• Question: why is it that we know more about space than what lies beneath the water?

    Asked by iloveyouuflake99 to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Good question – I guess it’s got a lot to do about how much easier it is to see through space, compared to trying to see through water – optical light cannot penetrate more than a few tens of metres into the ocean usually, so we have to use things like radar and sonar. It’s extremely hard to study the deep ocean bed, and I think that space was a lot more excviting – the whole “space race” in the ’60s and ’70s was all about politics, and Russia racing against America to get humans to the Moon.

      It’s a lot more glamorous(?) studying space than it is studying the bottom of the oceans, but I love scuba diving, so I guess I’m a bit of a fan of looking down as well as looking up…

    • Photo: Laura Maliszewski

      Laura Maliszewski answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I’m not an expert in this, but part of it might be that it’s easier to explore in low pressure (space) than in really high pressure (like miles below the water).

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Although I’m not convinced by your statement I think the oceans are a bit of a mystery partly because of money. Funding for space exploration exceeds that for underwater exploration. Rockets, space suits, leaving Earth, other planets and aliens spark people’s imagination more than the murky depths of the seas. So more money is spent investigating these. I think oceans are so important and we should do more to research their role in the climate and all the amazing plants and animals they contain.

      Oceans. Space. Which is better? There’s only one way to find out. Fight!

    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Exploring both space and benath the sea are huge engineering challenges requiring lots of time and money as both are very hostile environments (for different reasons) for humans to be in

      I guess past generations have looked to the stars and that is where the money and hence the achievement has gone.

      As time goes on we will learn more about the oceans – and the technology for exploring them will improve – but the problems they are having working at depth fixing that oil leak in the gulf of mexico shows the technical challenges there are to working deep under water.

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Love this question!

      I guess it says alot about human nature more than anything else. Everyone on the planet can see up into the stars and our urge to explore takes over. Perhaps it is because the seas are finite- we know that they have edges and a top and a bottom- that we feel like we don’t need to go down there and poke about so much. I bet this is a mistake. Quite often we miss really important things that are right in front of our noses because we are so busy making ambitious plans regarding the big wide world.

      On the other hand, I would rather go to the moon than the bottom of the sea!

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