A fascinating tale of obsession, teamwork and undersea exploration

The New Yorker has a very interesting (and very long) article about a man's obsession with reaching the bottom of the deepest point in every ocean, and how he set about it.  In the process, he built - as a private venture, using his own money - the only vessel in existence certified to dive to any depth, anywhere on Earth.

Here's a short excerpt.

Most submarines go down several hundred metres, then across; this one was designed to sink like a stone. It was the shape of a bulging briefcase, with a protruding bulb at the bottom. This was the pressure hull—a titanium sphere, five feet in diameter, which was sealed off from the rest of the submersible and housed the pilot and all his controls. Under the passenger seat was a tuna-fish sandwich, the pilot’s lunch. He gazed out of one of the viewports, into the blue. It would take nearly four hours to reach the bottom.

Sunlight cuts through the first thousand feet of water. This is the epipelagic zone, the layer of plankton, kelp, and reefs. It contains the entire ecosystem of marine plants, as well as the mammals and the fish that eat them. An Egyptian diver once descended to the limits of this layer. The feat required a lifetime of training, four years of planning, a team of support divers, an array of specialized air tanks, and a tedious, thirteen-hour ascent, with constant decompression stops, so that his blood would not be poisoned and his lungs would not explode.

The submersible dropped at a rate of about two and a half feet per second. Twenty minutes into the dive, the pilot reached the midnight zone, where dark waters turn black. The only light is the dim glow of bioluminescence—from electric jellies, camouflaged shrimp, and toothy predators with natural lanterns to attract unwitting prey. Some fish in these depths have no eyes—what use are they? There is little to eat. Conditions in the midnight zone favor fish with slow metabolic rates, weak muscles, and slimy, gelatinous bodies.

An hour into the descent, the pilot reached ten thousand feet—the beginning of the abyssal zone. The temperature is always a few degrees above freezing, and is unaffected by the weather at the surface. Animals feed on “marine snow”: scraps of dead fish and plants from the upper layers, falling gently through the water column. The abyssal zone, which extends to twenty thousand feet, encompasses ninety-seven per cent of the ocean floor.

After two hours in free fall, the pilot entered the hadal zone, named for the Greek god of the underworld. It is made up of trenches—geological scars at the edges of the earth’s tectonic plates—and although it composes only a tiny fraction of the ocean floor, it accounts for nearly fifty per cent of the depth.

Past twenty-seven thousand feet, the pilot had gone beyond the theoretical limit for any kind of fish. (Their cells collapse at greater depths.) After thirty-five thousand feet, he began releasing a series of weights, to slow his descent. Nearly seven miles of water was pressing on the titanium sphere. If there were any imperfections, it could instantly implode.

The submarine touched the silty bottom, and the pilot, a fifty-three-year-old Texan named Victor Vescovo, became the first living creature with blood and bones to reach the deepest point in the Tonga Trench.

There's much more at the link, including many photographs.

It's a pretty amazing story about a man driven to achieve what had never been done before, and the team he assembled to do it.  It's very long, but I think it's worth the time it'll take to read it.  Highly recommended.

Peter

OK, this is a weird one . . .

The BBC reports on a strange placebo effect in the world of sports that even the scientist investigating it can't explain.

The Pico Simón Bolívar is one of the highest mountains in Colombia. Near the top, there is only half as much oxygen as at sea level, a dizzying 5,500m (18,000 feet) below. The air up there makes it hard to walk and causes fatigue and headaches, so the body tries to adapt: breathing rate increases, the heart beats faster and blood vessels expand to get more oxygen to tissues.

As you might expect, giving someone an oxygen tank to breathe from will reverse these changes. They’ll quickly feel less tired and their head will stop pounding as their heart rate and breathing return to normal. What you wouldn’t expect is that you can achieve exactly the same thing if the oxygen tank is a fake – it’s empty.

Fabrizio Benedetti is the scientist behind these experiments. Based in Italy at the University of Turin, he has given people placebo oxygen on mountains in Colombia, Alaska and his laboratory in the Alps and observed the same thing –fake oxygen tanks can mimic the effects of the real thing.

The effect only works if an actual oxygen tank is given to the subject a few times first, before it’s switched for a sham one without them knowing. That way, their bodies are expecting to receive an oxygen hit. Remarkably, although the tank is now empty, it can still boost physical performance on a lab-based high altitude walking exercise. The question is – how?

“This is the one-billion [dollar] question,” says Benedetti. “There is no oxygen in the blood, there is no oxygen in the body, but you can get the very same effect as real oxygen. The real answer is we don’t know.”

There's much more at the link, including speculation as to the cause of this phenomenon - but that's all it is.  At present, there's no solid evidence or proof of what's going on.

I find this fascinating.  Could this sort of "placebo effect" be triggered during a sporting event, to provide a boost equal to a performance-enhancing drug, but without the illegality?  Could it be used in the context of military operations, to give troops in combat a boost to their performance that lasts just long enough to triumph over the enemy?  The possibilities are endless.

Peter

Olive oil is facing a pandemic of its own

Never mind coronavirus - it seems there's another pandemic affecting Europe's olive groves.  The BBC reports:

Researchers say the economic costs of a deadly pathogen affecting olive trees in Europe could run to over €20 billion.

They've modelled the future worst impacts of the Xylella fastidiosa pathogen which has killed swathes of trees in Italy.

Spread by insects, the bacterium now poses a potential threat to olive plantations in Spain and Greece.

. . .

The infection limits the tree's ability to move water and nutrients and over time it withers and dies.

In Italy, the consequences of the spread of the disease have been devastating, with an estimated 60% decline in crop yields since the first discovery in 2013.

. . .

As well as in Italy, the Xylella bacterium has now been found in Spain, France and Portugal.

Tackling it at present involves removing infected trees and trying to clamp down on the movement of plant material and the insects that spread the disease.

. . .

In Spain, if the infection expanded and the majority of trees became infected and died, the costs could run to €17 billion over the next 50 years.

A similar scenario in Italy would amount to over five billion, while in Greece, the losses would be under two billion.

If the rate of infection is slowed down, or resistant varieties are planted instead, then these costs would be significantly reduced.

However, the authors believe, whatever happens, there will likely be a knock-on impact on consumers.

"The expected effect could be that there would be a shortage of supply," said lead author Kevin Schneider from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

. . .

Ultimately, the researchers believe that beating the pathogen will require trees that are resistant to the disease.

There's more at the link.

As far back as 2012 I reported on a growing olive oil scandal, where cheap, inferior oil was packaged as top-of-the-line product and sold fraudulently under the best brand names.  It seems nothing's changed, according to this report at Mama Natural.

According to a University of California at Davis study, more than two-thirds of common brands of extra-virgin olive oil found in California grocery stores aren’t what they claim to be.

The oils were either spoiled or made from lower quality olives unfit to be labeled “extra virgin.” Even worse, some were outright counterfeits, made from soybean, hazelnut, and even fish oils mixed with low grade olive-pomace oil. Not only is this a scam to your wallet and your health, robbing you of the true health benefits of real, high-quality extra-virgin olive oil, but it’s a major safety hazard too—especially to those with allergies to some of the counterfeit oils actually used in place of olive oil.

Again, more at the link.  The article contains detailed instructions on what to look for to identify the "real deal".  I found them very useful.

I guess any shortages of olive oil as a result of this pathogen will only make the fraud problem worse.  What's more, you're more likely to find fraudulent oil in supermarkets than at specialty outlets, because supermarket buyers purchase in bulk and don't have time to track down origin and shipment of their stock.  Specialty buyers do, because they depend on knowledgeable customers.  They know that if they don't get it right, those customers will turn around and take their money somewhere else in a heartbeat.

I guess I'd better stash a few bottles of the good stuff while I can still get it.  Fortunately, thanks to friend and fellow author and blogger Alma Boykin, my wife and I know a trustworthy source for it.  I recommend Amarillo Grape & Olive, not just for olive oil, but also for their outstanding balsamic vinegars.  They're not cheap, but the "real deal" never is.  Yes, they do e-orders and will ship (although a road trip is more fun).

If any reader knows another good, honest source for guaranteed real-deal olive oil and associated goodies, please tell us about it in Comments, along with contact information if possible.  That way, those in different cities and regions will learn where it's safe to shop in their area.

Peter