The most famous shipwreck in the world, the Titanic, has been revealed like never before and the images are shocking.
Technology allows us to see the famous shipwreck in full size in a first-ever digital scan. The Titanic sits at a whopping depth of 3,800 meters in the Atlantic Ocean.
Digital scanning provides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, allowing it to be viewed as if the water had been drained.
And what is really hopeful 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 ocean liner, which sank in 1912, a BBC report reports.
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 toward evidence-based research, rather than speculation.”
A complete image of the Titanic.
The Titanic has been extensively explored since the wreck was discovered in 1985. But it’s so huge that in the darkness of the seabed, cameras can only show us excruciating snapshots of the sinking ship, never all of it.
The new scan captures the wreck in its entirety, revealing a complete image of the Titanic. It is in two parts, with the bow and stern about 800 meters apart. A huge debris field surrounds the wrecked ship.
The scan was carried out in the summer of 2022 by Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions, which is making a documentary on the project.
The submarines, which were controlled remotely by a team aboard a specialized ship, spent more than 200 hours surveying the length and breadth of the wreck. They took more than 700,000 images from all angles, creating an accurate 3D representation.
Magellan’s Gerhard Schiefferd, who led mission planning, 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,” he explained.
“And the other challenge is you have to map every square inch, even the parts that aren’t interesting, like in the debris field, you have to map the mud, but you need that to fill in between all these interesting objects.”
The scan shows both the scale of the ship and some minor details, such as the serial number on one of the propellers.
The bow, now covered in rust stalactites, is still instantly recognizable even 100 years after the wreck. At the top is the ship’s deck, where a porthole glimpses into the void where the grand staircase once stood.
The stern, however, is a chaotic mess of metal. This part of the ship collapsed when it fell to the bottom of the sea.
Scattered in the surrounding wreckage are artifacts, including elaborate metalwork from the ship, statues, and unopened champagne bottles. There are also personal effects, including dozens of shoes that rest in the sediment.
“You can see the whole wreck”
Stephenson, who has been studying the Titanic for many years, said he was “stunned” when he first saw the scans.
“It allows you to see the wreck like you never could from a submarine, and you can see it as a whole, you can see it in context and perspective. And what it’s showing you now is the true state of the wreck.”
He said studying the scans could provide new information about what happened on the Titanic on that fateful night in 1912.
“We don’t really 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; could 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 carries the remains of the shipwreck, microbes eat it and part of it decomposes. Historians are well aware that time is running out to fully understand the naval disaster.
But the scan now freezes the wreck in time and will allow experts to study every little detail. The hope is that the Titanic can still reveal her secrets.