The Titanic could be gone in 30 years
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — History
CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 01:21 AM)
As the world fixates on the desperate search for the missing submersible with five passengers that set out to explore the remains of the Titanic, news has re-emerged that what’s left of the doomed Titanic itself is also in trouble.
The ill-fated ocean liner is being attacked by various underwater threats including salt corrosion, deep sea currents, and specific kinds of bacteria — and the ship could disintegrate in the next 30 years, Business Insider reports.
According to the Smithsonian Institution, the bacteria — called Halomonas titanicae (yes, named after the ship) — is slowly destroying it.
This type of bacteria — which was first discovered in 2010 by Henrietta Mann, a researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia — causes structures resembling rusty icicles to form and nibble away at the iron on the ship. This could cause the entire vessel to essentially disintegrate over time. Some estimates say the ship could be completely gone as soon as 2030, Live Science reported in 2019.
“They're kind of like living communities, these rusticles,” Erin Field, a microbiologist at East Carolina University, told Discover magazine in 2022. “They're constantly changing and evolving — much like the icicles that attach to your house that can start to melt and then can regrow.”
In 2019, an expedition team helmed by Victor Vescovo, the CEO of Caladan Oceanic, went down to the site of the wreckage multiple times to document the current state of the ship. What they found was discouraging. According to TIME, a well-known section of the boat called the Captain’s Bathtub was already completely disintegrated.
Leading Titanic researcher Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, has made dozens of treks down to explore the wreckage — but unfortunately, he is currently missing aboard the Titan submersible along with Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman Dawood, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and British billionaire Hamish Harding.
In 2022, Nargeolet told Discover magazine that the ship's disintegration seemed to be getting worse each time he went down to see it. “Step by step, everything is collapsing," he told the publication.
The heaviness of the massive vessel has also contributed to the Titanic's deterioration, TIME reported in 2019. Mann told the publication, “If one level deteriorates at the top [of the wreck], it drops to the next one, which means it … impacts on the lower levels. Damage is done layer after layer.”
“Logic tells you [that] more structurally it is damaged, the more quickly it will deteriorate,” she added, TIME reports.
Mann told TIME that she doesn't know exactly when the Titanic will disappear for good, but she estimated the remains had approximately 30 years left before the ship entirely disintegrates.
However, Expedition team leader Vescovo told TIME that the overall damage to the vessel was, in his opinion, less extreme than one might expect, given how long it’s been on the ocean floor. “Biology and current are slowly eroding the wreck as one would expect it to,” he said. “But we should remember that the wreck has been down there 107 years in strong currents and seawater, so it is a matter of not if, but when, the sea will reclaim it in its entirety.”
https://people.com/experts-say-titanic-wreckage-entirely-disintegrate-7551172 -
CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 01:35 AM)
On a related note, Dorothy's dog is at risk of extinction!
Cairn Terrier Which Rose To Fame As Dorothy’s Dog In The Wizard Of Oz Is At Risk Of EXTINCTION
It’s the breed that became famous with the line, “Toto, I feel like we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
But the historic British dog, the Cairn Terrier, is in danger of disappearing.
New statistics released by the Kennel Club show a significant drop in numbers for the once popular breed.
In the first quarter of 2023, the working terrier recorded a 42 percent drop in popularity compared to the same period last year.
Their numbers have also more than halved in the past decade, from 1,085 annual puppies born in 2013 to just 492 in 2022.
It’s the breed that became famous with the line, “Toto, I feel like we’re not in Kansas anymore.” But the historic British dog, the Cairn Terrier, is in danger of disappearing
Experts are now warning that the small Scottish breed, which hails from the Isle of Skye, faces an uncertain future.
Their current predicament is a far cry from the 1930s when the Cairn Terrier was one of the top five most popular breeds in the country.
It became one of the most famous dogs in film, after starring as Dorothy’s beloved Toto in The Wizard of Oz.
After the film’s release in 1939, demand for the breed skyrocketed, with a 658 percent increase in registered puppies over the next seven years.
Their popularity peaked in 1989, with 4,189 puppies born that year.
But thanks to a recent nosedive in numbers, there are fears the breed could be placed on the Kennel Club’s list of vulnerable native breeds, which highlights British and Irish breeds at risk of disappearing from our streets and parks.
https://nybreaking.com/cairn-terrier-which-rose-to-fame-as-dorothys-dog-in-the-wizard-of-oz-is-at-risk-of-extinction/ -
Lilith — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 01:43 AM)
Funny you should mention this. I'm currently rewatching
Supernatural
, S9 E4 "Slumber Party," which is about Dorothy bagging the wicked witch from Oz. Dorothy indicates in this episode she is L. Frank Baum's daughter. She's a hunter, and at the 22 minute mark, Sam and Dean accidentally reopened a portal to Dorothy's time, letting her and the "trapped" witch back in. Dean knocked over the bottle the witch was trapped in, and she escaped.
I think Dorothy has the hots for Charlie, and she, in turn, has the hots for Dot. On an amusing note, Charlie and Dorothy made "poppy bullets," and the woman playing Charlie played a character by the name of Poppy in a TV series T
he Magicians
.
I'm just waiting for Kevin Bacon to make an appearance.
"Your emotional state is not my responsibility." – Warren Smith -
CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 01:31 AM)
This is interesting - that article says the captain's bathtub was already disintegrated in 2019, but it was found again in 2021!
Footage captured from a recent expedition to the wreck of the Titanic shows the famed bathtub in the captain’s quarters thought to have been lost to decay is still intact.
But the latest survey of the shipwreck shows its disintegration continues due to salt corrosion, ocean undercurrents, and a bacteria that is steadily munching its way through the shell.
The Titanic is estimated to have less than 30 years left before it disintegrates entirely.
The "recent expedition" mentioned in the 2021 article above was from OceanGate!
This video from 2012 clearly shows the tub: -
CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 01:43 AM)
Thanks!
I wasn't looking for this, but I just came across this OceanGate video from last year (surprisingly, it has 0 comments). "Climb in," it says in the title.
(Part of it was in a video I posted earlier, but I hadn't seen this one before.)
This is the description:
It can take five passengers to The Titanic on the ocean floor, you can pilot it with a gaming controller…and it has a toilet. Climb aboard Titan, a unique submarine used to explore the world's most famous shipwreck. -
CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 02:50 AM)
Should items be brought up from the ocean floor or is it grave robbing?
Bob Ballard had found the Titanic.
Having discovered the wreck, Ballard could have claimed “salvage rights,” but he considered that grave robbing and chose to leave the Titanic as he found it. But by the time he returned 18 years later, other companies had swooped in and swept up more than 6,000 artifacts, either selling them — $25 for a hunk of Titanic coal, for example — or putting them in a Titanic museum. It may have been Ballard’s only regret about the whole experience.
“It had turned into an ugly carnival, an affront to the fate of Titanic and all those who had lost their lives in her final hours,” he writes.
In this 2018 video, Ballard said, "I realized I was at a cemetery, and nothing should be taken from this site."
But as it says above, other companies took the items:
RMS Titanic conducted salvage expeditions in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2004, according to the NOAA. Since 1994, the company has collected thousands of artifacts, including top hats, China dinner plates, and a grand staircase cherub, according to their website.
This is from January 2020: -
CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 10:20 AM)
Should items be brought up from the ocean floor or is it grave robbing?
I demand replies to this excellent question. If the items weren't brought up from the ocean floor, they'd eventually be gone forever. But at the same time, it's considered a gravesite; so should the items have remained where they were? -
CrystalRaindrops — 2 years ago(June 22, 2023 10:24 AM)
Even in death, the "classes" were treated differently:
According to titanicfacts.net, CS Mackay-Bennett was instructed to treat the bodies differently depending on whether the victims were crew or First, Second, or Third class passengers. This is because there was not enough space or embalming supplies onboard to store all of the recovered bodies and because there were legal requirements that any bodies had to be embalmed before entering port.
The bodies of first-class passengers were embalmed, placed in coffins, and stored in the rear cable locker. Second-class passengers and crew were embalmed and wrapped in canvas before being placed on ice in the forward cable locker. Third-class passengers were generally buried at sea.
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/dead-of-the-titanic-2