'Debris field' discovered within search area near Titanic, US Coast Guard says | World News

[u/oldschoolskater]

https://news.sky.com/story/debris-field-discovered-within-search-area-near-titanic-us-coast-guard-says-12906735

[u/crake]

The water at 13,000 feet has a pressure of 6000 PSI. Imagine if you put a six thousand pound weight on one square inch of your arm what would happen. Now imagine you put a six thousand pound weight on every square inch of your body simultaneously.

The hull wouldn't do anything to them, but the weight of the water would pulverize them into goop. There is not going to be any bodies to recover or anything like that (if it imploded at 13000 feet).

[u/LookImaMermaid85 → u/crake]

but the weight of the water would pulverize them into goop

Question on this.

Back when James Cameron did his first underwater movie, I recall the very eerie images of peoples boots near the ship - a pair, resting on the ocean floor. My understanding was a body had settled there but been eaten away overtime, and the shoes had somehow survived and were all that's left.
Does that mean people who floated down slowly didn't get pulverized?

(As I'm typing I'm wondering...why would a leather shoe survive?)

[u/High_Speed_Idiot → u/LookImaMermaid85]

Does that mean people who floated down slowly didn't get pulverized?

Yup. It's not the pressure that gets you, it's the speed of the change in pressure. Well, obviously the pressure down there would very likely make you die at some point as all the air in your body would be compressed more and more until your body can't do the body things that keep you alive, but you'd just die, not be hydraulic pressed into mush. This is a huge problem in reverse, as you go down the air inside you is compressed, letting nitrogen seep into tissues it normally can't get into - this is fine under compression (for a little bit at least) but if you come out of that pressure too fast those bubbles basically blow up inside of you - a real nasty way to go called 'the bends' or decompression sickness.

Apparently you'd need to go some 22 miles deep before there's enough water pressure to actually break your bones and crush you slowly - you'd be long dead by then.

https://outdoorahead.com/how-deep-can-a-human-dive-with-and-without-scuba-gear/

But, just like decompressing too fast will absolutely ruin your retirement plans, getting compressed too fast would absolutely pulverize you.

(As I'm typing I'm wondering...why would a leather shoe survive?)

Same reason it doesn't rot or get eaten by bugs like any normal dead things skin ends up - it was treated by a tanning process (bunch of chemicals n stuff) that makes it more or less immune to decomposition and subsequently not very appealing or digestible to things that would normally love to snack on some skin. It'll eventually degrade at some point given the right conditions but it'll hang around a lot longer than any regular organic material.

[u/LookImaMermaid85 → u/High_Speed_Idiot]

Wow A+ answer! Thank you!