Location of Cameron's deep dive: Challenger Deep is about 300 miles southwest of Guam.Courtesy Kmusser via Wikipedia Creative CommonsHollywood director James Cameron returned safely from a dive that took him nearly seven miles to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Encased in a narrow submersible of his own design, Cameron reached the bottom in an area of the trench known as Challenger Deep after a 2.5 hour descent. He spent three hours exploring the sea bottom using the well-outfitted submarine's cameras and sampling equipment to collect images, fauna, and other data from the silty seabed. The single-person capsule - built to withstand up to 1000 atmospheres of pressure - held up well under the eight tons(!) per square inch that six and a half miles of ocean water exerted upon it. As today goes on, I'm sure more information will come out about this remarkable feat. In the meantime, I'm really anxious to see what images he captured down there, and we'll all get that chance when the National Geographic Society - one of the expedition's sponsors - comes out with a planned future program about the dive.
SOURCES
National Geographic website
CNET.com
BBC story
Mother Nature Network
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