Tech Talk - Bob Ballard |
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San Jose Tech Museum: 4/7/99 Resources
BackgroundAttended UCSB Went into the Army an was assigned to the Navy in Viet Nam.
First-dive RitualThe dive is usually three people: Ballard, who's dived hundreds of times, the pilot, who's dived hundreds of times, and a novice on a first dive. The hatch is closed and the dive begins. When you first get in the sub on the surface, it's hot, 90 degrees inside the cabin.The sub has been baking in the sun all morning. As you go deeper, the water gets colder. The water does not get any colder than 4 degrees Centigrade. This is the temperature at which water is the most dense so it settles to the bottom. Any colder and the crystallization causes the water to expand making it less dense and being displaced by the denser, warmer water. The sub hull is two-inch thick titanium, not insulated, however the only exposed surface is the top hatch. Everything else is covered with equipment. As the hull gets colder, condensation forms on the top hatch, around the seal. We tell the novice that to save power we need to turn off the lights. About 45 minutes into the dive the condensation starts to drip on the novice, who shines a flashlight on the dripping hatch. When the novice comments on the dripping, we start screaming that we're all going to die and cause the novice to "react." Then the novice catches on. So far, no one has simply reached up and tasted the water to see it's pure, not salty, which would tell them that it's condensation, not sea water. Another problem solved by HERE, Human Element Range Extender. However, it only holds 3/4 of a bladder. Another first dive ritual is to have the novice drink lots of coffee while we dehydrate ourselves. The oceanMost of the planet is unexplored. The undersea mountain range rift zone covers 23 percent of the Earth's surface, 42,000 miles. It was undiscovered until after the last man walked on the moon. We have better maps of the moon and Mars than the sea floor. Plate tectonics renews the surface of the planet regularly and has erased the Earth's early scars. The pillow lava found in the rift zone is the result of the extreme pressure that keeps lava from erupting or causing pyroclastic flows. Based on the geology, 4,000 degree lava chamber beneath the 4-degree water, we expected to find hot springs. Sure enough, we found black smokers. It's not really smoke, it's the mineralization caused by the cold water. On one dive, we measured the temperature of the plume with the probe. The "smoke" was more than 650 degrees. During the dive, the pilot started to get nervous. He saw that the probe had been melted. The probe is made of the same material as the windows. We now put heat sensors all around the sub. Discovered life based on chemosynthesis. Creatures resembling giant clams, and other littoral-looking creatures. However, they contain no organs, just cellular bacteria. They look exactly like the fossils found in the Mars meteorites. Chemosynthesis-based life supports the theory that this was the origin of life, not in primordial soup. This also might explain why life suddenly appeared only 500 million years ago. Could have been seeded from space. Similar geology observed on moons of Jupiter. On Io, gravitational distortion causes crustal shifting that generates heat and volcanism. Europa has a two-mile thick ice sheet covering a 60-mile deep ocean. The 2003 NASA mission hopes to melt through the ice and use helium detectors to identify chemosynthetic life. We want to find out how smart their worms are. Jason ProjectTaught geology at Stanford in late 70's. Got interested in high-tech, particularly fiber optics. Came up with the concept of fiber-optic telepresence and implemented the Argot-Jason project. Finally built in 1985. Wanted to try to find Titanic because Scripps tried to and failed. We could do better than them. We concluded that the Titanic broke in half, based on eyewitness accounts, John Thayer. After the ship broke in half, it became a salt shaker, scattering debris. The heavy stuff fell right there, lighter debris drifted with the current. We searched for the debris field and followed it to the shipwreck. The Titanic discovery struck a chord with children. I received 16,000 letters from kids. I discover the origin of life, and I get no letters. I discover an old sunken ship, and I get 16,000 letters. Go figure. Because of the interest of kids, I founded the Jason project.where students can remotely operate and explore with us on projects. Some kids go on expeditions. Composition mirrors general population. Fifty-three percent of participants are girls. Just completed project in Lake Ontario exploring wrecks from the War of 1812. Mediterranean ExplorationsThe Mediterranean is not shallow. The average depth is more than 9,000 feet. Maximum depth is 20,000 feet. The busiest shipping was in the Tyrrhenian Sea. More than 10,000 ships were lost. Busiest route was Carthage to Rome so that's where I concentrated the search. Discovered that when ships sank, they settled into the ooze up to the main deck. Wood borers totally consumed any exposed wood. Had to look for exposed inorganic objects, amphorae, pottery from galley. In the deep ocean, the rate of sedimentation is less than once centimeter per millennium. Wood borers exist in the ocean because over the millennia, logs washed out to sea, became waterlogged, and sank. Wood borers evolved to chow down on the wood. I was fostering a new field, deep water archaeology. We used the Navy's NR-1 to explore.
Locate ships by detecting the top of the cargo holds. Use Jason Jr. to map the site. Can map the entire ship site in about 4 hours. It takes a month using normal divers. Use of transponders an GPS allows us to create a 3-D image of the site and ship. Using robots for underwater exploration is much more efficient than using live divers. Less damage and breakage to artifacts with robots than with divers. Archaeologists on board specify which artifacts to bring up for dating. Some examples of recovered objects more than 2000 years old:
Expensive to recover objects. If the terra cotta is allowed to dry, the salt crystallization will pulverize the object. Must be rinsed to remove all salt and slowly and evenly dry relics. Costs about $2,000 per amphora. Some of the recovered artifacts are exhibited at the Mystic Institute, Black Sea ExplorationThis July will be exploring Black Sea for two reasons:
The Black Sea is about 7,000 feet deep and is fresh water. It's shaped like a bathtub, but has no drain. Top 200 meters is mixture of salt water and fresh water forming a layer that seals out oxygen from lower down. Lack of oxygen means no wood borers, which should allow fully-preserved shipwrecks. Also will also attempt to find evidence of theory described in Noah's Flood. About 12,000 years ago the water trapped in the ice sheet lowered sea level by 500 feet. This made the Black Sea a lake, cut off from the Mediterranean. Thousands of acres of arable land was home to thousands. About 5600 B.C. the water level rose such that water caused a catastrophic flood through the Bosporus in a matter of days. Core samples have shown that about 500 feet down are clam beds, signifying salt water. Under the clams, grass was found. QuestionsHave you met Clive Cussler? Where does he get his ideas? Yes. He reads my articles. I'm not Dirk Pitt, he's too much of a chauvinist. What's you're feeling about recovering artifacts from shipwrecks? Won't bring anything up from "contemporary" shipwrecks where survivors or descendants still live. However, I have no problems bringing up artifacts from ancient shipwrecks. This is done with the cooperation and support of archaeologists. Besides, archaeologists don't recover many artifacts, just enough to get proper dating. Always fighting with salvagers. Trying to pass laws to include "human history" as resources in law of the sea to preserve shipwrecks. Currently, no laws protect shipwrecks. How did you feel when you discovered the Titanic? This is the most frequent question I get. Combination of pride at succeeding with sorrow for the loss of life. The ship spoke to me. Jim Cameron told me he had the same sensation when he dove to the site. That's why he had the old woman throw the necklace back into the ocean. What would you like to see on the instrument package sent to Europa? Currently advising NASA on possible instruments. Would suggest a helium detector to detect the presence of life based on chemosynthesis. |
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