The exploration of the ocean depths is one of the newest of
sciences; here's a capable summary of the progress to date. Broad
(Teller's War, 1991), a Pulitzer Prize winner and science
correspondent for the New York Times, notes that the first serious
attempt to discover what lay beneath the waves came in the
Victorian era, with the three-and-a-half-year round-the-world
voyage of H.M.S. Challenger, commissioned by the Royal Society to
sound the depths and retrieve specimens. In the process, it founded
the science of oceanography. In the 1930s, William Beebe devised
the bathyscaphe, a heavy diving vehicle designed to carry human
observers a half-mile beneath the surface, an unprecedented depth.
That began the systematic exploration of the deep. But as with the
frontier of outer space, it was the military that was responsible
for the greatest breakthroughs, in vehicles originally designed for
submarine rescue and espionage. With the end of the Cold War, naval
technology became available to civilian science, and deep-sea
exploration suddenly flourished. Broad takes us through a number of
its recent triumphs; the reader gets first-hand accounts of trips
in a submersible to visit new underwater volcanic eruptions and to
examine the "black smokers" that arise around fissures in the ocean
floor. The exotic fauna that live in the superhot water around
these submerged chimneys - huge tubeworms and bizarrely colored
shrimp - have demonstrated that life can thrive in environments
once thought utterly hostile to it. And the entire picture of how
the surface of our planet has evolved was revised with the
discovery of midocean ridges. Broad's sympathetic portrayal of the
new breed of underwater scientists and explorers, and of their
state-of-the-art equipment, make this a fascinating account of the
newest frontier. (Kirkus Reviews)
Pulitzer Prize winner William J. Broad takes us on an adventure to the planet's last and most exotic frontier -- the depths of the sea. The Universe Below examines how we are illuminating its dark recesses as a wave of advanced technology quietly opens the Earth's largest and most mysterious environment.
Broad takes us on breathtaking dives and expeditions -- to the Azores, to the Titanic, to hot springs teeming with bizarre life, to icy fissures aswarm with gulper eels, vampire squids, and gelatinous beasts longer than a city bus. We meet legendary explorers and researchers and go with them as they probe the ancient mysteries of a universe that encompasses the vast majority of the Earth's habitable space and holds millions of humanity's lost artworks and treasures.
The Universe Below is an unforgettable trip to our last great unexplored frontier.
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