https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_ARA_San_Juan
>On 23 November the Argentine Navy said an event consistent with an explosion had been detected, on the day the submarine lost communications, by CTBTO seismic anomaly listening posts on Ascension Island and Crozet Islands
>The organization had been asked to analyse data from the search area by the Argentine government on the week of the disappearance, but no leads had materialised until 22 November when the CTBTO informed the government.
>The Navy added that it received information on the explosion on the afternoon of 22 November, adding that it would have concentrated search efforts in that area had it known sooner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS
https://www.amazon.com/Red-November-Inside-U-S-Soviet-Submar...
I mean the thing was a tiny 7x3m cylinder located 700Km from the nearest coast...
Crossmatch that with the time of loss of communication and it's safe to assume that it's it.
Without any actual knowledge, I imagine that a ship or sub could be festooned with hydrophones, enabling it to detect faint noises, but also to determine their direction from phase information.
Here's a naval study where they measured underwater sound propagation: https://www.navymarinespeciesmonitoring.us/files/7514/2780/4...
They found that a 10lb block of C4 exploding produced ~210db of underwater sound. If we use that sound level as an approximation of the implosion of 200 cubic meters of submersible, which seems not completely unreasonable, then we can use the inverse square law to calculate the perceived sound far away.
Halifax, NS is 1100km from the Titanic wreck. A sound that is 210db at 1 meter, is 89db at 1100000 meters. Boston is 1700km away; at that distance it would be 85db.
85db is really quite loud. You would be able to hear that, if you were underwater and paying attention.
If the implosion was instead, say, 180db, then it would have been 55db in Boston harbor. Still easily detectable by instruments.
For reference, when divers are performing construction using e.g. rock drills, those commonly reach 170db. The implosion of close to 200 cubic meters of air seems like it would produce a louder noise than a rock drill.
A former employee claims they were fired after brining up concerns about safety. The glass apparently was not rated for the depth required to see the titanic.
IMHO this was a get rich scheme the two founders spun up that went sideways. They spent the absolute minimum on safety and repeatedly cut corners on the sub in order to get it up and running, then charged people a ton of money to take a trip down deeper than the sub was clearly capable of going.
Perversely, a bunch of near-disasters can reduce people's concern and make them less likely to demand fixes because "it did that last time too and everything turned out okay" is a powerful rationalization.
Meanwhile, smart organizations have decades-ago stopped tracking (primarily) "Time-Lost Work Accidents" and replaced that with tracking "Close Calls".
I've seen prominent signs for "N Days Since a Time Lost Accident", and more recently "X Days Since a Close Call".
Sadly, it is so obvious that this CEO clown was doing everything possible to avoid experienced people ("not as inspiring to hire 50yo white guys as hiring young upstarts") so he could overrule any safety or redundancy concerns, firing people as soon as they raised things like "this porthole window is only rated to 1500m and we're going to 4000m", using cheap scrap scaffolding as ballast, and completely ignoring any kind of redundancy in case something went wrong. He seems to have gotten a just end, but his deceived customers didn't deserve that.
This problem extended far beyond this one individual, who was merely a symptom. The entire Birmingham maintenance facility, and perhaps British Airways more broadly, had a singular focus on “getting the job done.” If doing the work by the book took longer and jeopardized schedules, then doing the work by the book was discouraged. The shift manager who used the wrong bolts stated in an interview that if he sought out the instructions or used the official parts catalogue on every task, then he would never “get the job done,” as though this was a totally normal and reasonable attitude with which to approach aircraft maintenance. This attitude was in fact normalized on a high level by supervisors who rewarded the employees who most consistently kept planes on schedule. That a serious incident would result from such a culture was inevitable. The shift manager believed it to be reasonable to just “put on whatever bolts came off” and make a quick judgment call about what kind of bolts they were — not because he was personally deficient, but because he had been trained into a culture that didn’t consider this a flagrant safety violation.
In the absence of a proper means to report "That could have been bad" as you say it can cause normalization. But it's understandable that you don't implement something like ASRS when you haven't solved most of your "That was bad" problems. If you regularly have CI failures due to the code not even compiling, "We need more unit tests" isn't top of the list of your problems.
http://resource.npl.co.uk/acoustics/techguides/seaabsorption... -- here is a quick calculator for sound loss by distance. I think actual geography is important too but from understanding whether or not it's hypothetically possible, it certainly looks like it.
For example, at the default inputs we see .061 db/km absorption. This is at 1khz. Higher frequencies attenuated more and lower frequencies less.
I have no idea what frequencies an implosion generates, but given that, a sound at 120db might still be 60db 1000km later. Certainly seems possible and in fact given what we have seen from the US Navy (detecting imploding soviet subs in the middle of the pacific ocean) it seems totally possible to me that this small sub could be detected if microphones were places in quiet spots offshore of the continental US and Canada.
I think we don't have enough information to rule out that this was detectable.
Also, I wonder, if sound of explosions propagate that well, can one install multiple sensors to detect and map source of gunfire and artillery positions in realtime? (I hope I haven't disclosed NATO military secrets here).
I would think another failure mode could be water rushing in without the overall structure catastrophically failing, which would actually relieve pressure on the structure and occur over a much longer time period.
"The Spencer-built composite cylindrical hull either was repaired or replaced by Electroimpact and Janicki Industries in 2020 or 2021, prior to the first trips to Titanic."
Solid 5inch thick carbon composite OR a sandwich design with thick outer facesheets of carbon fiber? I suppose under that pressure not much would take the hydrostatic loads other than carbon, but that seems thick compared to everything I've seen made out of composites.
I think it was in Sub brief YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac&pp=ygUJc3ViIGJya...
https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/composite-submersib...
...since that article is from 2017, it is not clear that this was the unit that actually failed.
Not saying they are related at all but I am reminded of this:
* the way the ends are joined can complicate this, depending on the hot dog
Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels (COPVs) are fairly common in cases where a pressurized system needs to be relatively lightweight (e.g., spacecraft). To your point though, the failure mechanisms can be hard to model.
For a sub you have the opposite problem, which carbon fiber is very weak at.
What motivates this idea?
Not only does it explain nothing, it requires additional explanation.
"Coast guard gets report of lost sub and searches for a while".
Why would you turn that into
"USN knows that a sub imploded. Did nothing observable. Coast guard gets report of lost sub and searches for a while."
I looked at the link, I can't see any reason to interject into that more capability than was demonstrated. It may exist, it may not. There is no reason to comment on additional capabilities based on this event.
Whether they did or not, nothing would presumably change about the Coast Guard conducting search-and-rescue/recovery operations (since they still don't know for sure what happened). Worth pointing out that private explorers, led by Richard Garriott (aka Lord British, apparently), complained that they had optimal rescue equipment but got pushback from the U.S. officials:
> “Magellan has received mixed signals, first hearing from US Gov to get ready, waiting for plans, then getting told to stand down,” Garriott wrote in an email sent to Vice Admiral William Galanis, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John W. Mauger, who is leading the recovery mission, Congressman Lloyd Doggett, and Representative Eric Swalwell on Wednesday afternoon.
Again, hard to know if this is just standard operating procedure or not. If it's the case the U.S. govt already had things figured out by now, then it makes sense they weren't going to expedite Garriot's group, given that the search effort had already resulted in the loss of 1 (maybe 2) search vehicles:
> In addition, at least one ROV, possibly two, was damaged or destroyed during the search-and-rescue mission—a testament to the difficult conditions currently facing rescuers.
A lot of people are saying sounds travel far under water that's true.. but laterally and not between the typical layers of the sea.
Not to mention that these hydrophone systems are at critical choke points not littering the ocean floor uselessly.
It seems motivated by a sci-fi understanding of the physics.
Don't get me wrong things like this happen as cover ups. In this specific instance it seems driven by nonsense.
Rather than any information specific to this event leading to the conclusion that USN can.
This is the same reasoning "UFOlogists" use to insist area 51 has aliens.
1. Aliens must exist.
2. US must be able to detect any aliens.
3. The US must be covering up that aliens exist.
I don't believe I said that. You can draw your own conclusion from the fact that it is within their capabilities to detect, localize, and to some extent classify a wide range of sources in this region of the ocean.
What you won't find is a lot of information about those capabilities in the public domain. Just consider that what _is_ known tells us that we had these capabilities in the 1950s, and that they were continuously improved upon throughout the cold war. This is not Area 51 conspiracy speculation; it is bread-and-butter NRL stuff that is more than half a century old at this point and is classified for good reasons.
As far as I can see not only is the answer to that is "nothing" but the claim itself is non-falsifiable.
Detecting extraterrestrial aliens requires technology that is not publicly known. Therefore, it is not at all logical to compare "hearing an imploding submersible in the Atlantic" to "detecting aliens/UFOs"
You've got to be kidding!
* submarines make loud noises when they implode
* the navy can hear loud noises underwater
* the submersible is thought to have imploded based on debris
therefore,
* the navy heard the submarine implode
[0] https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/16challenger/wel...
Doesn't matter, I was curious why people were speculating this and that's clarified.
You believe that USN would detect this, and it's not motivated by any factor in the story. And a conspiracy to cover up capabilities is the only way you can sustain that belief.
Are you aware that there is, in fact, a such thing as "classified" information? If you'll pardon me linking to that hotbed of conspiratorial thinking, the Cornell Law School, here's some of the basic, completely open, law covering such things: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
Where on Earth do you get the idea that everyone in the world is operating in a regime where they tell you everything you want to know simply because you want to know it?
You are operating at personally dangerous levels of naivety, like, levels that are going to cost you money when you fall for a big scam because you thought someone was just informing you of a great money-making opportunity, as everyone always does when they find a way to make money. Or worse. You're light years beyond "rejecting conspiracy theories", you're operating on a Theory of Mind that has no visible correspondence to the real world. This is not how the world works. People and organizations do not rush to reveal everything they are, everything they can do, everything they know, to everybody, all the time, for free, simply because it would be really nice, and the military least of all!
I asked what about that link made them think that. The answer nothing.
They were making up explanations about how to maintain a pre-existing belief.
Let's assume that in our current reality, U.S. agencies did not detect an anomalous sound. So what we've observed is how they would operate if they had zero foreknowledge or data other than the initial report to the Coast Guard.
Now imagine the alternate scenario in which Navy or NOAA buoys pick up a suspicious sound near the Titanic. There might be a flurry of U.S. gov activity (e.g. communication between NOAA, the military, and intelligence agencies) to make sure it's not a Russian sub, but that would be completely hidden to the public, and for all we know, is something that happens relatively routinely.
In this alternate scenario, what would change about how the Navy, Coast Guard, or any other U.S. official has responded? Coast Guard rescue ships would still conduct search-and-rescue, the Navy would still send a deep sea salvage ship. You honestly think the Navy would volunteer information about an intelligence report that, as far as they know, may or may not be related to a now-missing civilian sub?
Maybe they kept it quiet to not reveal the satellite was still operational? I doubt it given the current situation, mostly likely it'd be all over telegram and we'd have known about it.
> The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said.
Instead they leaked it once the debris was found?
As for why they revealed their foreknowledge now? I don't speak for the military, but admitting to it vaguely, well after the fact is a significantly different situation than talking about it at the time and making it actionable intelligence. Furthermore, something may have leaked to a journalist, who then pressed them to make some kind of answer.
What conclusions would you draw?
/r/UFO must be leaking.
A complete non sequitur to assume it was detected with no observable action taken.
Yesterday the Coast Guard spokesman [0] said he hadn't even heard the notion that the banging noises were made at regular 30-min intervals, even though Rolling Stone published a leaked DHS report the day before [1], something which completely dominated the news coverage and gave people hope that there were survivors. When directly asked about most anything, the officials frequently demurred. Giving out the least amount of info necessary is their standard operating procedure, not a conspiracy
[0] https://www.dvidshub.net/video/887852/coast-guard-partners-h...
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/titani...
- Pro: increased chance of saving a few people's lives
- Con: risk of leaking info about U.S. sonar sensitivity
I.e., the decision would depend on the magnitude of the "pro" and "con" probabilities.
The actual Pro would be "minor calibration opportunity for our secret sensor network".
Relays don't really work because you'd need a LOT of them and they'd all have to keep themselves positioned within like 30 meters of each other which is very hard with ocean currents. That's with very low bandwidth VLF radio.
The real reason is that they were stingy as fuck and that it's mildly impractical which outweighed their complete disregard for safety.
Those also carry electrical power to supply the inline repeaters on those cables. If the cable does not have repeaters, it wouldn't need this, and the shielding could be greatly reduced.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-short_baseline_acoustic_...
U.S. Navy Detected Titan Sub Implosion Days Ago Underwater microphones designed to detect enemy submarines first detected Titan tragedy
WASHINGTON—A top secret U.S. Navy acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, officials involved in the search said. The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said. “The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior U.S. Navy official told The Wall Street Journal in a statement. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
I watched most of the press conferences and don't think I heard anyone ask about it. But hearing loud noises across thousands of miles is certainly within the U.S. military's capability.