Russians probe depths of Lake Baikal The Russians earlier today claimed a new record for "freshwater submersion" by dispatching two vessels to the deepest point of Lake Baikal - 1,680 metres (5,510 feet) beneath the surface. The expedition to southeast Siberia, consisting of the Mir-1 and Mir-2 submersibles each with a crew of three, was led from the surface by …
1960
Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench (deepest water on the planet, >10Km)
the "Trieste" (a bathyscaphe)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
"Do not ask what Wikipedia can do for you; ask what you can do for Wikipedia."
In lieu of the Paris icon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Hilton
I s'pose she's been the object of some deep diving too.
I see it now. They are simply trying to subtly draw attention to the fact that not only are we dependent on the Russians for Gas(and thereby electricity) but that if they succeed in buying out and running down our water processing infrastructure they will also have a monopoly on selling us freshwater!
Good of the Russians to recycle the name "Mir"- over and over again. Do they also save on newsprint and letterhead by doing this? In any case they could have had a deeper dive if Baikal were not drying up due to Soviet river diversion projects back in the last century (that would be the 20th for those who haven't been keeping up).
To non-record holders, it's all the same. To two competing groups, semantics matter. This is the deepest freshwater dive. At least for now. Next year some team will go in, dig 20 meters down into the silt and lower a submersible into the hole and then claim the deepest dive record.
Trieste went down 10,910 meters. I can hold my breath at 10.911 meters for 2 minutes while freediving.
Other than that, they tried this subsea habitat stuff before with their "Bentos" effort way before the US Sealab experiments took place. I guess they are realising that they are going to need to exploit the sea for its resources in coming years and want to be way ahead of the pack.
HOARDERS!
seriously .. I wonder if the depths are carbonated like some of the volcanic lakes that occasionally explode in Africa?
They explode because some of the carbonated water from the depths rises. And as it is relieved of the crushing pressure that keeps the CO2 dissolved, it begins bubbling, and rises faster, increasing the upwelling very rapidly. Then it is just like taking a bottle of carbonated beverage, shaking it up and popping the top. Note that you don't want to be within several miles of this as the heavy CO2 displaces almost all breathable air until the winds can disperse it. However by then most anything that needs to breathe has perished.
As we all know, these submersibles were designed and built in Finland, not in USSR. The piece of Nokian (of the City of Nokia) industrial history is in the design of the outer hull of Mir. The viewing sphere was made in Wärtislä yards in Turku and it was biggest of it's time. There is some rumours, that global geopolitics was involved and Wartsilä Meriteollisuus was cut in pieces because of this deal with soviets.
Lake Baikal is not as deep as it once was. The Russians have extracted all the water.
If they keep it up they will be able to walk around the bottom without a submarine. (No comments please I know you can't walk around with a submarine).
The big diving suit with lots of weights please.
Gosh there is a lot of anger and fear here. A lot of "They" and "their" like its even scary to use the name. You can see a lot of similar comments on anti - American articles - sort of mix of "I wish they would fail, then I would laugh and would not be so scared and envious" and I hate the fact that "they" are on the up and we are on the down and we depend on "them".
Quite aside from most of the comments being factually incorrect... I take it none of you ever visited?
> Trieste went down 10,910 meters. I can hold my breath at 10.911 meters for 2 minutes while freediving.
Set your locale to, oh, say, en_ZA, and tell us you can hold your breath at 10.911m -- bet you can't.
!Paris because she probably also didn't know that some places use something other than , and . for the 1000s separator and decimal point.
I guess the point is that the buoyancy of a submersible in fresh water will be much less than that in salt water, making it less difficult to go down but more difficult to get back up again.
@Den: way to take people's comments too seriously, dude :)
Paris, because I'd love to plumb her depths.
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