Robosub prowls Pacific's hadal depths US scientists are hailing a "new era" of deep-sea exploration after successfully dispatching a robotic vehicle to the bottom of the Mariana Trench - 10,902 metres or 6.8 miles beneath the Pacific's surface. The Nereus (pictured below during tests off Hawaii in 2007) hit the bottom of the Challenger Deep on Sunday, making it …
'braving pressures greater than 1,000 times that at Earth’s surface, or "crushing forces similar to those on the surface of Venus"'
The pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench *IS* about 100 MegaPascals (really big French mathematicians), but the surface pressure on Venus is only (HAH!) 9.3 MegaPascals.
This sort of confusion would be avoided if the World switched to a sensible measure of pressure we could all understand such as the force generated by 1 metric Wales balanced on a double-decker bus.
You mention correctly that the craft is named Nereus, after the mythological Greek sea-god who "had the gift of prophecy and could change himself into any shape". However, you omitted to mention that the robosub namesake changes form according to which mode it is working in (underwater 'flying' or 'hovering'), hence the name.
Ob. RoTM postscript: I may as well take this opportunity to hopefully be the first to welcome our new autonomous, shape-shifting mechanical over-, ahem, under-lords.
"..It collected samples and "placed a marker on the seafloor signed by those onboard the surface ship"."...
Of course, the trench is a subduction zone. So the marker will be carried down with the descending plate, melted into the core, or possibly ejected again through one of the volcanos in the Ring of Fire.
Apart from that - good idea...
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