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Depth of despair: Inside the chilling physics of Titan’s implosion [VIDEOS]
Uncover the physics and potential flaws behind the Titan implosion in the Atlantic, leading to the presumable death of five onboard.
Undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible launching from a platform. Photo: AFP/OceanGate Expeditions handout
The Titan’s implosion sparked intense global scrutiny, ranging from the debate around how billionaires spend their funds, to the risks of deep-sea exploration.
The US Coast Guard said on Friday the submersible likely suffered a catastrophic implosion, indicating that the five individuals on board are presumed deceased.
To further our understanding of the event, we looked at the science behind the implosion. And it is chilling, to say the least.
Titan implosion explained
According Professor Arun Bansil from the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, the implosion would have released a substantial amount of energy, causing instantaneous death.
He said they wouldn’t have experienced any pain – they didn’t drown or suffocate.
WATCH: Implosion illustrated
“In fact, they likely didn’t even have time to comprehend what was happening, since the implosion would have occurred in a fraction of a millisecond, maybe even a nanosecond.”
Bansil said the structural integrity of submarines’ hulls enables them to withstand the tremendous pressures of the deep sea.
Design flaw
But since the Titan was an experimental craft, it used carbon fibres instead of steel, titanium or aluminum.
“This created a more spacious environment since the submersible was lighter, but the properties of carbon fibres hadn’t been tested under extreme deep-sea pressures before.
“This made the carbon fibred-hull prone to cracking, which is likely what lead to the implosion,” he said.
WATCH: Titan implosion explained
READ: Did ‘The Simpsons’ predict Titanic submarine events?
Among the casualties were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who piloted the vessel, along with British businessman Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood from Pakistan, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a former French naval officer and a Titanic expert.
But what happens to a human body when a sub implodes?
Impact on human body
Bansil said at the ocean’s floor, at the depth where the Titanic wreckage rests, the pressure equates to approximately 2 800 kilogrammes per square inch.
“An average adult male consists of 21 square feet (or 2 square metres), which is 3 000 square inches – roughly 19 300 square centimeters.
“At 2 800 kilogrammes per square inch, that’s approximately 18 million pounds of pressure, or 8 million kilograms of pressure.”
READ: Titanic sub: James Cameron felt the loss ‘in his bones’, Navy found ‘anomaly’
So, what happened to the bodies?
Since the submersible had one giant air bubble inside, the pressure of the implosion compressed the air, according to Bansil.
“This process heated the air up to about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun, which is 5 726 degrees Celsius.”
If there was anything of the bodies left, it would have been compressed into a cooked, gel-like substance.
This substance would have been ejected out of all the seams of the sub at high velocity, where it would have been absorbed into the ocean’s ecosystem.
“Macabre, we know. But on the plus side (if there is such a thing in this saga) they didn’t even a feel a thing.”
