From: Ankfix@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 12:10 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Underwater survival of Aquaforms In a message dated 9/22/99 11:04:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time, banzai@missouri.edu writes: > However, once you get below the very top most levels of water, all bets are > off. For example, the prevailing surface current through the Straights of > Gibraltar are from the Atlantic in towards the Mediterranean. However, the > Romans figured out that if you wanted to get out to the Atlantic and there > was no wind, you could tie lines to the four corners of your sail, weight it > down, chuck it overboard, and let this mysterious "underwater river" carry > you out in the direction opposite of the prevailing surface current. > Cousteau tried it in the late '80's (if memory serves), and sure enough, out > he went. > > Well, that's enough for one message. > > -Jason Werner > Biohazard Games You, sir, are like a Discovery channel and History channel documentary all rolled into one. I just love watching the science shows (especially the marine biology ones) on Discovery, and I can't get enough of those documentaries of the Roman Empire that are always on History. In that one paragraph above, you provided enough juicy tidbits to ease my appetite until I can catch the next show. Is this message board not spiffy? - Fixer :-) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 9:36 AM To: blue planet list (E-mail) Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Underwater survival of Aquaforms -----Original Message----- From: "John Werner" To: Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Underwater survival of Aquaforms Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 19:12:08 -0500 >I assume it is harder to swim at greater depths, >with more atmospheres of pressure? This actually turns out not to be the case. Remember, pressure is the same on all points - the bottom of your arm as well as the top. Therefore, the hundreds of kilos per square cm do not inherently make it more difficult to move. Additionally, water doesn't compress very well, which means that it's about as dense at the bottom as it is on the surface. Thus, it's not like you've got a thicker medium to move through. Sounds like your biggest obstacles are going to be (1) temperature, (2) complete darkness (unless your characters brought lights with _really_ long lasting batteries), (3) nasties, (4) passive sonar, and (5) active sonar ... in more or less that order. Characters that are smart, keep quiet, and swim steadily will make very little noise for passive sets to pick up. Much of biologic noise is either cetaceans calling to each other or echolocating or large groups of animals feeding. If all your character does is swim in a straight line, and they don't have a bunch of gear flopping around, the only noise they're going to be making is flow noise, which at the few km/hr they'll be moving should be about the same as a current flowing over a rock. It'll be pretty quiet. However, if they start banging pots together or shooting at stuff, obviously that'll get somebody's attention. Similarly, a nice, squishy human will do a pretty good job of absorbing sound energy from an active sonar set. And if they're down on the bottom or swimming among the rocks, you can forget picking them up. Get a boulder between you and the sonar, and you'll quite literally disappear. Alternatively, if Hanover were to use, say, electrical potential detection gear analogous to what sharks use naturally (just as an experiment, mind you), the characters might show up two km or so away. And if one got wounded and you used chemical "sniffers", well...but I digress. The currents pictured in the maps and in Access Denied are (as far as I understand it) surface currents, mainly since these are the ones that are going to be most commonly encountered, and they're the most easily studied. However, once you get below the very top most levels of water, all bets are off. For example, the prevailing surface current through the Straights of Gibraltar are from the Atlantic in towards the Mediterranean. However, the Romans figured out that if you wanted to get out to the Atlantic and there was no wind, you could tie lines to the four corners of your sail, weight it down, chuck it overboard, and let this mysterious "underwater river" carry you out in the direction opposite of the prevailing surface current. Cousteau tried it in the late '80's (if memory serves), and sure enough, out he went. Well, that's enough for one message. -Jason Werner Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 12:54 PM To: 'blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com' Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - Underwater survival of Aquaforms > -----Original Message----- > From: Ankfix@aol.com [mailto:Ankfix@aol.com] > Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Underwater survival of Aquaforms > > In a message dated 9/22/99 11:04:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time, > c577200@showme.missouri.edu writes: > > > You, sir, are like a Discovery channel and History channel documentary all > rolled into one. I just love watching the science shows > Yeah but don't try to watch him eat mashed potatoes. Jim -- Jim Heivilin, 884-3898, IAT Services, Systems & Applications Group -- University of Missouri, mailto:banzai@missouri.edu *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.