HN Explorer

26 comments

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novum
Oceans are the new undiscovered country. Star Trek IV was on to something.
ErrantX
It was actually quite creepy scrolling down the page - especially as the blues switched from "there is clearly a little light here" to "black!".
InclinedPlane
That's actually an artistic effect. The black should properly start at 3280ft (1km) of depth. Below 200m only about 1% of light penetrates, below 1000m it's pitch black (darker than the darkest dark most humans have ever experienced in their lives).
dantheman
I assume it's as dark as being deep down in cave? It's much easier to experience that, and I'd say quite a few people have.
InclinedPlane
Yes. The only illumination would come from bio-luminescence or artificial light. Though a lot people have been in enclosed areas that are dark, very few people have completely turned off every source of illumination in such situations.
yummyfajitas
Very few people have ever gone into a closet and closed the door?
tsuraan
I obviously can't speak for anybody else's experiences, but every time I've gone into a cave, the group has spent several minutes in the pitch dark, being quiet. I can't really imagine anybody not doing that; going into a cave without experiencing the dark and the silence would be a much less interesting experience.
dugmartin
Same for me on every cave trip. The fun part is that if you do it long enough your brain starts making up shadow images that you would swear are real.
scott_s
Our minds are not adapted to sensory deprivation. Hence, prolonged sensory deprivation can induce hallucinations, and exceedingly long sensory deprivation (combined with restraints to prevent movement) can impact sanity.
masomenos
I think you're underestimating the ubiquity of caves.
ajross
Or a darkroom. Or just a closed closet in a dark house on a moonless night. Black is black, it's hardly beyond most of our experience to be sightless.
nfnaaron
I had a very similar reaction as I scrolled down, somewhere between creepy and despair.
akadien
That's because the deeper you go, the closer you get to Hell, which everybody knows is at the exact center of the Earth: http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/demonsscr.htm
logicalmind
Wasn't the earth considered flat when hell became a concept? How could it have a center?
metamemetics
Sure it scales, but completely vertically. Talk about an expensive server.
far33d
Call me crazy, but I read this as "The Marijuana Trench To Scale"
protomyth
"Sperm whales are believed to be able to reach 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) and remain submerged for 90 minutes." - that's a lot of darkness for an air breathing mammal to go through.

(quote from wikipedia)

ajross
Which is why toothed whales evolved echolocation.

On a related subject: why is the blue whale referenced on the chart? It's big, but doesn't dive particularly deeply. It eats krill, which themselves are tied to photosynthesizing plankton which are tied to the surface waters. There's no reason for it to be interested in diving beyond there.

protomyth
Perhaps because it is the biggest? That is really the only explanation I can think of. Unless you wanted to show where the plankton feeders hunt to illustrate light penetration.