“After hydrogen, there’s nothing.”
March 20, 2024 10:51 AM Subscribe
Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go (Samantha Schuyler in MIT Technology Review)
"They weren’t there to exceed 245 meters—a depth they’d reached three years earlier. Nor were they there to set a depth record—that would mean going past 308 meters. They were there to test what they saw as a possible key to unlocking depths beyond even 310 meters: breathing hydrogen."
"They weren’t there to exceed 245 meters—a depth they’d reached three years earlier. Nor were they there to set a depth record—that would mean going past 308 meters. They were there to test what they saw as a possible key to unlocking depths beyond even 310 meters: breathing hydrogen."
"Never send a human to do a machine's job."
posted by happyinmotion at 11:34 AM on March 20 [6 favorites]
posted by happyinmotion at 11:34 AM on March 20 [6 favorites]
Oh, the huge manatee!
posted by pracowity at 11:34 AM on March 20 [15 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 11:34 AM on March 20 [15 favorites]
pracowity wins today’s internet.
Thank you everyone for playing. Please come back tomorrow.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:39 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Thank you everyone for playing. Please come back tomorrow.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:39 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
You can watch their presentation on YouTube here. It's well done and worth watching.
posted by Hatashran at 11:44 AM on March 20
posted by Hatashran at 11:44 AM on March 20
For a brief moment, the question "why" bubbled up into my consciousness. That annoys me; I don't want to ask why these people are doing what they're doing. I think it's amazing that they are. And I absolutely cannot imagine doing it myself -- just reading this article made me super anxious and it's very mild as far as anxiety-inducing cave diving articles go!
posted by dbx at 11:50 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
posted by dbx at 11:50 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Partway into the piece, and this stood out, re: breathing hydrogen:
“If you’re breathing that mix when it’s burning,” Clarke told the group, “it’s going to be a very unpleasant dive.”
What an enormous understatement!
Edit: Five paragraphs later, (different guy):
“Hydrogen voice is much sillier than helium voice,” he told me. “And I was pleased the house and the dog were intact.”
posted by potent_cyprus at 11:51 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
“If you’re breathing that mix when it’s burning,” Clarke told the group, “it’s going to be a very unpleasant dive.”
What an enormous understatement!
Edit: Five paragraphs later, (different guy):
“Hydrogen voice is much sillier than helium voice,” he told me. “And I was pleased the house and the dog were intact.”
posted by potent_cyprus at 11:51 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
I read the whole article in search of the huge manatee. I guess I have to go deeper
posted by chavenet at 12:07 PM on March 20 [4 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 12:07 PM on March 20 [4 favorites]
Having the air you're breathing catch fire seems like a very bad way to go. Though I suppose at least its over after 5 or 10 minutes.
As they say, after hydrogen there's nothing. So what about just not breathing, as in have a machine to reoxygenate your blood without involving gases at all? Then you don't have to have these odd gas mixes with their pseudo-narcotic effects or deadly flames. Just a bit of surgery before the dive to add a blood port or two.
posted by Ansible at 12:39 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
As they say, after hydrogen there's nothing. So what about just not breathing, as in have a machine to reoxygenate your blood without involving gases at all? Then you don't have to have these odd gas mixes with their pseudo-narcotic effects or deadly flames. Just a bit of surgery before the dive to add a blood port or two.
posted by Ansible at 12:39 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
I think you also would have to not just put oxygen directly into the blood, but also take carbon dioxide out.
posted by aubilenon at 12:52 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
posted by aubilenon at 12:52 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Have you ever done a dive while on a heart/lung bypass?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:22 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:22 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Have you ever done a dive while on a heart/lung bypass?
Not with that attitude, I haven't.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:38 PM on March 20 [20 favorites]
Not with that attitude, I haven't.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:38 PM on March 20 [20 favorites]
As you go deeper, wouldn't you still need some kind of hardened suit to keep the water from compressing your body, organs and blood vessels?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:16 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:16 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
As you go deeper, wouldn't you still need some kind of hardened suit to keep the water from compressing your body, organs and blood vessels?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:16 PM on March 20 [+] [⚑]
eponysterical!
posted by chavenet at 4:02 PM on March 20 [5 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:16 PM on March 20 [+] [⚑]
eponysterical!
posted by chavenet at 4:02 PM on March 20 [5 favorites]
As you go deeper, wouldn't you still need some kind of hardened suit to keep the water from compressing your body, organs and blood vessels?
Those things are mostly water already, so minimally compressible. Anything with air in it (lungs, sinus, ears) needs to be at ambient pressure and the big deal is dissolved gasses in tissues.
A hardened suit is really all or nothing, so essentially a submarine. Within a sufficiently hardened suit, you can descend at one atmosphere and there is really no impact on your body at all.
posted by snofoam at 5:24 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
Those things are mostly water already, so minimally compressible. Anything with air in it (lungs, sinus, ears) needs to be at ambient pressure and the big deal is dissolved gasses in tissues.
A hardened suit is really all or nothing, so essentially a submarine. Within a sufficiently hardened suit, you can descend at one atmosphere and there is really no impact on your body at all.
posted by snofoam at 5:24 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
(To clarify, a hardened suit either protects you from any change in pressure, so you could just be at sea level air pressure (why not?), or it doesn’t, in which case your under whatever pressure you’re under. For commercial diving, there are hardened chambers to get you to high pressure, keep you at that pressure while you are down and then control your decompression, but you are still at ambient pressure when you go out into the water.)
posted by snofoam at 5:36 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
posted by snofoam at 5:36 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
As they say, after hydrogen there's nothing. So what about just not breathing, as in have a machine to reoxygenate your blood without involving gases at all? Then you don't have to have these odd gas mixes with their pseudo-narcotic effects or deadly flames. Just a bit of surgery before the dive to add a blood port or two.
Still need to get CO2 out... it's a solved problem in the form of a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, just wildly impractical to go diving with ;)
I understand why you'd want to go cave diving, the nice ones are breathtaking it's just really amazing. Don't knock it till you try it, it's addictive.
But depth? This one I don't get unless you have a specific wreck in mind or some other goal like connecting 2 cave systems together, but even then the logistics aspect really turn it into a whole production. At least they have an habitat/bell and aren't just hanging in the ocean.
And hydrogen... I'm nervous enough dealing with high pressure O2 and transfills, it feels comical to think about adding H2 in the mix ;) But they seem to be approaching this very methodically, I'll go and watch that presentation.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:44 PM on March 20
Still need to get CO2 out... it's a solved problem in the form of a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, just wildly impractical to go diving with ;)
I understand why you'd want to go cave diving, the nice ones are breathtaking it's just really amazing. Don't knock it till you try it, it's addictive.
But depth? This one I don't get unless you have a specific wreck in mind or some other goal like connecting 2 cave systems together, but even then the logistics aspect really turn it into a whole production. At least they have an habitat/bell and aren't just hanging in the ocean.
And hydrogen... I'm nervous enough dealing with high pressure O2 and transfills, it feels comical to think about adding H2 in the mix ;) But they seem to be approaching this very methodically, I'll go and watch that presentation.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:44 PM on March 20
So what about just not breathing, as in have a machine to reoxygenate your blood without involving gases at all?
You still need to deal with the lungs, possibly by filling them with liquid. Whales can collapse their rib cages and shut off gas exchange in their lungs at depth, but that's not a trick that humans can pull.
posted by mscibing at 7:56 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
You still need to deal with the lungs, possibly by filling them with liquid. Whales can collapse their rib cages and shut off gas exchange in their lungs at depth, but that's not a trick that humans can pull.
posted by mscibing at 7:56 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
When these people get to the limits of where hydrogen breathing can get them, maybe that's the answer: liquid breathing.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:41 PM on March 21
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:41 PM on March 21
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cave diving.
with explosive breathing mixtures.
⚫
posted by lalochezia at 11:25 AM on March 20 [6 favorites]