7549 pounds per square inch and sounded American.
They could have said 73 atmospheres and sounded wimpy.
And I think if you do it in Cobols you have to divide pascals by the weight of Cobol programs when printed out on green bar in the Cobol probrams history to 1995. That's a measly .05 Cobols. Now that we have conflicting definition for a Cobol when used as a unit of pressure can we get an SI uint and call it Boco
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73 MPa is not 73 atmospheres, it is a bit more than 720 atm.
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> They could have said 73 atmospheres and sounded wimpy.
Not wimpy, but wrong by exactly one order of magnitude.
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Where the is water (Score:2)
there is life.
And there is a lot of water in the universe.
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And just how do you propose that happen?
Peak biodiversity (Score:2)
these, and many other species, will be gone in few years. we need to significantly reduce the worlds population, starting now.
If a high quantity of species is desirable (big if), selection pressure (human competition, for example) would be a Good Thing, as it would drive speciation. BTW, in which era would you place peak biodiversity? Was it really that nice back then?
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Any specific reason why this has to be NOW, not 50 years ago, not 50 years in the future ? Are you selling a book, or buying too many of *those* books ?
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Is that you James Lee? I thought the police shot you when you did that thing at the discovery channel.
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It's not needed. Nearly all estimates predict human population will peak at about 9 billion sometime this century, then start declining. This is entirely due to education and a higher standard of living. With those, people naturally have less children.
Lowering population by a couple of billion will not necessarily preserve species. If there were only one billion people who consumed the amount the average American does now, we'd be in a worse position than we are now with 6 billion.
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Neptune was Roman. Poseidon is the Greek analogue. Besides which, Poseidon (or Neptune) have nothing to do with rain... that would be Zeus (or Jupiter).
Yes, yes, you were trying to make a joke... but please do be accurate lest Poseidon's horses carry you away (yes, the greek god of the sea was also the god of horses. Go figure.).
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I thought Poseidon was the manufacturer of nicely-made Swedish regulators.
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I thought Poseidon was the name of a cruise ship
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Units (Score:3, Informative)
That's about 715 atmospheres, in case anyone else is interested in remotely relatable units.
-Peter
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Although it's an astonishing pressure, it's static, and equilibrated. That is, just as atmospheric pressure is balanced by the pressure in our bodies, and therefore individual cells and organs do not have to withstand much if any of a pressure differential, the same will be true of these creatures despite the massive depths. The creatures aren't pressure vessels: Bringing them to the surface creates a huge pressure differential, causing them to rupture.
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No they won't! They'll grow to hundreds of times their original size, and then they'll start stomping all over Tokyo. Why, oh why did those scientists have to bring back a sample to the surface?
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I get 721:
(4.5 miles * 5280 feet / mile ) / 33 feet per atm + 1 atm = 721 atm.
Eh, let's call it "more than 700" and be done with it.
Corrections to my math or methods are posted below:
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I didn't know we were showing our work [google.com].
-Peter
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I would say that we're both right if we used totally different methods for getting approximately the same number.
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Oh goody, let's have this conversation again.
Slashdot is a US site. [slashdot.org] Yes, it has users from around the world, and it's great to have you all here. But bar aren't commonly used in the US and, therefore, are not relatable units in context.
-Peter
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I picture them just exploding they're raised above a certain depth.
Also, too soon to predict a future where there are pressurized water aquariums for these interesting fish?
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If the fish was brought up without proper pressure then yes it would take a significant amount of time to rise and live (maybe even impossible). I belive that they typically manage to store them in some kind of pressure vessel so that they can keep them at least close to the same pressure until they can perform a study on them. either that or they just let them explode i don't know.
just, please (Score:2)
whatever these well meaning scientists do, make sure they do not awaken the one waiting, dreaming, in his house at R'lyeh
Jeez how hard is it to use USI (Score:1)
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What is this "world" thing you speak of?
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Sounds like.. (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like this snail works well ...
...
(puts sunglasses on)
...
under pressure.
...
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......
(Sorry I seem to have gotten lost on my way to reddit...)
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http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/csi-4-pane-comics [knowyourmeme.com]
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Better adapted to space as well? (Score:2)
I wonder how these snailfish would fare if exposed to the 'vacuum' of space? Would they fare better than the near instant death of terrestrial creatures? It seems to me that any creature that lives at pressures of 10K PSI must not have an internal pressure differential at all. Gills are certainly a better adaptation for both immense pressures and vacuums than lungs.
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I didn't realize that was the case. There's a lot I don't know about biology.
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Depth is irrelevant. (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop thinking about it like what would happen to you at that depth because thats not what happens.
Everything in the body of the fish formed at that pressure, which means it doesn't really feel the pressure. Your body didn't. Its internal pressure is about 14psi, if you took it down there, it would be crushed until it reached equilibrium with the outside pressure.
Likewise, if your brought the fish to the surface, or tried to, it would literally explode before it got to the surface as the internal pressure would be too great for its cells to contain.
You can see the same thing if you pull a fish up from even 150 feet too quickly, its eyeballs will pop out of its skull and its internal organs sometimes pushed out of its mouth.
We need to stop thinking that theres something special about life at these pressures or depths like its rare. We've known for 50 years there are fish down deeper than that, there were fish at the bottom of the Marianas trench, this one is slightly more than HALF that deep.
When you are born at such pressures, anything else seems insane ... kind of like going into space without a space suit, which is pretty much what the fish would need to survive at the surface since its body is designed to operate at much higher pressures.
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Depth is relevant... Because there is no light that deep. What is their food source? how do they survive? How did their species evolve to make sure they were born with the same internal pressure? Like your example states, these fish didn't just swim on DOWN there one day and decide to call it home...
Re:Depth is irrelevant. (Score:4, Informative)
What is their food source?
Apparently there's a steady rain of nutrition from above, basically. Feces, skin cells, plant material, cast off crap... they live in a constant of surface particles wending their way down, much of which is edible to them.
How did their species evolve to make sure they were born with the same internal pressure?
You don't decide to be born at the same internal pressure as your parents, any that you, the poster, decided to be born as an oxygen breathing mammal. Fish at that pressure necessarily breed more fish at the same pressure--any who leave the safe pressure zone die rather than breed. How did you decide not to be born underwater? Your parents avoiding death by drowning in order to give birth to you.
Re:Depth is irrelevant. (Score:4, Informative)
Obligatory Mythbusters reference [wikipedia.org].
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If they taste good I'm marketing them as a new product.
Sealed in a special pressurized container, you pop it open and...
Blam!!
INSTANT SUSHI! (tm)
[Protective bib sold separately]
Not for years (Score:4, Insightful)
" It seems the deepest parts of the ocean, once thought to be devoid of life, are actually home to some organisms."
Do we really have to hear this every effing time a new deep sea species is discovered? The deeps haven't been thought of as being devoid of life for decades, if ever.
Wow that's amazing (Score:5, Funny)
get to the important part (Score:2)
What does it taste like?
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Given the fact that it lives life under the sea at "over 700 atmospheres," and any attempt to bring it to the surface and prepare it for consumption would cause every cell in its body to rupture, then the answer to your question is very likely, "fish goo."
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I'm going to go with "like piss." Deep sea and arctic sea creatures tend to have significant amounts of ammonia in their flesh, thus making them quite nasty. Thus the reason the Japanese haven't started fishing for giant squid.
The fools, they brought it to the surface! (Score:1)
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Dopefish is not a lie! (Score:2)
Dopefish is not a lie!
eh? (Score:1)
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Richard Nixon, of course
Fish have been reported deeper before (Score:3, Informative)
An expedition to the Mariana Trench back in 1960 [wikipedia.org] at a depth of 6.8 miles reported "a number of small sole and flounder swimming away". so it's been known for 50 years that vertebrates can survive at extreme depths (the deepest part of the ocean no less)
Goldilocks & exoplanets (Score:2)
Does 700+ atmospheres constitute 'goldilocks' in the search for exoplanets? 'Goldilocks', apparently refers to a set of conditions capable of sustaining life. I've often been struck by the near-religous arrogance of defining the conditions capable of sustaining life. Someone who didn't drop biology in (very) high school will hopefully clarify this. From casual reading, it seems that we find life on this planet everywhere we look. From SO2 vents on the ocean floor, to the rim of volcanoes, the ocea
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We presume that when life started off on this planet 4 billion years ago, give or take a week, there was water, heat, little oxygen and a lot of minerals and dirt. Life started and then colonized, and dramatically changed, the planet. The question now is whether life can form in other envir
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I can reply as an astronomer: 'Goldilocks' more ore less only refers to conditions that allow liquid water, which on earth seems to be the the only condition that must hold. An energy source will always be found, but afaik, no water == no life.
Astronomers are not so close minded as you seem to suppose they are, but you have to start somewhere. It is hard enough (==impossible atm) to determine whether a planet can sustain life as we know it. Once we are able to do that, we will also look for other signs of l
4.5 Miles Under the Ocean (Score:1)
Title needs a little revision - "New Fish Species Discovered 4.5 Miles Under the Ocean"
That's a lot of deep ocean digging to get to it.
"If my calculations are correct" (Score:2)
That tiny snippet of a sentence sums up the problem with Imperial.
I need exactly _one_ non-trivial calculation to fix this:
4.5 miles = 7.24 km
So it's 725 bar. (ten meters of water = 1 bar. plus the ~1 bar of air)
Why is it that the US still prefers Imperial over Metric? I really don't get it.
Go deeper to find "Starfish" (Score:2)
or {beta}ehemoth
sorry - I don't know how to html a greek letter. So go read the Peter Watts series, already!
Over/Under (Score:2)
Miles Under the Ocean
Well, that's interesting, a fish under the ocean. Usually there's rock under the ocean.