Wreck of Australian Warship HMAS Sydney Found? 193
Mendy writes "Tim Ankers, a British archaeologist, claims to have found the wreck of the HMAS Sydney, lost with all hands in the Indian Ocean during World War II. He says that he's done this from the comfort of his home using software he wrote called Merlindown, which can analyze satellite photographs at different wavelengths to 'peer 75 meters into the earth and 16,000 meters beneath the seas.'"
Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Sunken Warships on Google Earth (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Sunken Warships on Google Earth (Score:5, Informative)
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Tim - need your services (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, it is a big deal. A very big deal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any idea of how valuable salvage rights of all the sunken wrecks that this tool could potentially uncover would be? No? Well, here's a clue:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/66719
That's one wreck. Worth half a billion dollars. Makes you think, doesn't it?
Re:Uh, it is a big deal. A very big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench [wikipedia.org]
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What's the depth of the oceans of Europa ?
Two possible answers... (Score:2)
The Marianas Trench might only be 10,900m deep but it and other parts of the oceans would be obscured by a lot more than 10,900m of ocean when viewed at an angle.
That to me seems to be one logical explanation. Another would be that, having found at least 31 sunken vessels, he's tested his software enough to be able to confidently extra
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From the article, the 31 sunken vessels claim is coming from him. Does anyone have anything that actually backs this number up?
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Makes me think it's time to short the value of gold and silver.
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Too good to be true I think (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps he is going public with this in hopes that someone will want to purchase the software for treasure hunting.
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Re:Too good to be true I think (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/hmas-sydney-f
FTA -
But Ted Graham, the chairman of the Perth-based volunteer company HMAS Sydney Search (HMA3S), says finding the shipwreck using the methods Mr Akers said he employed was impossible.
"All the advice we're getting is saying Tim's claims are technically not possible," Mr Graham told AAP.
"We've spoken to a whole lot of people and got advice from various people including technical people in government departments and they have all stated that what Tim's claiming is complete rubbish.
"I think it's just complete nonsense."
Reliability of sources (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree that this story sounds like nonsense, you have probably found the most unreliable source for a rejection: A competitor who is receiving public funds to achieve the same goal.
Ground based sonar (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, tech progresses, but 75 m from outer space using only UV, Xray, and Infra photography? I am very skeptical.
On another note... if this new process is true then construction will have to pretty much halt in many areas of Southern California. There are stringent rules in place governing building on areas that contain either significant fossil remains or any sort of Native American relics. Several hundred million USD per year is spent on archeological surveys to determine what may be beneath a construction site. Various companies have reputations for finding little if anything, and so environmental groups sometimes employ other companies that usually find a good deal of things that will prevent construction.
Decently resolved pictures up to 75 m below the surface will prove what some archeos in the field already believe to be true... under current laws it should be almost impossible to build anywhere in the greater L.A. area because of the shear volume of fossil record.
They pulled two gigantic whales out of a toll road excavation in the middle of the desert... etc.
Regards.
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The unit he used had a stationary computational unit with a tethered box that contained the sonic pulse generator/echo reciever.
The tethered unit would traverse the survey area, direct the sonar pulses into the ground, recieve the echo, and then relay data back. The tether was required because large amounts of juice had to be delivered, so they ran the data and the juice (two seperate, heavily shielded lines) through the
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X-rays and short-wave UV don't. Longer-wave UV does.
IR penetrates less than visible light -- ie, not very far.
Near IR penetrates the atmosphere better and with less scattering than visible light. What you say is true for *some* of the IR band, but it's also got a lot of room in it.
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Long wave UV kind of penetrates atmosphere, but it sure doesn't penetrate either 16,000 metres (if that were even possible) of water or 75m of ground.
The only thing that has any chance of penetrating a decent amount of water is extremely low frequency (ELF) radio and there's no way you're going to image anything with that. If any other part of the EM spectrum could make it through an appreciab
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Frankly, it's impossible. (Score:2)
Probability that this could be useful at very shallow depths, with objects whose size are far more significant in the scheme of things: Prett
I missed it in the article... (Score:2)
Diving trip anyone? (Score:2)
Comfort of my own home (Score:5, Funny)
Nobody ever considers this end of things.
16,000 meters beneath the sea? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well done.
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If its actually true that this technology works, it would work because of differances in pics compared to static features like a shipwreck.
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16000meters is a bit off (Score:5, Insightful)
Mariana trench is only about 10900 meters. Whats he imaging at 16000? Sounds a bit crusty to me.
H.
Did he say 16,000? (Score:2)
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The 16000 meters claim does not say that he did that, it only says that the software can. Like in: "This is the physics involved, this is what we can get on terms of picture quality, and based on all that the maximum we can do would be 16000. And it turns out we're lucky that the ocean ain't that deep anywhere."
Having said that, I still don't believe it.
You even need to ask? (Score:2)
i call bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
he's popped this in to sound clever, but the reality all he could have done is take exisiting data the same as whats on google earth and examined the colour gradients in an attempt to identify shapes which could possibly be a sunken ship. problem is the resolution on those photo's is WAY too low to identify a ship let alone confidently proclaim to know WHICH ship it is.
in other words he's an attention seeking moron. i'll take that back when he goes there's a brings back some proof. i'm confident he won't
Perth company HMAS Sydney Search 2nds that (Score:3, Informative)
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Even visible, which is what you'd use for examining "colour gradients" in Google Earth won't show you anything unless your ship happens to be sitting in shallow water, in which case someone would have tripped over it (almost literally) long ago.
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I think the Times got trolled.
but water is opaque (Score:4, Insightful)
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If an "amateur" can do this ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless, of course, a British archeologist has outdone the entire technical expertise of the NSA and CIA. But that would make them look pretty much like bumbling civil servants rather than the sleuthing savants that we are led to believe they are.
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So... you believe him then?
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Apparently there were over sixteen thousand of them at one point. There really is no point moving off into the realms of fantasy when talking about this article however - the pre-war propaganda cooked up by public relations people to fool congress has been revealed as such and it's time to move on.
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I mean, X-rays?
If he has really found it, I doubt it's by the method he's outlined above.
UFO Bases! (Score:2)
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You're obviously inhaling the wrong kind of gas. Try Nitrous Oxide. Or perhaps some illicit vegetable matter fumes. You won't need them to tell you where the ETs are.
LOLOL (Score:2, Funny)
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Noah's Ark Found! (Score:2)
Noah's Ark Found! Noah's Ark!
[sigh] Time to add another layer (Score:3, Interesting)
All Nuclear Submarines Located (Score:3, Insightful)
hard to believe.. (Score:5, Interesting)
We found that the best mechanisms for finding as yet unfound wrecks were plain old research. We requested and got a copy of the microfilms of the WW2 records for the area from the US Archives. Slowly and meticulously (reading Microfilm projected onto the fridge door), following each report, we ultimately ended up finding around half a dozen new wrecks. The report of a Corsair that clipped a tree, while trying to line up for the airstrip, and spun into the bay, prompted a search for a tree stump, and and following a logical path to the airstrip, a probably location - sure enough a deep dive (180 ft - lots of decompression) found it. Biggest coup was the talk of an abandoned airstrip on a remote island in the Solomon Islands. Sure enough, worked out roughly where, found a single like reference to the "local name" for it, and sure enough, found three WWII fighters still sitting at the end of a punched metal runway, as if waiting for orders...
As someone said, an archaeologist developing software that the spooks, and/or mining types haven't been able to. That's a bit far fetched.
I would suggest "text scans" of historical documents may be more useful.
q
FYI ... (Score:2)
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A favourite trick of conmen (Score:3, Interesting)
One of his other favourite cons was the Deep Sea Gold..... While running the startup-con, he was also trying to start this con on the same investors.
He would claim to have intimate knowledge of an ancient wreck somewhere. There was the lure of lots of gold. All that the investors needed to do was stump up some cash to hire dive-boats and a little sundry, and they would get all the gold retrieved.
This guy had fake Lordships [where you buy a tiny plot of land in Britain and get the title] and fake ids. But in essence the fact that the wreck was out to sea and the investors didn't have an independent source of verification made the con a good one. The investors put in lots of cash, some deep sea divers were hired, but the fictitious wreck remained undiscovered long enough for the conman to drain all the cash from the investors. Then the conman disappeared back to whatever country he had never fled to before. No cash, now wreck, no gold, no money.
So now I'm always wary of deep sea discoveries... Special software to spot wrecks from the comfort of Google Maps and your couch??? The conmen will have a field-day if people start to believe this. Not saying this guy is wrong, but how soon until other people leech his achievements?
Nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Optical sensors can see at most a few metres [eurimage.com] into clear water. At infrared wavelengths water is black and opaque. "Light passes through matter"? No, it doesn't. Didn't The Times use to have a science correspondent?
Bermuda Triangle (Score:2)
Then I realized it was probably a hoax. The media is excited by news of wrecks, after that recent $500M find.
Re:Whhhaaaaa? Aussies had a Navy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm a Canuck: and it shows (Score:4, Informative)
not picking on you for being from Canadia :) , but you mean Port Moresby [wikipedia.org] and the Northern Territory [wikipedia.org].
Besides, the West Papuans [wikipedia.org] had helped us Aussies a great deal in defending the norther frontier from the Japs. The Australian government has recently and shamefully turned their backs and allowed the West Papuans to suffer terrible human rights abuses [survivalfrance.org] at the hands of the Indonesian dictatorship.
Re:Whhhaaaaa? Aussies had a Navy? (Score:4, Informative)
To take nothing at all away from the exceptional job done by the Royal Australian Navy, the defense of Port MorEsby is generally placed at the feet of the Battle of the Coral Sea, which was a combined operation between the US Navy (2 carriers, 6 cruisers, 13 destroyers), and the RAN (2 cruisers).
Australian military was in Europe ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Australia had, and still has, excellent soldiers. Mac Arthur was an egomaniac and no one other than Mac Arthur got credit for anything, regardless of whether they were American or Australian. However things are not as simple as you suggest. Australia had many of its forces in Europe trying to save England. Recall that the war had started in Europe years earlier than in the Pacific and England was just barely hanging on and absolutely needed Canadian, Australian, South African, etc forces. When Mac Arthur was ordered/tricked to leave the Philippines he was expecting to mount a counterattack to rescue the American forces left behind. When he arrived in Australia he found no counterattack/rescue force, not even enough of a force to defend Australia should Japan attempt a major invasion. The Australian generals were planning to trade most of the country for time and only defend the south eastern (?) quarter, to be fair that was where most of the population and development was located.
Divinities... (Score:3, Funny)
Mac Arthur was an egomaniac and no one other than Mac Arthur got credit for anything, regardless of whether they were American or Australian.
The size of MacArthur's ego is legendary. I once saw a film about President Truman. In one scene they were discussing MA being put in charge of the occupation forces in Japan and somebody mentioned that the Emperor of Japan had to regularly report to MA whereupon one of president's people made a really good sarcastic comment that went something like:
"I'd sure like to be a fly on that wall... It isn't every day you get to see one divinity talking to another.
I don't know whether that conversation eve
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Actually, MacArthur had some justification for the claim.
Roosevelt and Churchill had tried to force the 6th and 7th Australian Divisions to remain in Burma, effectively abandoning New Guinea and Northern Australia to the Japanese. The Prime Minister of Australia at the time, John Curtin, made the decision to r
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Hardly. Japan never had any intention of invading Australia: no plans for such were ever made, other than occasional speculations by junior officers. More importantly, it didn't have the logistical capability to sustain such a huge operation over such vast distances.
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The Japanese navy was responsible for planning an invasion of Australia. In February 1942, Admiral Yamamoto had set a plan before Japanese General Staff to land two Divisions on the northern coastline of Australia. They would then follow the north-south railway line to Adelaide, thus dividing Australia into two fronts. The plan was opposed by the Japanese army, and was not approved by Emperor Hirohito.
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This site [bigpond.com] (which
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Plans change rapidly in wartime, and circumstances meant that the Japanese did not get the opportunity to mount the invasion. Nevertheless, the intention was there as early as 1938 (Operation Mo). The planning included Yamamoto, Tomioka, Fukudome and Nagano, and involved landing the main force in North Queensland, not Darwin, hence the use of rail transport.
You might also want to
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We lost a war to the Dominion which was part of the British empire. Canada came long after...
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And just where, pray tell, are we fighting for the Americans?
... which is a NATO mission. And we're fighting there for the Afghanis, not for Americans.
The only combat the Canadian Forces are involved in right now is Afghanistan
If you're going to troll, please at least try to come up with something that's *reasonably* close
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"Done. Mod me to hell, American Fanboys. My karma can take it."
Be thankful that I don't do as you d
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What they said doesn't contradict what I said. I never said the Aussies & Brits did everything themselves - they didn't, not by a long shot.
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Um, yeah. I work with a lot of Aussies and one of the things we teach (here in Japan) is WWII history, since it's mostly stricken from the Japanese education system. They all seem teach that the Americans pushed the Japanese back after the Brits abandoned them.
On a related note, I also work with a fair number of Canadians, and most of them never met a piece of erroneous US-bashing misinformation they didn't like. Even things demonstrably false. I can never really figure this out because, I mean, and I
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Fact of the matter is, the UK, USSR, AUS, an everyone else were the primary force against Hitler and the Japanese in the beginning of the war. All of Europe would have fallen to Hitler very quickly, and with the economic mass of the continent (Not something to be underestimated) the
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Fact of the matter is, the US was the driving force behind keeping the UK, USSR, AUS, and anyone else against Hitler and the Japanese in the war. They would have all lost to Hitler very quickly if the US had not shipped all the guns, ammo, food, clothing, aircraft, tanks, trucks, etc... for them to fight with, long before Pearl Harbor or the Pacific Theater.
Oh really? The US was supplying the USSR, a superpower, with packed lunches and American tanks to help them fight hitler on russian soil? News to me. Time to ask your high school history teacher for your money back.
I figure you're trolling, but you really should consider asking your community college for a refund. Although there were dozens of runs like it, I'll single out one specific Merchant Marine [usmm.org] run:
"Through the Murmansk Run, the United States supplied the Soviet Union with 15,000 aircraft, 7,000 tanks, 350,000 tons of explosives, and 15,000,000 pairs of boots. American boots made a difference on the Eastern Front, especially during the harsh winters."
Yes, this was a series of convoys that delivered war materi
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http://www.georgecarlin.com/ [georgecarlin.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin [wikipedia.org]