31–40 of 84 posts
I just recently read the Brilliant Abyss[0] and it was a really interesting look at the deep ocean and the complexity of life down there. If this kind of thing interests you at all, I highly recommend it. I didn’t know much going in, but found it fascinating. [0]: https://helenscales.com/portfolio/the-sea-beneath-us/
What does water "feel" like at that depth? There is a lot of weight felt I guess from the pressure, but is it thicker to swim through in some sense?
Water is incompressible, so I think it should behave similarly. Even viscosity remains within a few precent [1] (Mariana Trench is around 100 MPa) [1] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/absolute-dynamic-viscosit...
DSSV Pressure Drop sounded like a Culture ship name to me so I looked that up. It's not, but the name of the DDSV, "Limiting Factor", is. Apparently they also named their utility boats after Culture ships. To those who don't know: "The Culture" is a... society(?) of godlike AI ships/minds from the series of SF books by Ian M. Banks. SpaceX named their landing barges after Culture ships too, the "Of Course I Still Lov…
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If you ever wondered how they survive the pressure, from wikipedia: TMAO (Trimethylamine N-oxide) is found in the tissues of marine crustaceans and marine fish, where it prevents water pressure from distorting proteins and thus killing the animal. The concentration of TMAO increases with the depth at which the animal lives; TMAO is found in high concentrations in the deepest-living described fish species, Pseudolipar…
Is this why they expect this fish is near the depth limit? Does this mechanism stop working at higher pressures?
> Likewise, their approach to food - they are suction feeders and consume tiny crustaceans, of which there are many in trenches. I remember James Cameron’s dive and the main life pictured was crustaceans. I’ve also read they are a significant amount of life in underground aquifers [1] was crustaceans, which also had blind reptiles which also fed on crustaceans and had transparent skin similar to those snailfish. I’m…
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26423203
It says that fish use the TMAO protein to protect themselves from pressure. But other organisms use a combination of multiple proteins and that apparently lets them survive higher pressures.
So it seems the fish would basically need to re-evolve how to handle pressure, but in a different way, to be able to go deeper.
I just recently read the Brilliant Abyss[0] and it was a really interesting look at the deep ocean and the complexity of life down there. If this kind of thing interests you at all, I highly recommend it. I didn’t know much going in, but found it fascinating. [0]: https://helenscales.com/portfolio/the-sea-beneath-us/
I just recently read the Brilliant Abyss[0] and it was a really interesting look at the deep ocean and the complexity of life down there. If this kind of thing interests you at all, I highly recommend it. I didn’t know much going in, but found it fascinating. [0]: https://helenscales.com/portfolio/the-sea-beneath-us/
I wonder if this fish will be crucial to the survival of life on Earth, if the climate change gets out of control. I would imagine the conditions at the deepest levels of the ocean won't change much, allowing their natural habitat to continue.
> At 8km down, they are experiencing more than 80 megapascals, or 800 times the pressure at the ocean surface. Is this somewhat a coincidence or is this the beauty of the metric system?
Those factors of 10 don't really look so nice if you use e.g. the binary number system.