Photo: Atlantic/Magellan
The Titanicis finally giving up its secrets.
Scientists are hoping new full-sized scans of the famous cruise liner will uncover the truth as to how the famed ship sank after it struck an iceberg in April 1912, killing more than 1,500 crew and passengers.
Previously onlysections of the wreckage, which lies about 12,500 feet under the Atlantic Ocean, have been captured on camera, but now the ship in its entirety can be viewed in new 3D digital scans created using deep-sea mapping.
‘I have been studying Titanic for 20 years, but this is a true game-changer," Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson said in a release. “What we are seeing for the first time is an accurate and true depiction of the entire wreck and debris site. I’m seeing details that none of us have ever seen before and this allows me to build upon everything that we have learned to date and see the wreck in a new light.”
Atlantic/Magellan
To capture the startling new images the team sent out a submersible to survey the wreck, spending more than 200 hours capturing more than 700,000 images of the Titanic, which is split in two, from every angle. They then put together the images to create an exact 3D reconstruction.
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“The depth of it, almost 4,000 meters, represents a challenge, and you have currents at the site, too — and we’re not allowed to touch anything so as not to damage the wreck,” Gerhard Seiffert, who led the planning for the expedition, told theBBC.
“And the other challenge is that you have to map every square centimeter - even uninteresting parts, like on the debris field you have to map mud, but you need this to fill in between all these interesting objects,” he added.
The scan also shows smaller detailing of the ship like the serial number on one of the propellers and larger details like the wrecked stern, which appeared to be a crushed mess of metal.
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“It allows you to see the wreck as you can never see it from a submersible, and you can see the wreck in its entirety, you can see it in context and perspective. And what it’s showing you now is the true state of the wreck,” Stephenson told the BBC.
“We really don’t understand the character of the collision with the iceberg,” he continued. “We don’t even know if she hit it along the starboard side, as is shown in all the movies — she might have grounded on the iceberg.”
source: people.com
