51–60 of 84 posts
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…
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…
There's definitely an MSV Pressure Drop on that page, under the list of ships in Hydrogen Sonata . :)
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Creatures living in the deep simply equalize their internal and external pressures and don’t feel the pressure as some kind of weight they need to withstand. This is why when you bring them to the surface quickly they die from the sudden decrease in pressure. As to eyes bioluminescence is common in the deep and nothing would bother if nobody had eyes.
I'm sort of curious how they don't simply explode when you bring them to the surface.
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Those factors of 10 don't really look so nice if you use e.g. the binary number system.
Indeed. And the SI defining constants are downright ugly.
With base 12 SI units at least some argument for imperial units would be gone, that is that some of their ratios are easy fractions. Not that this makes sense since the ratios of different imperial units are different random numerical values, and nothing prevents using fraction notation with metric units
I've found a 2014 article by the BBC that explains why fish are not expected to survive beyond about 8,000-8,500m: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26423203
> It rests on the particular molecular mechanism they use in their tissues to withstand crushing pressures. To go deeper would require fish to evolve some other mechanism, the team tells the journal PNAS. The all-important molecule is a so-called osmolyte called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). It is what gives fish their “fishy smell”. TMAO acts to stabilize the proteins fish use to build and maintain their cells. Without its presence, the proteins would be distorted by the high pressures found at depth and stop functioning.
I've found a 2014 article by the BBC that explains why fish are not expected to survive beyond about 8,000-8,500m: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26423203
Other organisms like crustaceans are able to occupy deeper parts but they use 5 different osmolytes for this purpose whereas fish have only ever been observed using this one.
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Indeed. And the SI defining constants are downright ugly.
Yes, give me chains, barley corns and furlongs so that we have nice folksy constants.
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Another commenter posted a link to a 2014 article that explains how the fish can survive so deep. 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…
If they're born and live at that depth isn't the pressure equalized inside and outside of them?
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I'm sort of curious how they don't simply explode when you bring them to the surface.
I have caught quite a few red fish in Greenland. They ‘only’ live a hundred meters down, but sure they kinda explode when surface. Eyes pop out, and their swim bladder pops out of their mouth. If they get unhooked on the way up, they will also surface themselves.
How long does that take?
> 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?
I think it is just that gravity happens to be 9,81 m/s^2. On other hand 1kg being equal to 1 litre of water is by design in metric system. Other happens stance is that pressure on surface is about 101 325 pascals. So things work out that way...
The kg was initially defined by the mass of the water, but as the kg has been redefined it's drifted a tiny bit.