James Cameron Begins His Deep-Sea Dive 162
James Cameron is on his way down. The director's long-planned trip to the deepest spot on Earth — the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep — is in progress; by the time you read this, if all goes well, Cameron will be navigating around in depths unvisited since 1960. National Geographic's coverage of the dive is excellent as well, as is the BBC's (with video).
Godspeed! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Cool rich guy (Score:5, Informative)
But not quite as cool as planning on retiring to Mars.
He's already on the bottom (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
He created a sci fi world with at least some effort at plausibility.
Oh, c'mon! Where the frig in the Periodic Table does one find "Unobtanium"? Seriously? I heard that, and gave up on the flick from that point on.
The reason the "indians" won was because the entire planet was a biological entity that could defend itself, by mobilizing all resources against the human invaders
Entity, meet biological warfare (easily possible, given the ease with which the DNA was replicated) and a gaggle of large asteroids being flung at the surface just for good measure (also possible, given the massive energy require to go FTL (or was it near-light?) speeds in the first place). There's at least half a dozen ways, given that story's tech, in which to destroy the inhabitants without harming the material, endangering a single human being, and basically turning the place into an airless rock that can be strip-mined.
Seriously... good visual effects (easily give it that), but the story had more holes in it than a sieve.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
The test dives all went well past the 8,000 meter mark and I'm sure the sponsors wanted the deepest point moniker attached to the venture. There are many mountains more challenging to climb than Everest but everyone want to go to the highest none the less.
All along he's said that it's about the science and having reached the deepest point I'm sure they'll be visiting those places that maximise the science. James Cameron says he does not want this dive to the deep to be a one-off, and wants to use it as a platform for ocean exploration. [bbc.co.uk]
Having reached the deepest point there is no where marked off limits and there are several other ventures out there on the same Race to the bottom of the Ocean [bbc.co.uk] quest.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Your point is valid, but elements are one of the things we can experiment with fairly well here on Earth, and after a certain point atoms get too large to be stable and break apart almost immediately. Right now, some suspect that there may be some "islands of stability" out there on the periodic table, but after a certain point, while an element is possible, it usually breaks down in a very, very short period of time after creation because nuclear forces start becoming too weak to hold it all together.
So, point is, it's unlikely that an element we haven't heard of exists in large deposits on a terrestrial world. It would have decayed to other elements very quickly after formation, let alone surviving long enough to be part of planet formation.
On the other hand, no one said "unobtainium" needs to be a new element. It could be one of the newly discovered ones we have right now that they just nicknamed because it was very difficult to find or produce.
Re:Cool rich guy (Score:5, Informative)
He means Bill Gates, though I don't his dig about 'monopoly'. Say what you will about Bill Gates the OS monopolist, but the Gates Foundation has done very good work.
I happen to have many friends working in NGOs in developing countries and I'm getting the same feedback over and over: the Gates Foundation is like a bulldozer that rolls over all the "competition" and forces people to do things their way. The foundation also has close ties to Monsanto and is pushing around the small organizations that disagree with their vision of "green development".
I guess you have access to Google, it's worth a quick search.
Re:Good luck maybe. (Score:4, Informative)
that one's not by Michael Bay. Even he isn't dumb enough to try and make water explode.
AWESOME POOL! [youtube.com]