Live data from Hacker News

Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

theguardian.com

201–210 of 265 posts

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good guess, but I'd still like to see the final report if and when it is published and whether or not they manage to find the root cause. Likely the differential made the problem worse to the point that something gave but I suspect that there is a deeper underlying cause that made it sensitive to that difference in temperature to begin with. Either a material flaw, an assembly issue or something else.

I'm basing it off of what this guy is reporting. He seems to have an inside legit view. https://www.zerohedge.com/user/105370

There are some eye witness accounts about corrosion around the base of the tank. One way in which that could have caused this is because corroded metal takes up more space than the original and this could put point stresses on the acrylic. I haven't seen any engineering drawings (I did try to find some but there are only pretty pictures) so I'm not sure how much effect that would have but keeping the base corrosion free would seem to be an absolute requirement regardless of whether or not it would have a disastrous effect like this. So I will have to wait until the investigators have gone all over this, given the amount of money involved there is bound to be a very thorough investigation and after having seen a couple of aircraft accident investigations conclude with entirely different findings than the first 24 hours of speculation I've learned that to be patient usually pays off.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#202
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source on that?

Too early for an official RCA, but the surrounding facts of the known temperature sensitivity of the aquarium, the energy reduction mandates in Berlin, and the unusual cold point to that as the most likely cause. This poster on Zerohedge provides more details: I am directly involved in the legal cleanup of this and can provide a little more detail as to what actually happened (Tyler, reach out to me you have my email…

> All because the city made the hotel turn down the heat.

That's a little bit early to start aiming at the city, isn't it? The call to reduce energy consumption is, if anything, coming on as a case of too little, too late if anything given the ongoing crisis over here; it is altogether a reasonable thing to do. As is always the case in Germany with such things, there will be maddening array of if/then/otherwise escape hatches that is part of those rules, and, frankly, if the management of the hotel and the people responsible for the aquarium had been in the know that keeping a constant temperature in the lobby was essential to the structural integrity of the aquarium and they still lowered it, they're mad. If they weren't told they can't be held responsible. If the manufacturer did know or should have known, they'll be in (sorry) hot water.

All of this is conjecture at his point so phrases like "all because the city told them to turn down the heat" have to be understood in the conjunctive or, better, be explicitly written in that voice.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#203
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too early for an official RCA, but the surrounding facts of the known temperature sensitivity of the aquarium, the energy reduction mandates in Berlin, and the unusual cold point to that as the most likely cause. This poster on Zerohedge provides more details: I am directly involved in the legal cleanup of this and can provide a little more detail as to what actually happened (Tyler, reach out to me you have my email…

> All because the city made the hotel turn down the heat. That's a little bit early to start aiming at the city, isn't it? The call to reduce energy consumption is, if anything, coming on as a case of too little, too late if anything given the ongoing crisis over here; it is altogether a reasonable thing to do. As is always the case in Germany with such things, there will be maddening array of if/then/otherwise escap…

Whenever I hear people describe a complex chain of events only to conclude that there was a single root cause, I'm reminded of the old proverb:

>For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

>For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

>For want of a horse the rider was lost.

>For want of a rider the message was lost.

>For want of a message the battle was lost.

>For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

>And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The moral of the proverb is: it is important to ensure that critical systems have redundancy built in.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#204
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source on that?

Too early for an official RCA, but the surrounding facts of the known temperature sensitivity of the aquarium, the energy reduction mandates in Berlin, and the unusual cold point to that as the most likely cause. This poster on Zerohedge provides more details: I am directly involved in the legal cleanup of this and can provide a little more detail as to what actually happened (Tyler, reach out to me you have my email…

2011 - Nord Stream gas pipeline opens, 2022 - the world's largest acrylic aquarium in Berlin disintegrates due to the sanctions. What a beautiful butterfly effect... I'm afraid we'll see more of similar incidents in the coming months...

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation? You're also ignoring the thermal mass and physical pressure of a million liters of water.

They're pulling that "info" from the conspiracy theorist website zero hedge.. that it conveniently aligns with that site's support of Putinist Russia should be noted. The German law limits public space heating to 67º which doesn't seem like it should be nearly enough to cause this kind of failure..

I would also think that 1,500 tropical fish need the water to be maintained at a certain temperature to keep them alive.

If anything, the water tank was heating the room instead of vice versa.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm basing it off of what this guy is reporting. He seems to have an inside legit view. https://www.zerohedge.com/user/105370

There are some eye witness accounts about corrosion around the base of the tank. One way in which that could have caused this is because corroded metal takes up more space than the original and this could put point stresses on the acrylic. I haven't seen any engineering drawings (I did try to find some but there are only pretty pictures) so I'm not sure how much effect that would have but keeping the base corrosion f…

That is fair. Security tapes might tell a lot as well.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the best material for a tank like this, if not acrylic? Normal glass? Not educated on this subject.

Ideally it would be extruded diamond, but that technology will not be available until early in the 26th century. Second would be clear aluminum, but again that will not be available for another 150 years.

Just one question: Why did you give my homie Stephen Hawking the cold shoulder when he hosted a party[0] for time travelers in 2009?

[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-time-t...

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#208

I know people got hurt (and fish died) but all I can think is, this is a hotel lobby, there most certainly IS security camera footage of the failure and subsequent deluge and man do I want to know what that looked like.

There might be legal/liability reasons why they’re not releasing the footage immediately.

Reminds me of the Champlain Towers accident - there were surveillance cameras everywhere, as well as a fire alarm control panel (that was critical to the incident as it would’ve been the one triggering an alarm to prompt everyone to evacuate) but no efforts were made to recover either despite the fire alarm panel checking in with the control centre several times (on battery power, over a mobile phone connection) after the collapse, proving that it was still alive and recoverable.

I guess they worked out that it was better to play dumb and let this evidence go away than recover it and potentially get into more trouble. I suspect it’s the same situation with the aquarium.

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#209
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be possible to construct a seamless acrylic tube, maybe on-site?

You're making me think of this industrial scale 3D printer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL2KoMNzGTo

That's cool but it's all seams with 3d printing, so it seems like that would make the problem worse.

By the way, here's a big cool 3D printer that prints opaque acrylic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b3CY3P28qyQ

Re: Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

#210
post #49
post #38

Considering there was a hotel lobby under the aquarium, it's actually a miracle that only 2 people were hurt. Too bad for the fish though. Also, there's a sentiment of "how could this happen, it was only upgraded two years ago?!" in all the articles I have read so far - maybe it happened precisely because of that ? But let's see what the investigation will reveal...

> it's actually a miracle that only 2 people were hurt It probably helped that it happened at 6AM ...

as someone who has an aquarium, i'm amazed it didn't happen in the middle of the night. Any time I've had an overflow issue or something, it's always in the middle of the night and my water sensor is blaring
Post reply on HN