by The world’s most famous shipwreck, the Titanic, has been revealed like never before and the images are shocking.
The technology allows us to see the famous wreck in full size in a first digital scan. The Titanic lies at an enormous depth of 3,800 meters in the Atlantic Ocean.
The digital scan provides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, allowing it to be seen as if the water has been drained.
And what is really encouraging is that with the help of this technology, in addition to the impressive images, it will shed new light on what exactly happened on the liner, which sank in 1912, reports a BBC report.
More than 1,500 people died when the ship struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
“There are still questions, fundamental questions, that need to be answered about the ship,” Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson told BBC News.
He said the model was “one of the first important steps in moving the Titanic story towards research based on evidence – rather than speculation”.
A full picture of the Titanic
The Titanic has been widely explored since the wreckage was discovered in 1985. But it’s so huge that in the darkness of the seabed, cameras can only show us harrowing snapshots of the sinking ship – never the whole thing.
The new scan captures the wreckage in its entirety, revealing a full picture of the Titanic. It is in two parts, the bow and the stern being separated by about 800 meters. A huge field of debris surrounds the wrecked ship.
The scan was made in the summer of 2022 by Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions, who are making a documentary about the project.
The submarines, remotely controlled by a team aboard a specialist vessel, spent more than 200 hours surveying the wreckage up and down. They took over 700,000 images from all angles, creating an accurate 3D representation.
Magellan’s Gerhard Schiefferd, who led the planning for the mission, said it was the largest underwater scanning project he had ever undertaken.
“Its depth, almost 4,000 meters, is a challenge, and there are currents in the area – and we are not allowed to touch anything so as not to damage the wreck”, a- he explained.
“And the other challenge is you have to map every square inch – even the uninteresting parts, like in the debris field you have to map the mud, but you need to fill in between all these interesting objects.”
The scan shows both the scale of the ship, as well as some minor details such as the serial number on one of the propellers.
The bow, now covered in stalactites of rust, is still instantly recognizable even 100 years after the sinking. At the top is the ship’s deck, where a porthole gives a glimpse of the void where the grand staircase once stood.
The stern, however, is a chaotic mess of metal. This part of the ship collapsed as it fell to the bottom of the sea.
In the surrounding wreckage, artifacts are scattered including elaborate ironwork from the ship, statues and unopened champagne bottles. There are also personal effects, including dozens of shoes lying in the sediment.
“You can see all the wreckage”
Stephenson, who has studied the Titanic for many years, said he was “stunned” when he first saw the scans.
“It allows you to see the wreck like never before from a submarine, and you can see the wreck as a whole, you can see it in context and perspective. And what it shows you now is is the true state of the wreck.”
He said studying the scans could provide new information about what happened to the Titanic on that fateful night in 1912.
“We really don’t understand the nature of the collision with the iceberg. “We don’t even know if it hit it on the starboard side, as it appears in all the movies – it may have landed on the iceberg “, he explained.
Studying the stern, he added, could reveal the mechanisms of how the ship hit the seabed.
The sea weighs down the wreck, microbes eat it and some parts decompose. Historians are well aware that time is running out to fully understand the naval disaster.
But the scan now freezes the wreckage in time and will allow experts to study every minute detail. The hope is that the Titanic can still reveal its secrets.
