SGU Episode 937

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SGU Episode 937
June 24th 2023
"Although sand dunes often conjure images of great deserts, they also occur along coastlines worldwide and can be an important buffer against sea level rise, storms, and coastal erosion."  Click for detailed caption "More than 45% of southern California's coastline is groomed with machinery used to remove debris from sandy beaches, creating a flat topography ideal for recreational activities of the local population and tourists. However, vegetation is consequently actively discouraged from growing, reducing habitats for local wildlife and resulting in some native and threatened species becoming locally extinct. "Oblique aerial photograph of the restoration project site from the 10 November 2022 UAS flight, with key elements labeled including the project boundary, perimeter fence, various habitat types, adjacent groomed beach (control site), and the incipient foredune ridge." Credit: Frontiers in Marine Science (2023).
SGU 936                      SGU 938
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.
Jacob Bronowski, Polish-British mathematician and philosopher
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, submersible sinks down to the Titanic

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, June 22^th, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: So the big news this week, a story I've actually been following in real time all week, is the loss of the submersible Titan, which was a private submersible that took five people on an attempt to view the wreck of the Titanic, right? One pilot and four passengers. And I'll just say that we just learned fairly recently as we're recording this show that they determined that the submersible met with a catastrophic implosion and the debris, two separate debris fields were found with the pieces of the sub, consistent with this sort of catastrophic implosion, and that's unsurvivable at that depth.

C: Very close to 1,600 feet from the wreckage of the Titanic.

S: Which is the only reason they found it, because it was close to the Titanic.

E: I'm sure they had something to sort of work around at some point in the vastness.

C: So it's kind of like they got down there and then catastrophe happened.

S: Well, that's where the debris ended up.

C: Right, yeah, you're right. They could have been above.

S: We don't know how high. So the timeline that we know so far, so it was supposed to be a two-hour descent or two-and-a-half hour descent. And one hour and 45 minutes in, they lost contact. It's probable that at that moment is when the catastrophic failure happened, or shortly thereafter.

C: They heard an audible signal that could have been the implosion, but it wasn't definitive.

B: Oh, really?

C: So they kept looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm seeing that in a lot of, like the Navy, the US Navy heard an audible signal that was not definitive, but now in hindsight, they can say that could have been it.

E: Yeah, they just reported today that it was an implosion.

S: So it is sad. It is tragic. I know some people have reservations about the whole enterprise, and I understand that, but it doesn't take away from the fact that this was a tragic loss of five people. I think one of the legitimate concerns that's raised by this is that if you take chances like this, the Coast Guard, if you're within 1,000 miles of the coast, that's the rule in the US, they'll spend millions of dollars trying to save you. They'll do what it takes, and they don't bill people for that. It's like it's on the taxpayer's dime. So you have a certain responsibility. If you are reckless, we're not saying they were reckless. Again, we don't know all the details, but certainly they were willing to take chances that ultimately led to this international effort to rescue them.

C: Yeah, sadly, this was a very risky endeavour. It's a commercial endeavour that is not scaled up. It's not widely utilized. This is not the same thing as commercial air travel. You know what I mean? There's not a robust system in place.

S: This is a custom-built submersible.

C: Exactly. That had only five people on board, including the guy who owns the company.

S: Yeah, the CEO.

C: Was the guy who was the captain of the submersible, right?

S: He was the pilot.

C: The pilot, sorry.

S: {[w|Stockton Rush}} was the pilot and CEO of Ocean Gate Expeditions.

C: Members of the Explorers Club were also on board. So these are people with a lot of experience. They weren't just rogue people who don't know what they're doing, but that said, this was still a commercial endeavour, and it was not a scientific expedition. It was not a government-funded or sponsored expedition. It was a commercial endeavour.

B: Yeah, and one guy has actually, this surprised me, one guy has gone down 30 times.

S: More than anyone else, probably.

B: Yeah, I mean, that's a lot more trips than I thought. Nargeolet, Paul-Henri, I think it's a French guy, 77-year-old guy. Yeah, he's been there probably more than anybody else. And we're starting to get early reports. Again, this story is just developing. We have very dodgy information at this point, but early reports of, over the last couple years, of multiple people raising concerns about the safety of this particular vessel and the company, and were they cutting corners, and apparently the glass porthole was not rated for this depth, even though the entire enclosure was, et cetera. But these kind of questions always come up right in the wake of a disaster, why did this happen? Probably this kind of chatter is always going to occur, and we just have to wait and see if there's an investigation and what they find. But it sounds like there were some concerns raised over the safety of this vessel. And in terms of regulation, so this is an American company launching from a Canadian ship in international waters. So it was in a legal gray zone. There basically was no one who had jurisdiction over this, and therefore there was no licensure required. There was no inspection. There was nothing.

E: Compliances.

S: They didn't do it voluntarily. Some people thought they should have voluntarily allowed their ship to be inspected. And I know, Cara, you were saying, I mean, I don't know if you want to mention names, but somebody...

C: A friend of mine works on a television show where they do kind of like big feats and they travel the world, and they actually did a test dive in this very submersible to see if it could be a story on the show. And they determined that it was too risky. It didn't feel safe enough for the crew, for the on-air individuals. It just wasn't worth the shot for them. And I think that that raises sort of exactly what we've been talking about. There are a lot of parallels between this type of ocean exploration and space exploration in that when we're doing something that's either never been done or has been done very few times with very few people, where there's a lot of money on the line and the risk to life and limb is very, very, very high, it's important that there are a lot of redundancies. It's important that there's a lot of people who are aware of this thing that's happening and that there's a concerted effort. And I'm not saying that didn't happen here. I mean, it was really beautiful how the world came together to try... It's worth a life, many people would argue, a life... You can't put a dollar on a life. You're going to do what you can do. If you think that somebody is still alive and you can prevent them from death, you're going to do what you can do. But then after the fact, when you actually look at the risk-benefit ratio, was it appropriate?

S: So it was interesting to follow the story in real time. Now we know obviously that they probably, basically they died four days ago when they were on their descent, it seems. But without that information, there was sort of the countdown clock of their oxygen supply, which would have run out this morning as of the recording Thursday morning.

E: There were also reports that they were picking up sounds, some kind of knock-out that was yesterday and the day before.

S: They now think that that was red herring. The sounds were unrelated to the Titan, to the submersible.

E: The point being though, as this developed over the course of these days, that added sort of another layer of, oh my goodness, are these people still down there and still alive at this point?

C: Until there's definitive evidence that they're not, you're going to assume that they are.

S: Yeah, you have to do that. That's the Coast Guard policy. The whole time I've been thinking, because my worst nightmare would be to be trapped in a small vessel like that deep under the sea with no power. Can you imagine being in pitch black, no light in this, they said it's like the size of an SUV. You're in this small can.

E: It's about 20 feet long.

S: And you're trapped in this, yeah, deep underwater. The claustrophobia.

B: Very cold as well.

C: In a non-survivable environment.

S: In a non-survivable environment.

C: That's the thing.

S: So what would be worse, being trapped like that for four days until you slowly run out of oxygen?

C: Much worse. That would be much worse.

S: An implosion would probably have been instant lights out. You were just, maybe there was this fraction of a second of something's happening.

B: Probably not. Probably not even that.

S: But before you could really, really register what was happening, you were dead.

C: That's the hope. I think that's probably, hopefully, the solace that the family members of these individuals have.

S: Yeah, they didn't suffer for four days.

E: Right. No suffering. That's what you want.

B: No suffering. It's weird how, for the past couple of days, people have been saying, you know, I hope it was a catastrophic implosion because that was literally the best-case scenario, assuming though that they would never be rescued.

S: Assuming they were not rescuable, yeah, not that they were not. The other thing is, I've been reading, because again, you're following the story, it's like this dramatic thing on a plane, they said if they found it intact, trapped under the water, they didn't know what they were going to do at that point.

C: Exactly. How do you get it up and safely?

S: They would not have been able to get it up to safety in time. Now I tried to find out as much as I could about the submersible itself, just to see what could possibly have gone wrong here. So first of all, it's a submersible, not a submarine. The difference is that submarines are independent. They could launch from port and go where they need to go.

C: Oh, I didn't know that.

S: A submersible requires a support, some other support vessel, which could be a ship, a surfership, could be another submarine. It could be land-based support, but they don't have their own guidance system. So they have to be told where to go, for example.

C: So it's almost like a drone that they're riding in?

S: Kind of. I mean, they can pilot it. It was literally a joystick.

C: Yeah, I saw that. It was a PlayStation.

S: Yeah, like a PlayStation joystick. But that's like, they had these four electric motors that could...

C: But they don't have radar on them or all that good stuff.

E: They can't independently [inaudible].

C: Sonar.

S: Yeah, yeah. They're dependent upon this other vessel to guide them. Also, they get put into the submersible, and then the hatch is bolted from the outside. So they can't get out. One of the scenarios that people were contemplating was that if something went wrong, they can float to the surface. They could drop their weight, and they could also flood their tanks with air.

E: And get the submersible to a point where it would be safe for them to evacuate?

C: Yeah, if it was up high enough.

S: It would go to the surface. It could have been on the surface.

E: Oh, the whole thing itself.

S: The whole submersible. But they would have been trapped inside. So they were searching for it on the surface, and even that was a long shot. The thing is, there were multiple people describing how difficult it is to find something at sea like this over such a short period of time.

E: Well, without a buoy, or what are those?

S: Transponder.

C: A beacon. How are there not redundant beacons on this?

E: Sure, everybody should be...

S: They were pinging their base, but that's what stopped, so their ability to communicate is what stopped.

C: But that sound like one line. Don't you need multiple redundant communication abilities?

S: Yeah, I couldn't find...

C: Some analog stuff?

S: I was very interested in that, like, what's their backup? But the thing is, if they lost power, it kind of wouldn't matter how many batteries.

E: Transponder should be battery-operated, though.

S: Unless it has some independent power. Then I was thinking, would it be possible to have a completely manually-operated thing that just makes noise?

C: Right.

S: You know what I mean? Like a kind of a whistle or something where you could just, pump it with your hand or something, and it creates a loud noise.

B: And noise travels well in water, for sure.

S: It does. I don't know.

E: Well, remember in, what was it, Hunt for Red October, when they docked up with the Russian ship, the way they knocked down... They took a hammer and banged on the submarine. That's basically how they were able to tell them, right? So a hammer on an arm or something that automatically would go off to start banging the thing.

C: Well, that's probably what they were sadly scared and maybe hoping that they were hearing.

S: Yeah, it was a banging noise. Yeah. And then one of the concerns is that they were trapped, and this was a very real concern. Even the pilot at one point said, this is my greatest fear, is that you get snagged in a net or you get trapped under an overhang, then you can't get to the surface. Because even if you drop your weights and flood your tanks, you still can't get to the surface because there's something keeping you trapped on the bottom.

E: Yeah. It's not like you can dispatch an assist vehicle to go down there and dislodge you.

B: That actually happened. I think in the early 1990s, somebody was touring the Titanic and their submersible got stuck under part of the ship. And it took a half hour. They got out.

E: Oh my gosh.

B: But if they didn't get out, they'd probably still be there today.

C: It's pretty bananas that we, since the 1990s, we've had submersibles going down there. I know we had the technology decades and decades even before that. But I've been looking at these infographics of where the Titanic is. That is really deep. It's really far away, scary deep. You need some good technology to be that deep. We're talking lots of pressure.

B: Oh yeah.

S: Yeah. Well, it was made out of carbon fiber and titanium. Yeah, I mean the submersible, not the Titanic. The Titanic is at─

C: 12,500 feet.

S: 12,500 feet, yeah. That's deep. And it's cold down there. So yeah, sad end to a riveting news story that was unfolding in the last four days. But I do think from one perspective, the money aspect of it aside, that they were adventurers. They did something they knew was dangerous. They all signed waivers that said multiple times, you can die. I think the word you may die was in the waiver they signed three times. And they were willing to take extreme risks for an extreme experience. And sometimes the risks don't go your way.

E: And there'll come a day where we unfortunately maybe have to talk about this again with all the people who want to do the space.

C: That's yeah. There's going to be a lot of parallels there. We've really got to be thinking about how to regulate those things.

S: Yeah, the lack of regulation is one of the questions that comes out of it. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on to some regular news items.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Neuroforecasting (14:43)

• Using AI for Neuroforecasting

Coastal Erosion (34:34)

• Coastal erosion could be reduced by dune restoration projects 

S: I'm in favor of them.

C: They're really big and pretty.

E: "It's coarse. It gets everywhere." Was that what you--

C: --Oh god.

B: Anakin would hate them.

C: Saw that coming.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole (44:36)

• The Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole had a Burst of Activity 200 Years Ago. We Just Saw the Echo.

Aliens in Vegas (52:11)

• Did aliens land in Las Vegas? NASA says no

Alcohol Use Disorder (1:03:13)

• Alcohol Use Disorder: More Alcohol, More Impairment, Regardless of Drinking Habits

Who's That Noisy? (1:15:44)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Fox getting its tummy rubbed

New Noisy (1:20:20)

[raspy warblings]

short_text_from_transcript

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups

Question #1: Debating RFK Jr. (1:27:23)

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Science or Fiction (1:34:03)

Theme: Lesser-known dramatic events Item #1: Often called the forgotten genocide, in the 1880s, the Ottoman Empire engaged in ethnic cleansing in the region of Astrakhan, killing over 1 million native Cossacks, and ultimately absorbed the territory. Item #2: In 1919, in Boston's North End, a large tank ruptured, spilling 2 million gallons of molasses, which raged through the streets at 35 miles per hour, killing 21 people and injuring 150. Item #3: In 1862, some soldiers in the Battle of Shiloh noticed that their wounds glowed green-blue, and these wounds seemed to heal faster than non-glowing wounds. Recent investigations suggest the glow was due to bioluminescent bacteria seeded in the wounds by nematodes.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Forgotten genocide
Science	Molasses disaster
Science	Glowing wounds

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Forgotten genocide
Jay	Glowing wounds
Evan	Forgotten genocide
Bob	Glowing wounds

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:48:39)

Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.  – Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974), Polish-British mathematician and philosopher

Signoff

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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