Alvin will help scientists unlock the mysteries of the deep ocean

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Famous explorer Robert Ballard scoured the depths of the sea for decades in search of its mysteries.

Fascinated by Jules Verne’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ as a child, the oceanographer is most associated with the discovery of the wreckage of the RMS Titanic in 1985 – a find that was actually part of a secret US military mission . He and Alvin, a three-person submersible, returned to the site in 1986 to capture footage revealing artifacts left behind by those who had perished.

Ballard helped develop Alvin in the 1960s in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. Together, he and Alvin dived into the depths to observe underwater mountain ranges and discover thermal vents.

And now 99% of the seabed is within human reach, thanks to a household name: Alvin.

The deepest parts of the ocean are a largely unexplored area, but after a serious upgrade, Alvin is ready to take people straight to this remote place of wonder.

The submersible reached a record depth of 4 miles (6,453 meters) over the summer when crews visited the Puerto Rico Trough and the Mid-Cayman Rise, where tectonic plates create mysterious underwater landscapes and strange sea animals float by.

The researchers took samples from the ocean floor, including unknown creatures and chemical belching from hydrothermal vents.

With direct access to the seabed, scientists expect to find the foundations of life.

Astronomers have confirmed that the DART spacecraft successfully altered the motion of asteroid Dimorphos when it intentionally slammed into space rock last month, according to NASA.

The deviation test shortened Dimorphos’ orbit around its larger companion asteroid Didymos by 32 minutes – the first time humanity has shifted the motion of a celestial object.

Meanwhile, the James Webb Space Telescope observed what happens when two massive stars violently interact with each other. Every eight years they release a plume of dust, creating interlocking rings that look like a giant spider’s web.

And astronomers have detected an unusual feature in the upper atmospheres of two hot exoplanets where liquid iron and gemstones are raining down from the sky.

French soldiers who fell on a broken stone slab covered with inscriptions in 1799 had no idea that would reveal the secrets of ancient Egypt.

Indecipherable hieroglyphs, Simplified Egyptian Demotic, and Ancient Greek script were carved into the dark granite-like stone. At the time, scholars only understood ancient Greek.

It took two decades for Egyptologists to decipher the meaning of the scripts once they started working on them in 1802. By deciphering the Egyptian texts, they opened a way to understand the past.

A new exhibition at the British Museum in London explores the race to decode the Rosetta Stone and celebrates the 200th anniversary of the breakthrough.

For many, William Shatner will always be Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. But when the actor ventured into space in 2021 on a Blue Origin suborbital flight, he had a much different experience than any « Star Trek » scene.

Shifting his gaze from Earth to the cosmos, he said, upended all his preconceived notions of space. « All I’ve seen is death, » he writes in his new book, « Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder. »

Shatner described intense grief as he briefly left his home planet. “That was life. Feed, support, live. Mother Earth. … And I left her. No longer tied to the earth, his thoughts turned to how humans are destroying the planet.

Meanwhile, Artemis I is preparing for a third launch attempt on a trip around the moon on Nov. 14, with a 69-minute launch window opening at 12:07 a.m. ET.

Images that capture buzzing bees, battling Alpine ibexes and celestial flamingos are among the winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2022 competition.

The title grand prize went to Karine Aigner for “The big buzz,” which shows a ball of male cactus bees battling to mate with a single female. The image, taken at « bee level », depicts an endangered species threatened by pesticides and habitat loss.

According to a new report from the World Wide Fund for Nature, global wildlife populations have fallen by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018 due to climate change and human activity on Earth. As the natural world approaches a tipping point, immediate conservation efforts could slow and even reverse these losses.

These discoveries might blow your mind:

– Astronomers have discovered the Milky Way’s huge graveyard of dead ancient stars – and they’ve also found where supernova explosions have blasted some of them straight out of the galaxy.

— Brain cells in a lab box could play the video game Pong, and neurons were able to move the racket to hit the ball in a targeted manner, the scientists found.

— Paleontologists have found mummified dinosaur skin, and it still bears the teeth marks of a predator that bit it 67 million years ago.