Posted on 02/18/2012 5:51:57 AM PST by SunkenCiv
As much as Foley likes discovering shipwrecks -- he's found or helped find 26 in the past 14 years -- he doesn't much like spending time looking for them, at least not in the conventional ways. Rather than sending dive teams down to survey 1,000-foot transects one fin kick at a time, Foley prefers to use autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to survey huge tracts of seafloor. Where the robots don't work well, Foley sends down divers armed with closed-circuit rebreathers and thrusters, allowing them to cover more ground. He wants to go faster, he says, because he needs a lot more information. Maritime archaeologists can spend years on just a few sites, but for Foley's purposes, a solitary wreck is statistically weak -- nothing more than a few words from a greater conversation. To understand the entire conversation, maritime archaeologists must study many wrecks and identify patterns between them. Foley's model is not the soft science of digging and interpretation, but the hard science of high-throughput screening deployed by gene and drug researchers, who gather data at an industrial rate and analyze that data with powerful computers able to detect subtle patterns beyond the reach of ordinary analysis.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
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The knowledge of submerged ancient civilizations is extensive, but just not wide spread. It isn't something that the powers that be wish to disseminate.
There’s no economic return on such a search; and of course, even talking about using gov’t grants for scientists to conduct such searches can yield megatons of nasty comments. :’)
The whole article is quite amusing, btw, he complains about the billions spent on particle physics research, and that he doesn’t like boats. :’D
And based only on my limited observations, many or most of which were "discovered" NOT through concerted efforts by teams actually looking for them but by someone stumbling upon them. Seems that's the way it happens most of the time on land also.
It isn't something that the powers that be wish to disseminate.
Gotta wonder about that since so much of it disappears down a rabbit hole. It brings to mind the mysterious finds just off the southwest shores of Cuba some years ago. The initial and followup findings, done by the owners of an underwater surveying company, indicated geometric patterns, some very large, sitting on the sea floor almost a half mile down. There's been no followup of it since that I'm aware of.
It's not so much that the gummint shouldn't support the arts and sciences, it's what they actually DO with the money. More often than not, they're stifling progress instead of supporting it. True curiousity is being sacrificed at the alter of government diktats -- with OUR money no less. Just think what could have been done with the BILLION$ thrown at "green" flapdoodles by jug ears and his czars. Add a few more BILLION$ invested in "climate change" and other PCBS and pretty soon we're talking real money. Jug Ears' administration isn't the first by a long shot to throw our money at preferred cronies and projects but they have taken it to new heights.
Ahem, nothing new here; just venting. ;^)
:’) Hey, without “projects”, there’s no way to embezzle. Geez.
Oh, pardon me; I forgot. An acceptable level of crime is good for business. I'll try to remember that. ;^)
:’) It’s all about building up your threshold of discomfort.
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