DailyDirt: Getting To The Bottom Of It All

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you're a billionaire, what better way to spend your pocket change than to explore the deepest parts of the ocean? Deep sea diving is almost like being an astronaut, but you're more likely to find strange new lifeforms that no one has ever seen before. And so far, more people have been to the moon than to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But that bit of trivia will likely change in the next few years. By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
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Filed Under: apollo, billionaires, deep sea, exploration, james cameron, jeff bezos, mariana trench, oceans, richard branson, science


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  1. icon
    Torg (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 5:17pm

    "Are privately funded scientific efforts going to be a trend (like 3D movies)?"

    Crowdsourced scientific efforts are also a possibility, but for big things like getting to the bottom of the ocean, getting an obscenely rich person involved seems like it would be easier. And, unlike 3D movies, major scientific projects are worth seeing.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Michael Ho (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 6:43pm

    Re: science trends...

    Crowdsourced and crowdfunded science efforts are definitely some growing trends in science -- any other trends out there to look out for?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Ryan Diederich, 5 Apr 2012 @ 10:53am

    Inspiring

    Seeing things like this pushes me to become rich, just so I can make scientific discoveries/advances of my own.

    Glad to see people pouring their money into something worthwhile, rather than just using it to get richer.

    Science generates a need for jobs, a need for smarts, and a need for adventurous people. Best economic stimulus I can think of

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Michael Ho (profile), 5 Apr 2012 @ 1:34pm

    Re: Inspiring

    Ryan,
    The (not) "being rich" part should stop you... making scientific discoveries is becoming more and more a hobbyist realm -- as long as you aren't trying to discover the bottom of the ocean, interplanetary space or fundamental particle physics... :P

    Try Foldit at home?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Rekrul, 5 Apr 2012 @ 3:51pm

    Jeff Bezos has a privately funded team of deep-sea explorers, and they found discarded Apollo 11 rocket engines at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

    The linked article states that the engines are still the property of NASA. Considering that NASA (as far as I know) never went looking for them, or attempted to recover them, wouldn't that make them abandoned property? Not only that, one could argue that by dropping them in the ocean, NASA was discarding them.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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