Could you dive to the titanic?

[thin_air]

i am having a large debate with my friends as to weather or not you could dive to the titanic under these circumstances.
1.you had a perfect gas, so you would not get any type of gas poisoning. (a perfect time for liquid breathing)
2. you could carry enough gas to get you there and back and decompree
3. you had a nice warm drysuit.
4. you could get down in a resonable amount of time

even my science teacher didnt know the answer
i would post this in the Scuba forums but they have no-one smart there. so i was hoping that some of the people who know lots about diving could help
the main unknowns for us are
1.what is the compression rate of water and how would this effect the size of your limbs. would the water inside of you being compressed make you combust internally?
2.what would happen to your bones? would they shatter or are they filled with a fluid.
3. we already know that your sinuses and ears could be equilized but are there any other air spaces that could not be equiliezed but that are to small to matter at the depths we are accustomed to.

this is purely theoretical

by the way the titanic is at 12,460 ft so 3797m and 379atmospheres

warning: this would be a very dangerous dive please do not try it to find out what would happen to the human body at that depth. kids dont try this,ever....

[Stephan Whelan]

Vince,

I have moved this to the Scuba Forum but there is a redirect in the Freediving Forums.

It's been a while since I did any serious physics but i'd say that your body would have a very tough time down at that depth. I'll see if I can get any of our resident physics experts to help us out on this one...

You'd probably need a good few hundreds books to read whilst doing the deco though.

warning: this would be a very dangerous dive please do not try it to find out what would happen to the human body at that depth. kids dont try this,ever....

Well - yea, not sure of many people who'd be nut's enough to even contemplate this...

Great question! Anyone got any insight?

[crazyfrenchmen]

Hi,
oxygen get toxic at a pressure of 1.6ATA. This means that in order to descend to 99ATA (i.e. 1000m) you would need to use a 1.6% oxygen gaz.
((99ATA+1ATA (surface))*1.6%=1.6ATA partial pressure.
So , if you dive to 379 ATA with a 1% oxygen mix, you would get a partial pressure of (379 ATA * 1%) 3.79ATA which represent 2.4 times (3.79 / 1.6) the maximum safe pressure to breath oxygen. You would need a (1.6*100/379) 0.42% oxygen mix to get that deep.... and you would suffocate.

[bam bam]

I recall someone dived to over a 1000m!!! Though when he was there he had a difficult time due to the presure. Can't remember excatly what the problems were, but I think there was shaking and some impaired vision. So going over three times that depth, would definatly be a super human feat.

[thin_air]

i thought of that,
i guess what my real question is, is weather or not your body could take the pressure if all of your airspaces were filled with water. (fluid breathing, or just fill your lungs up with fluid and drown)
i put that a perfect gas could be found because we were already aware of that.

[crazyfrenchmen]

Hi,
actually, john Benneth as dived to 1000 ft not 1000 m. That's he current record i think. see http://www.divenews.com/article.php?sid=216

[bam bam]

crazyfrenchmen, your right I just couldn't remember which units it was

[Alun]

John Bennett pretty much reached the depth limit of trimix from what I understand. From around 250m onwards HPNS usually becomes a major problem. (high pressure nervous syndrome). i think 300m (1000ft) is believed to be the about theoretical limit. Other problems that you would face is the density of the gas, and the effort required to breathe it. Breathing Hydrogen mixtures at depth helps because it's the lightest gas. Divers have used HydroHeliox mixtures down to 500m+ (helium, hydrogen and oxygen). there are lots of pages on the net about such subjects if you're interested.

alun.

[thin_air]

what if you could use fluid breathing link 1 , link 2 , link 3 )

and only put in enough O2 so you would have a PP of 0.21
or would the pressure crush you anyhow?

[Erik]

Vince, assuming that somehow all the CNS problems could be dealt with and you dived filled with liquid, you would be fine. Water is not compressible (not to a degree that is noticeable). We are made of fluids, and would not be crushed.
I thought that some chamber experiments had been done to over 3000' with the resulting tremors and loss of control, but maybe I'm mistaken. I think it was a French Comm Dive company ?
Chers,
Erik Y.

[Erik]

Vince, assuming that somehow all the equalization problems could be dealt with and you dived filled with liquid, you would be fine. Water is not compressible (not to a degree that is noticeable). We are made of fluids, and would not be crushed.
I thought that some chamber experiments had been done to over 3000' with the resulting tremors and loss of control, but maybe I'm mistaken. I think it was a French Comm Dive company ?
Chers,
Erik Y.

[Erik]

Ok, my old brain popped COMEX into my head, so I found their site: www.comex.fr , there is an English version once you get there. It says that they did the world record chamber dive to -701 metres (2313') using hydrogen as the inert gas.
Interesting!
Erik Y.

[thin_air]

thanks erik,
does anyone know to what depth hydrogen could be used as an inert gas. it seems to me that if it can be used that deep then our bodies must be very resistant to its effects(or does it simply have no effect on our bodies?)
also does anyone know where i could find a chart that has a reference of the partial pressures of gases and the toxicity to humans/mammals.


thanks

[porky]

Originally posted by thin_air
i would post this in the Scuba forums but they have no-one smart there.

Hmmmmmmm........ bet you didnt think you would be redirected hey?!!!

[Chefkoch]

Yo thin_air! That`s a nice, interresting question! I have also been asking myself if we could dive to such extreme depths, and I've read a book written by an ex-COMEX-diver (Robert Sténuit). Nice book by the way, it is called "Ces mondes secrets où j'ai plongée".
I think, as a biologue and freaky freediver, we could manage this!
Diving to that depth using gas seems completely impossible to me. Let`s say we use hydrogen as the lightest gas, and some Oxygen (0.42%). At 3790meters you could breathe 0,42%oxygen without any problems. Your body would not crush, because our tissues are filled with water, which cannot be compressed. The problem is the hydrogen: I have no data about the exact viscosity it has at 379ATA, but I think it is very thick and difficult to breathe. The next important point is the possible toxicity of hydrogen under pressure. Could be possible that the exremely high amount of hydrogen solved in our tissues gets toxic.
Even if not, we would have a loooooooooooooong decompression (more than 2 weeks).
Another problem is the thermic capacity of hydrogen: (regarded at constant volume)
Hydrogen: c=10.2 kJ/kg x K.
Nitrogen: c=0.741 kJ/kg x K.
Water: c=4.19 kJ/kg x K.
This means: in water, your body cools down 4 times quicker than in air, and in hydrogen about 10 times quicker. By breathing hydrogen your body gets cold, and you don't even notice this, because the sensoric cells which lead to "feeling cold" and to a higher metabolism rate are lying in the periphery of the body, not in the chest.
So we would have to warm up the hydrogen.
Now what about breathing a liquid?
In the sixties, there have been made some experiments with mice and dogs. They were breathing an isotonic, hyperoxygenated water solution. (Isotonic means that it has the same amount of solubilized molecules as our blood)
Mice could breath it for up to 6hrs. Dogs could breathe the solution in a pressure chamber at a pressure of 5ATA for 43minutes without problems. They were not dying at the end of the experiment: time was limited by the long decomp of the assisting scientist, who was also inside the chamber.
One problem they were facing was the carbon dioxide C02: its diffusion speed (=speed at which gas can move through a gas or solution) in air is 6000times greater than in water, which means that the animals simply had problems getting the C02 outside their body. It gets even more difficult: breathing water takes 32times the effort needed for breathing the same amount of gas.
So breathing alone leads to the production of high amounts of C02. One solution is to search for additives capable of binding the dioxyde. The liquid must have a low viscosity, otherwise breathing gets even more difficult.
Anyway, if we want to dive around the wreck, we need pumps helping us to breathe the liquid.
So we have LOTS of problems to solve, but what about the advantages?
Well, guys, there would be no decompression, even equalisation is unnecessary!!! We could be able to reach even the deepest deph, 10000m and more!
We would take some heavy weight, jump into the ocean and reach the wreck in about 20 minutes. Then we would dive around and take some pictures, for let's say another 20 minutes. Finally we would use a raising balloon for the ascent (again 20minutes), and be back on deck, just in time for a hot cup of tea.