On the 31st of March, 1911, 100,000 people gathered at a dock in Belfast, Ireland to
watch the launch of the new Royal Mail Ship Titanic.
The result of an intense international rivalry between the United Kingdom and France over
who could field the most luxurious, and fastest, cruise liner in the world, the Titanic well
earned her name, and was at the time the largest and most luxurious cruise liner in the world.
Measuring over 882 feet (269 meters) from bow to stern, and 175 feet high (53 meters),
the Titanic weighed in at over 46,000 tons.
One year and one month later, the Titanic would be on her maiden voyage to New York,
loaded full of passengers.
On the night of April 14th, 1912, four days out of Southampton, England, the Titanic struck
an iceberg and proved that she was without a doubt, not an unsinkable ship.
Over 1500 passengers and crew died, at the time the greatest ocean catastrophe in history.
Fast forward seven decades and famed oceanographer Robert Ballard is on a secret US Navy mission
in the North Atlantic.
In 1982 Ballard had approached the US navy and asked for funding to develop his robotic
submersible technology which he hoped to use to discover the Titanic one day.
The navy agreed, but with the condition that once the technology was ready for use he help
them locate the wrecks of two downed nuclear submarines, the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.
Three years later and Ballard finds himself in the North Atlantic, using his submersibles
to locate the wrecks of the Thresher and Scorpion.
He has plotted Titanic's course, as well as the location of the rescue of its surviving
passengers, and he realizes that the Titanic is likely located directly between the two
downed subs.
He asks Vice Admiral Ronald Thunman, the then deputy chief of naval operations for submarine
warfare, for permission to search for the Titanic enroute from one sub to the next,
but Thunman very sternly reminds Ballard that his mission is to locate the downed subs.
The entire expedition is being secretly funded by the Navy, and Ballard is granted permission
to search for the Titanic only after he locates the subs, and then, only if time remains.
Luckily for Ballard, he manages to locate and photograph the downed subs per the Navy's
specifications with just twelve days left on the mission.
He uses the time to search for the Titanic, though nobody- least of all the Navy- believes
he'll find it.
To the shock of all involved, Ballard manages to do just that, and the legend of the Titanic
is reborn for a new generation.
Today the Titanic is nothing more than a rusting hulk.
It rests almost 2.5 miles (3.8 km) below the surface of the Atlantic, where no light can
reach it.
This fact and the incredible pressures at that depth, coupled with the very low temperatures,
means that scientists believed the wreck would remain well preserved for many decades to
come.
After all, the ship now rests in one of the most inhospitable places on earth, and the
lack of life dramatically slows down corrosion.
In 1991 scientists from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, collected
samples of what look like icicles but are actually formations of rust called rusticles.
Breaking a few off from the ship, the scientists brought them back to a lab and discovered
that they were teeming with life- an exciting discovery.
However, it wasn't until 2010 that scientists led by Henrietta Mann at Dalhousie University,
took it upon themselves to actually identify what type of life it was.
For years NASA has been looking at the possibility of extreme forms of life- known as extremophiles-
surviving in places like Titan and Europa in conditions that were once thought inhospitable
to life.
The discovery of bacteria living in hydrothermal vents deep under the ocean, and even under
the arctic ice, has led to scientists exploring what other environments bacteria could survive
in- with the thinking being that if life can survive in extremely inhospitable places here
on earth, perhaps it can do so in similar places across the solar system.
The scientists re-examining the rusticles were able to isolate just one species of bacteria,
and to their surprise it turned out to be completely new to science!
This new bacteria was termed Halomonas titanicae, after the ship, and has the ability to survive
in crushing pressures and freezing cold, salty water.
A cousin of this bacteria is known to survive in salty marshes, where the salinity can vary
dramatically due to evaporation, and has evolved the ability to produce special compounds that
can prevent their cells from bursting or shrinking due to too much, or too little salt.
Incredibly, this deep-sea cousin somehow survived the trip to the bottom of the ocean and put
this adaptation to great use, propagating across the salty ocean bottom.
Perhaps most incredible of all their adaptations though is the bacteria's ability to actually
'eat' iron, and to do so quite voraciously.
In fact the little buggers are such hungry eaters that scientists have now estimated
that the entire shipwreck will be mostly consumed by the year 2030.
Soon after that all that will be left of the once mighty ship, dubbed 'unsinkable' will
be a pile of rust, and some non-edible furnishings from the interior.
So if you planned on seeing the Titanic with your own eyes anytime soon, you may want to
get yourself into a deep sea submersible and take a trip down now while you can, because
as of today you only have ten and a half years left to catch sight of this sunken wonder
of the world.
Would you ever take a trip to the depths to see the Titanic for yourself before it's gone?
Let us know in the comments!
And if you liked this video check out one of our other awesome Titanic video Where Did
All The Bodies On Titanic Disappear to?
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