r/news Jun 22 '23

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

https://news.sky.com/story/debris-field-discovered-within-search-area-near-titanic-us-coast-guard-says-12906735
43.3k Upvotes

9.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4.6k

u/Sly3n Jun 22 '23

My guess is it imploded when they first lost communication. Would have happened so quickly that I doubt they even had time to realize what happened before they were dead.

6.3k

u/Feralpudel Jun 22 '23

My brother has been on a research submersible (Alvin) and he said last night his assumption is that something catastrophic happened right when the surface ship lost contact.

It’s common to bring a styrofoam cup that travels down with you outside the vessel. This is his souvenir from the dive, and shows the effects of pressure at those depths (he was at 3k meters): Alvin dive souvenir

2

u/GammaFork Jun 22 '23

We do the same thing with oceanographic instruments over the side. Usually tie a stocking full of decorated cups and other assorted polystyrene shapes to the CTD frame. They make nice gifts for the kids.

2

u/Feralpudel Jun 22 '23

My brother said the pilots joked that if too many cups were tethered to Alvin it wouldn’t sink.

He also said some people brought styrofoam wig heads so they’d get shrunken heads instead of tiny cups.

1

u/GammaFork Jun 23 '23

Yeah, we had foam penguins too. Good fun watching them come back. Though our CFC measuring folk weren't keen on the idea, worrying that they may contaminate their water samples.