• OccamsTeapot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    2 days ago

    The meme is funny, this isn’t criticism of that.

    BUT this general point always rubs me the wrong way. Do people realise how fucking big space is? The observable universe contains so many fucking planets that we don’t even know exist, some of which have their own oceans we know absolutely nothing about. We have literally no idea what like 95% of the stuff out there even is (dark matter, dark energy).

    And that’s just the observable universe. The rest of it likely comprises even more space than the observable universe. And that isn’t “stuff we don’t know yet,” it’s literally “stuff we could probably never know based on the laws of physics.”

    Like we know surprisingly little about the ocean. That is shocking. But there is no need to make such a bizarre claim to get that across.

    OK, rant over.

    • pebbles@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      I think this meme misremembers the idea “we know more about the moon than our oceans” which is much more believable.

  • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    28·
    2 days ago

    There’s probably some cool microbiology going on down there that’s just too much of a pain in the ass to study in a lab environment. Maybe there’s a simple way to culture a bacteria sample at 200+ atmospheres of pressure and 200 C, but I wouldn’t want to be near it.

    • SolarMonkey@slrpnk.netEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      They have some really cool pressure capsules for bringing deep sea specimens to the surface, can’t imagine it wouldn’t work for bacteria and such, but the actual studying of it would be very difficult.

      Like the blob fish, which was really just a fairly normal looking fish that essentially ruptured into a pile of goo under the lack of pressure, the cells they would be trying to study would be really really difficult to do anything with.

      You’d probably have to create a whole special automated lab for them, maybe even a whole mess of different types for different environments, but making a rover-type craft and studying them in situ would probably be much easier. Like the mars rovers, but close enough to control live.

      Personally, I’m partial to sending people down to work on deep sea labs to study this stuff similar to the Rifters series by Peter Watts. It seems fascinating to be modified to breathe underwater and survive the pressures.

      Link is to the archive.org full copy of Starfish, book one of the Rifters trilogy, all of which were released entirely free under a Creative Commons license, and are absolutely amazing imo. Wild ride of insanity and destruction. All of his work that I’ve read has been great.