February 12, 2025 • 54 mins
The Mariana Trench is the deepest and least explored part of our oceans. Hold your breath while Arpita tells the story of the first scientist to make the harrowing journey into the deep.
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Episode Transcript
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Aarati (00:12):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Smart Tea Podcast,
where we talk about the lives ofscientists and innovators who
shape the world.
How are you doing, Arpita?
Arpita (00:20):
I'm feeling kind of slow today.
Like it's so cold and rainy andI feel like it's making me feel
like I just want to cuddle up inmy bed and hold a cat and not do
very much else.
Aarati (00:32):
Yeah, it is.
Arpita (00:34):
What about you?
Aarati (00:35):
Yeah, we've been hunkering down over here too.
I did, go to San Francisco thisweekend.
I was, like, visiting mycousins, but since it was
raining, we couldn't really,like, do a whole bunch of stuff,
so we just kind of, like, hungout at this cafe, and then we
ended up going to this reallyrandom shop called Paxton's
(00:58):
Gate, and it was full of, like,witchy things.
It was really very interesting.
Like, if you want a skeleton ofanything, that's where you go,
apparently, to get like, youknow, rodent skeletons or bird
skeletons, right?
I was like, how did I end uphere?
My cousin was like, let's justgo into this store real quick.
Arpita (01:20):
Where was it?
Aarati (01:21):
I, it's, it was in The Mission.
Um,
Arpita (01:24):
I was just going to say, I feel like I've seen this story
in The Mission.
Is it on Valencia?
Aarati (01:28):
Yeah, yeah, it is and it's like it has all these
crystals and it was so funnybecause like we had gone to this
bookstore and we had gone to oneother store, but I was feeling
really proud of myself I waslike, I haven't I haven't bought
anything and I'm being so goodwith my money Like I'm so
responsible and then of allplaces in this like random
(01:50):
witchy store.
I broke down and I there waslike a section that had vacuum
sealed tumblers that had likechemistry molecules all over it
and it said"The Chemistry ofTea" and there was one that had
"The Chemistry of Coffee" andthey had all these molecules
(02:10):
that you find in tea and coffeethere was a whiskey one and
there was a beer one and I wasjust like.
Oh my gosh, well, this isperfect for my nerdy little
brother who does not have atumbler and loves all things
chemistry.
And I was like, yeah, you, youmade me break down, you witchy
store.
You did it.
(02:30):
You worked your magic on me.
Arpita (02:32):
Is he coffee or tea?
Aarati (02:34):
He's tea.
We're all
Arpita (02:35):
tea.
He's tea.
You're all a tea family.
Aarati (02:37):
Yeah, well my my grandma and my parents will drink coffee
in the morning, but thenafterwards they'll drink tea.
Arpita (02:44):
They all switched to tea.
Aarati (02:45):
Yeah, but me and my brother are tea all the way
Arpita (02:48):
That's so funny.
I Didn't realize that caffeinesensitivity was genetic until
Logan told me Because I willdrink one cup of coffee and then
I'll drink maybe a second onearound 10 a.
m.
If I'm still feeling a littlesleepy But Logan doesn't drink
coffee at all because he'sreally caffeine sensitive and so
(03:10):
like if he's really feeling likehe wants to focus then he will
drink a little bit or drinkmatcha Um, but he's not at a
baseline for caffeine and it'sso fascinating to me I'm, like
what's it like being better thanthe rest of us because I can't
relate to that
Aarati (03:27):
Yeah,
Arpita (03:28):
However, on a tangent, I have decided recently, for no
particular reason, that I'mswitching to decaf.
Um, and the reason that I neverdid before is because decaf is
disgusting and it tastesterrible relative to coffee.
But apparently there's new waysof processing coffee to
(03:49):
decaffeinate it without losing alot of the flavor profile.
It's like something with likesugarcane.
I don't know.
It's like sugarcane waterprocessing or something.
I don't know, but decaf has comea long way.
It doesn't taste like assanymore.
And so I've been just likecurious to be like, can I, can I
switch to decaf?
So today I'm on day four ofdecaf only.
(04:11):
And today I didn't have aheadache.
So.
Aarati (04:14):
Amazing.
Arpita (04:15):
Thank you so much.
Thank you
Aarati (04:17):
you!
Arpita (04:17):
So The last couple days, I definitely had a headache and
I was, I was texting my friendwho was the one who told me
about the new processing and Iwas like,"I think I'm going to
die." He was like, he was like,"Keep with it.
Like, it's going to get better.
Like, I promise." But today Ifeel normal.
Aarati (04:36):
I think there is something like a three day hump.
Like once you get, like when youstart, I feel with sugar too, I
feel like I've heard that.
Like if you try to quit sugar orsomething, or maybe it's just
like, A lot of type of addictivetype of things that if you can
make it past three days, it'slike you, you powered through
(04:56):
the hardest part of it and
Arpita (04:58):
Wow.
Okay.
That makes me feel betterbecause I am in fact on because
today's Thursday.
I started on Monday.
So today's my fourth day.
Um, and yeah, also the, thecompany that I work at, um,
because we are a quote unquotehealth company,
Aarati (05:14):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (05:14):
Our CEO doesn't want us to have junk food in the office
at all and I'm like, okay forsure like to a certain extent
I'm on board with that.
But also there's like there's nosweet treats anywhere.
There's no cookies.
There's not any, like, there'snothing.
Like, the snacks are trail mixand Chex mix and nuts.
(05:36):
And I asked the office managerone day, I was like, hey, I was
like, could we get, like, candy?
Aarati (05:42):
Is that allowed?
Arpita (05:43):
And she was like, she was like, no, we can't.
And we also don't have chips.
There's no...
there's no chi- If you want likea salty snack or something?
There's no, there's no chips.
We have um, God, what are theycalled?
Um, pop chips or something?
I don't know.
Aarati (06:01):
Like those airy of...?
Arpita (06:02):
Kind of look like rice cakes.
Yes, they kind of look like ricecakes almost.
And I'm like, this is garbage.
This is not what I
Aarati (06:08):
I'm talking potato chips.
Like,
Arpita (06:11):
I want Ruffles.
Aarati (06:12):
Yes.
Yes.
Arpita (06:14):
It is honestly so devastating.
Aarati (06:16):
But you can't even bring your own in like,
Arpita (06:18):
Oh, yeah, you could bring your own, but like, yeah,
you could, you can
Aarati (06:21):
I was going to say, I feel like that crosses a line,
Arpita (06:24):
not, it's not like a ban, but will
Aarati (06:26):
It's the company provided snacks.
Got it.
Arpita (06:29):
And so now I'm making, my new goal is to make a
petition for, um, have you seenthose, like, smart snacks at
Whole Foods or something?
Aarati (06:37):
No, I haven't seen those.
Arpita (06:38):
I don't even know what they're made out of, but they're
probably like erythritol or someother sort of sugar alternative,
um, but their whole schtick isthat it's only like, One or two
grams of sugar for the wholeserving
Aarati (06:51):
Uh huh.
Arpita (06:52):
I mean, I would take that.
I would take that at this pointbecause I would like a sweet
treat at the end of my lunch.
Just like a little baby one.
Anyway, this is a huge tangent,but this is the biggest problem
in my life right now.
Aarati (07:04):
No, that's great.
Arpita (07:06):
I'm pretty mad about it.
Aarati (07:09):
Congratulations, though, for switching to decaf and it
actually sticking.
But I know what you mean.
Like, even my favorite tea, itwas a black tea, and it was like
this sweet cinnamon tea that Iloved.
And Whenever I got the decafversion, it sucked and
Arpita (07:27):
It's disgusting.
It's so real.
No, it's a real thing.
it
Aarati (07:30):
Yeah, it is.
Yeah.
So I totally get it.
I don't know about coffee, butlike, I know about decaf tea and
yeah, you're right.
It's not the same.
So that's, that's a really bigachievement.
So I'm glad you don't have aheadache.
I'm glad it's going well.
Yeah.
Arpita (07:47):
Thank you so much.
I
Aarati (07:48):
Yeah.
Um, oh, the other thing I wantedto say, we got a really nice
comment on our YouTube channel,and I just want to share.
So this person wrote on the JackParsons episode.
Um, they wrote, wonderfulpodcast, glad I found this
channel.
There aren't much I found thatare dedicated to exploring
(08:10):
people in science and theirbackground, especially lesser
known or discussed figuresthroughout history.
I'm thrilled you are doing this.
Please keep it up.
Arpita (08:20):
Oh, that's very sweet.
Aarati (08:21):
Very happy by that.
I was just like, oh my gosh, Ilove you too.
Whoever you are, random internetstranger.
You got, you're amazing.
Yes.
Yeah.
Arpita (08:31):
Um, that was really great.
Thank you for sharing.
Um, I have a very left turn totake, um, in our topic of
discussion.
It has nothing to do withcoffee.
Aarati (08:45):
Well, the whole thing was a tangent, I guess.
Arpita (08:47):
The whole thing was a tangent.
Um, but I am excited to talk tothis person.
But it was inspired by our lastepisode when I was talking about
the fact that we haven't doneanybody who is an ocean
scientist, and I am going totalk about the first person to
get to the deepest part of theocean, which is the Mariana
Trench.
Aarati (09:07):
Oh my goodness.
You really took that to heart,yay!
Arpita (09:11):
Well, I googled it to be like, is there something
interesting there?
Because sometimes when I'mresearching a story, I think
there's going to be aninteresting story there.
And then it's actually not aninteresting story.
You know, it's like some dudewent to this college and then he
did this thing and then that wasthe end of his life.
Like, I don't
Aarati (09:29):
sometimes there's like just not
Arpita (09:31):
there's not
Aarati (09:31):
a lot about their life or like, yeah, yeah,
Arpita (09:34):
there's just nothing there in terms or like,
sometimes I'll hope that there'slike one interesting scientist
or someone who has more aboutthem on the Internet.
And sometimes it's like,actually so many scientists, but
it's actually kind of hard toreally pin it down into one
thing, but
Aarati (09:50):
mm hmm.
Arpita (09:51):
one actually ended up being literally one guy.
And it's also kind of a weirdstory.
So, I'm kind of interested tosee what you think.
Aarati (09:59):
Well I would imagine that because I feel like anyone
who is willing to traverse tothe depths of the ocean has to
be a little bit weird.
I feel the same way about space,too, though.
Anyone who's willing to leavetheir comfort bubble, like, I'm
very much a homebody, so anyonewho's willing to, like, go
places, I'm like, I don't knowif we can be friends.
Arpita (10:21):
No, in comparison to most of the people we've done,
he's actually quite normal, um,but it is kind of an interesting
story, okay.
So let's dive in.
We're talking about JacquesPiccard.
He was born in Brussels inBelgium on July 28th, 1922.
And his dad, Auguste Piccard,was also an adventurer, and he
(10:43):
had actually set two worldrecords, and he reached the
highest altitude in a hot airballoon in 1931, and then he
beat his own record in 1932.
Aarati (10:53):
Wow.
Arpita (10:54):
That, that's his dad.
And so growing up, he went toprivate school in Switzerland.
And then in 1943, he went tocollege in Geneva, where he
studied physics and economics.
And then he took a year off in1944 to spend some time in the
French army.
And then when he left the armyin 1946, he started teaching
(11:15):
high school economics.
There's really not a lot ofstuff about his childhood that
was kind of about it.
But this is kind of where thestory starts to get a little bit
more interesting.
So his dad had done this wholething with the hot air balloons
and had like traveled into, Iwas going to say space, but I
guess it is actually not spacebecause he did not leave the
atmosphere, but into the sky,into the sky.
Aarati (11:38):
Still high enough.
Yeah, high.
Arpita (11:40):
He went high.
And he was trying to use thesame buoyancy technique from hot
air balloons to then go theother way.
So he was trying to develop adeep sea submersible, but he was
trying to use similar conceptsof buoyancy to do this.
So he's like, cool.
I've already checked off thesky.
Now we're going to gounderwater.
Aarati (12:00):
That seems so counterintuitive, though, to try
and use the same, like,techniques to go down, like, I
would, I would think with goingup, you want to get lighter and
lighter in order to go up, andthen if you want to go down, you
need to get heavier and heavier.
Arpita (12:16):
Yes, there actually is...
This was not part of my deepdive, so I only know a little
bit about this, but there isactually like buoyancy is a
little bit complicated.
So to a certain point of depth,depending on your mass, you will
sink.
So if you jump into a lake orsomething, you will sink, but
then you depending on how bigyour body of water is.
(12:39):
So, like, let's just say it'slike an ocean.
And for this case, you won'tactually just fall to the bottom
of the ocean.
Because of there's so muchpressure coming up from
underneath you, you thenactually need force to propel
yourself downwards.
Aarati (12:52):
Oh,
Arpita (12:53):
Scuba divers need their fins and all this stuff to swim
actively downwards because youwon't sink after a certain
point.
And then the same principlehappens when you are coming back
up.
One, you can't come back up tooquickly because of water
pressure and all that.
burst your eardrums, like badthings will happen to you.
But also, the water will, buoyyou upwards to a certain extent.
(13:16):
And then after that, you have toactively swim out.
So it's the opposite thathappens on the way out.
Aarati (13:21):
Oh, interesting.
I never knew that.
Arpita (13:23):
So the same thing is true for anything that's trying
to basically go underwater.
And it has to do with theproportion of mass to pressure.
Don't ask me what thatcalculation is, but
Aarati (13:33):
Okay.
No, I believe you.
Arpita (13:35):
Yeah.
You wouldn't just sink is thebottom line.
Aarati (13:38):
Yeah.
Oh, that's fascinating.
I, I never, like, consideringI've never been in anything
deeper than a swimming pool, youknow, like.
Arpita (13:45):
Yeah.
So the interesting thing is I'mnot actually sure how this so I
feel like something like LakeTahoe or something where it's
really deep.
It probably be similarprinciples to an ocean, but I
wonder if it is more like alandlocked lake or something if
that would actually still be thesame if it wasn't that deep if
you would actually just sink tothe bottom.
Aarati (14:06):
Well, I wonder if the salt content also, like, changes
things
Arpita (14:10):
100%
Aarati (14:11):
The The higher the salt content, like, the more you're
gonna be buoyed up, right?
So.
Arpita (14:16):
yeah.
Aarati (14:17):
How Interesting.
Arpita (14:18):
so Yeah, many factors that are not, you know being
discussed at this moment, but itis a little bit tricky to do
that.
Anyway, yeah, so he's trying touse similar buoyancy techniques
and he's basically trying tocome up with different ways to
make himself sink and then makehimself float again.
So he does have to not only getpast a certain depth, but then
(14:42):
he also has to be able to comeback up.
So needs two things.
He needs two mechanisms.
Aarati (14:47):
So there's no, like, submarines at this point that's
what it sounds like.
Like, not really.
Arpita (14:53):
No, there, there is, but it, they only go to a certain
depth and his goal is to go asdeep...Oh, he wants to go as
deep as possible.
He wants to go deeper.
So this is, this is post worldwar two, or like, this is like
getting to the end of world wartwo.
And there was definitelysubmarines in world war two.
Aarati (15:07):
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Arpita (15:08):
So this is, it's not a new technology altogether.
He is just trying to solve thisbuoyancy problem and get deeper.
Aarati (15:18):
Yeah.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Arpita (15:21):
So he develops this deep sea submersible called a
bathyscaphe, which is basicallyan underwater blimp, but imagine
if the blimp was rigid.
Like, that's what it looks like.
Aarati (15:31):
Okay.
Arpita (15:32):
Um, and so it's a vessel that can dive and maneuver
untethered from a ship.
This is, this is straight fromWikipedia.
This is in contrast to abathysphere, which is tethered.
I've never heard of either ofthese words, but apparently it's
a thing.
Aarati (15:48):
Me neither.
Arpita (15:49):
And so in the years following Jacques and his father
built three bathscapes between1948 and 1955, and they recorded
depths of 4, 600 feet and 10,000 feet respectively.
And this was a really, reallybig accomplishment up until this
point, the deepest submarinethat had.
The deepest the submarine hadgotten was only 3, 500 feet,
Aarati (16:13):
Oh, wow.
Arpita (16:13):
which is for The record, very deep, but they were able to
get up to 10, 000 feet and theywere so happy with their success
that Jacques left his teachingjob and then he goes to work
with his dad full time toimprove bathyscaphe for
exploration.
So he's like, I'm all in.
And so then in 1953, theydeveloped a new vehicle called
(16:36):
the Triest.
Triest?
Triest?
This is the name of theirbathscape.
They named this one.
It's called the Triest.
Trieste, T R I E S T E.
Aarati (16:46):
Okay.
Arpita (16:46):
They're also, they also probably speak French, so like,
I don't know, there's probablylike a French way to say this.
I do not speak French.
Trieste te, I don't know.
Um, and then this vehicle wasable to reach 10, 168 feet.
And they were testing this inthe Mediterranean Sea off the
coast of Italy.
And so Trieste consisted of, um,a heavy, Crew sphere, so it's
(17:12):
like this big sphere that thecrew can be in and it's
suspended from the hull of theblimp containing tanks that are
filled with gasoline forbuoyancy and ballast hoppers
filled with iron and floodablewater tanks in order to make
them sink.
So gasoline floats in water.
And the more important thing isthat it is not compressible,
(17:35):
which is really important as youdive deeper and the pressure
increases.
That's something else that Ilearned is that.
Depending on if there is airthat's trapped in the liquid, it
will compress and not actuallyhelp you to float back up.
So they needed something thatwas so buoyant that it floated
in water that would help propelthis ship upwards.
(17:56):
And then the sphere, the crewsphere, um, had enough space for
two crew members and they couldaccess it via vertical shaft
through the hull.
So basically imagine like a bigcircle and then around it, it's
like attached this big hull withbig tanks that either hold
gasoline or iron shot.
Aarati (18:17):
Okay.
Arpita (18:18):
Yeah, it's basically a big blimp is what it is.
Aarati (18:21):
That's really interesting, though, that
they're using gasoline.
Like, I hadn't thought aboutthat.
Like, when you said gasoline, Ithought immediately, like, oh,
they're gonna use that for fuelto, like, move around, but no,
it's actually for buoyancy.
Arpita (18:34):
Yeah, exactly.
No, exactly.
There is a, there is a motor,but the motor is not for them to
propel downwards.
They're using the iron shot toget themselves down.
So it's floating down basically.
Aarati (18:48):
So the motor is just to go kind of back and forth
horizontally, and you have thegasoline to go up and down, and
the iron shot.
Arpita (18:56):
The gasoline and iron.
Yes.
So that's why the hot airballoon thing kind of makes
sense is because they're tryingto use these ideas of, you know,
releasing gas in order to makeit float and then turning it off
to let it cool to let it comeback down.
So they're floating in thewater.
They're not propellingthemselves up and down.
I don't actually know why thatis now that I'm saying that
(19:17):
loud.
I'm actually not sure why theydidn't just create a really
strong motor, but maybe it waslike, did the motors...
Aarati (19:24):
I mean, I'm sure it would be like an energy thing
too, because like to have thatamount of fuel that would drive
you down, it's probably a lotless energy intensive to just
like have iron shot that willcarry you down just like that.
Naturally kind of throughgravity and through just being
more dense than water like it'svery passive.
Arpita (19:45):
That's it.
Aarati (19:45):
helpful.
Yeah, like with my work, withclimate change, people are, a
lot of people are trying to likeremove carbon, carbon dioxide or
methane or like these greenhousegases from the environment and
either store it or recycle it insome way, make it some useful
thing, but one of the bigproblems is the carbon dioxide
(20:10):
and methane in our air is sokind of dilute that in order for
you to capture enough carbondioxide or enough methane you
would have to kind of create afan that blows air through the
machine And so if you're, if youhave a fan, you need energy.
And if you need energy, wheredoes that energy come from?
(20:32):
If it's not coming from solar,if it's not coming from, you
know, a clean energy source, andyou're using gasoline or fossil
fuels to power the fan, like,are you actually doing anything?
And so that's like a big thingright now that everybody's
trying to always find the leastenergy intensive ways in order
(20:53):
to capture carbon and so, like,the lower energy or the more
efficient your machine can bethe better it is and the lower
the carbon footprint is.
So, like, a lot of my clientsare thinking about it from that
perspective.
And that's just why I'm alsothinking, like, maybe they're,
like, not from an environmentalpoint of view, because they
(21:14):
didn't care about this backthen.
It wasn't a big issue probablyback then.
But just in terms of like, youknow, we don't want to be
carrying around a ton of fuel,or maybe it's just not practical
to carry around a ton of fuel,maybe doing something a bit more
passive in terms of just havingiron ore to carry them down made
(21:34):
more sense.
I don't know.
But oh, I see.
I see what you're saying,though, about like the hot air
balloon traveling through airand then they're kind of
treating the water as if it'slike just another medium that we
have to get through withdifferent density properties.
And so we can use the same kindof ideas of physics.
It's just instead of movingthrough air, we're moving
(21:57):
through a different substance,which is water.
I get it.
Okay.
Arpita (22:01):
That's exactly right.
You said it perfectly.
That's exactly what they'retrying to do here.
So, yeah, they have this littleblob that they're floating
around and then there's room fortwo people inside and then also
the hull or basically the entirething is made out of really
thick steel walls, which wasdone intentionally to withstand
all of the pressure of the deepocean.
Aarati (22:21):
hmm.
Mm hmm.
Arpita (22:23):
Also, interestingly, I was googling this and couldn't
find an answer, but they didn'thave a method to pressurize the
cabin or where the crew weresitting.
So I think they were just, itwas just really thick steel and
they were, hoping for the bestthat the pressure would not
equalize is really what it waslike It basically a vacuum is
(22:45):
what they were they were in avacuum And so there wasn't
really a way to actuallynormalize the pressure when they
closed it at the surface I thinkthey were just hoping that it
was a seal
Aarati (22:54):
Oh, that's so scary.
Arpita (22:56):
I
Aarati (22:56):
scary.
Yeah.
Arpita (22:58):
Which is relevant later in the story
Aarati (23:01):
Yeah,
Arpita (23:02):
So Jacques and his father have built the Triest,
and they are really excitedabout it, and they wanted to
keep testing and exploring, butthey were running out of money.
However, at the same time, theU.
S.
military was exploring new waysof designing underwater vessels
for research, and they werelike, hey, you guys seem like
you know what you're doing.
We're, we'll fund you.
(23:23):
So, they were really interestedin both of them, they like
welcomed Jacques and his dad andthey, you know, had like a fair
basically to like see what theywere up to.
And they were like, okay.
This seems really cool.
We're really interested in yourresearch.
And they tested the Trieste forseveral months and then Jacques
and his dad sold their design tothe U.
(23:45):
S.
Navy in 1958.
So now the U.
S.
Navy owns the Trieste and theyhave this bathyscaphe and it
doesn't exist anywhere else inthe world because it's a novel
design and they were like wedon't have anyone to actually
pilot this now that we own thisand unsurprisingly, nobody
(24:07):
pilots a bathyscapes, so thenthey put out a call for
volunteers, uh, in all submarinecrews on the West Coast, United
States, two people answered thiscall.
One was Jacques.
Aarati (24:20):
okay I'll pilot the machine.
I just sold you.
Arpita (24:26):
Yeah, literally.
And the other
Aarati (24:28):
was his dad.
Arpita (24:30):
No, it wasn't his dad.
I think his dad at this pointwas like, kind of done.
I think he was too old and waskind of.
Like I think he was interested,but I think he also acknowledged
that he was perhaps aging out.
Aarati (24:41):
Like, yeah, time for me to retire.
Arpita (24:43):
Yeah
Aarati (24:45):
Yeah.
Arpita (24:45):
The other person was a Navy lieutenant and submariner
named Don Walsh.
Don was from California and hewas a very buttoned up Navy man,
and he had lots of experiencediving but Don said, quote,"It
was like the first two airplanesin the world.
Who are you going to get to flythem?" Like basically like who
(25:05):
is going to answer this call?
Like nobody wants to do this.
And also most Navy men didn'tapply because they didn't see
the point.
They didn't think the bathscapehad any potential for
advancement.
They were basically like, whatis this random thing that these
two random dudes built?
Like, I don't want to do that.
There's no potential there.
And Don said that he didn't careabout any of that.
He just thought it would be fun.
Aarati (25:27):
He just wants to go down in history, kind of.
Like, he just wants to be partof, part of the new thing.
Arpita (25:33):
I guess.
Yeah, he was just like, yeah,I'm down.
And so now that the U.
S.
Navy owns the Trieste, theytested for many months off the
coast of Guam, and they werefinally able to reach 24, 000
feet, and they at this pointdecided to take on an even
greater challenge to try toreach the deepest point of the
ocean.
(25:54):
So then they spent a couple moreyears making modifications and
doing test dives, and then theyfinally decided that the Trieste
was ready for its big dive tothe bottom of the Mariana
Trench.
So the Mariana Trench is anoceanic trench in western
Pacific Ocean.
It's kind of near Guam, which isbasically why they were testing
(26:14):
it there.
And it's the deepest trench onEarth.
It's crescent shaped, and itmeasures about 1, 580 miles long
and 43 miles wide.
And its deepest point, it's thesouthern end, and it's called
Challenger's Deep, and it's over36, 000 feet deep, which is over
(26:36):
1.
2 miles deeper than MountEverest is tall.
So if you put Mount Everestupside down into the ocean from
its surface, there would stillbe 1.
2 miles to go from its tip toget to the ocean floor.
Aarati (26:49):
Oh my god.
And you said the deepest theyhad gone until this point was
24, 000?
So like one third more or yeah.
12, 000 miles more.
Oh
Arpita (27:00):
exactly, feet, 12, 000 feet more.
Aarati (27:03):
Feet.
Sorry.
Okay.
Miles.
Did I say miles?
Miles would be crazy.
Arpita (27:07):
You said miles.
Aarati (27:08):
Okay, we'd be, yeah, we'd be through the earth and
into space on the other side.
Arpita (27:12):
yeah, yeah.
Aarati (27:13):
Okay.
Sorry.
Arpita (27:14):
And the first time that we actually found out about how
deep the Mariana Trench was, wasin 1875, and it was first
sounded, which is basicallywhere they send out sound waves
and they're measuring the radarback, um, that was in 1875,
which was Honestly, like, forthis time period, we're in the
fifties, is quite a long timeago.
(27:37):
Um, but in Jacques lifetime hadnever actually been explored.
So we never actually sentanything down there other than
sound waves.
Aarati (27:43):
Wow.
Makes sense though.
I mean, it's, it's one thing tojust measure something.
It's another thing to actually
Arpita (27:50):
it's like you, you, like, they like stuck their
finger in, they were like, yep,it's deep.
Like
Aarati (27:57):
It's one thing to see the moon.
It's quite another thing to gothere.
Arpita (28:01):
A hundred percent.
That's a, that's very goodanalogy.
Aarati (28:04):
Mm hmm.
Hi everyone, Aarati here.
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If so, and you wish someonewould tell your science story, I
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That's S Y K O M M E R dot com.
(28:47):
Okay, back to the story.
Arpita (28:50):
So, on January 20th in 1960.
they were like, okay, we'reready for this adventure.
So they had a command ship, atugboat, and the bathyscaphe,
and they all set out from Guam.
And the first task that they hadto do was to find the deepest
part of the Challenger Deep fromthe surface.
Um, but because the depthsounder on the ship couldn't
(29:12):
measure such extreme depths, thecrew employed a very crude
method.
They lit fuses on blocks of TNT.
And I don't know why this keepscoming up in every episode and
also Don Walsh agrees with usand he joked that quote"boys
like to play with firecrackers"and they do.
Aarati (29:31):
Yeah, we've only done like, 25 or 26 episodes and it's
like, it feels like 10 of themhave explosives.
Arpita (29:38):
the time.
It does.
There's a lot of explosive.
So they.
Took the TNT, they lit it, andthen they heaved them over the
side to explode underwater.
And then they used thestopwatches to count the seconds
until the blast sound wavesbounced off of the distant sea
floor and echoed back into theship's hydrophone.
So 12 seconds for the soundwaves to come back is deeper
(30:00):
than 7 seconds.
And so they went back and forthacross the ocean surface for a
couple days, lighting andthrowing over and blowing up
TNT.
And then they finally identifieda target area that was about 1.
6 kilometers wide and 11kilometers long.
And this was their target to tryto reach the deepest point from
the surface,
Aarati (30:20):
Gotcha.
So I'm assuming that when theyactually try to go, they're just
going to go straight down istheir plan.
Like, there's not gonna be awhole lot of steering involved.
Gotcha.
Arpita (30:31):
So then early in the morning on January 23rd, Don and
Jacques climbed down the ladderinto the Trieste entrance tunnel
and they entered this reallytiny cramped cabin.
And so Jacques was 6'4 and hedesigned this cabin to basically
accommodate exactly him.
So the cabin was exactly 6'4inches in diameter, which is
(30:51):
pretty funny.
And Don apparently was muchshorter.
I don't actually know his exactheight, but he apparently could
move around the cabin veryeasily, but Jacques barely fit
because he was trying tomaximize space, so he made it so
he could exactly fit, basically.
Aarati (31:04):
That's so funny.
Arpita (31:06):
I know.
So they let go of a little bitof gasoline to quote"get heavy"
and then the iron ballast beganto pull the ship downward and
their mission started.
So at 1500 feet, they had tostop and put on warmer clothes
because the ocean's temperaturewas starting to seep in, and
around this point there's nomore sunlight, and so you can't,
(31:28):
like, it's completely dark, andthen it Mm started to get cold.
Aarati (31:31):
Oh my god that's so scary like I was like picturing
it from the outside before likeI was just picturing like an
ocean scene with this steelblimp thing sinking down but
like.
Arpita (31:42):
No, but they're in like a bubble.
They're in a six foot widebubble.
Aarati (31:47):
like, I wasn't imagining it from their perspective until
you just said that and it's justlike pitch black.
You can't see anything and it'scold.
Oh, my god that's so scary.
Arpita (31:57):
Also, six feet wide is not very wide.
I'm pretty sure my dining tableis probably six feet wide.
And then there's two people inthat space.
So not only is it a small spacefor one person, it's small space
for two people.
Aarati (32:09):
Yeah.
I don't really consider myselfclaustrophobic, but I think that
would do it.
Like,
Arpita (32:14):
Oh 100%.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Okay, so the thick steel doordid offer some insulation, but
once they got to around 2000feet, that just wasn't a thing
anymore.
And so at this point, the lightvanished and they fell further
and further into the dark, andthey were very deeply aware of
the pressure that was outsidetheir steel chamber.
(32:35):
And like I mentioned before,they were kind of just hoping
that they had made a vacuumseal.
Um, and then once they got toabout 9, 400 feet, they heard a
loud bang that shook through thecabin and then they both started
shaking.
And Don said, quote, we lookedat all of our indicators, our
instruments, and everything wasnormal.
(32:57):
End quote.
They didn't know what had causedthe noise and it didn't really
seem to be affecting the shipitself.
So they just decided to keepgoing.
And they were hoping that theymade the right decision.
I know.
Aarati (33:09):
Oh my god.
Balls of steel.
Like, I cannot.
I would be like, nope.
Nope.
Uh, nope.
Take me up.
Take me up.
Arpita (33:17):
At this point they haven't even reached their
record, which was 24, 000 feet.
So they're not even anywhereclose there.
But at this point, they are alsoreally aware that the pressure
outside the cabin is reallyhigh.
So they estimated that it wasabout 103 megapascals or about
15, 000 pounds per square inch.
(33:38):
And so what this basicallymeans, because there's not
really a comparator for us toreally conceptualize this is, if
there was any sort of breach ofthe vessel at this point, the
entire thing would have implodedso quickly, like it would have
just closed in upon itself,because there would have been so
much pressure.
And Don said, quote,"we'd havebeen dead before we even knew we
(34:01):
were dead."
Aarati (34:02):
That's what they're thinking happened to the Ocean
Gate Titan, right?
Like, that's, that was in thenews a few months ago.
Yeah.
Just like, immediately imploded.
Arpita (34:13):
Immediately implodes.
Yeah, there's nothing you cando.
I don't know.
I was trying to find like an,like a, what does 15, 000 pounds
per square inch mean?
And like, there's just like allthese like heavy machinery
things.
I'm like, none of this meansanything to me, but really the
most important thing is theywould have just imploded.
Aarati (34:30):
Yeah, just, Like, I can't, I can't imagine just
being with that stress.
Like, this could be my lastbreath for that constant
feeling.
Arpita (34:41):
So also just to like, keep in mind, they've done this
a bunch of times before, so theyhaven't.
Yeah, gone this deep, but evengetting to this point, they've
done this before, so it's notthe first time that it's
happening.
Period.
Aarati (34:55):
True.
That's true.
So I'm like not the type ofperson who would even take the
first journey down like 10 feet.
I'd be like, I'm 10 feet down.
That's enough.
Thank you.
They're going like thousands offeet and okay.
It's a different, it's adifferent breed.
It's a different type of personwho can do that.
It's not me.
Arpita (35:13):
To a certain extent, they are expecting a lot of
this.
Aarati (35:17):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (35:18):
You know, like they are, they've done this enough times
where they've desensitized tocertain things and they're like
expecting certain things tohappen.
Aarati (35:25):
Gotcha.
Arpita (35:25):
They just haven't beat their record, is all.
Aarati (35:28):
Okay.
Arpita (35:30):
So At this point, they found out that in the entrance
tunnel, which is separate fromtheir cabin, because they have a
tunnel that they crawl into,right, they crawl down into a
tunnel, and there's a hatch, andnow they're in their cabin.
They found out that theplexiglass window in the
entrance tunnel, which is notpart of the cabin, had cracked
(35:51):
under the pressure, but theywere safe in their little cabin
because they were protected bythe steel hatch.
So.
They're like, okay, I thinkwe're okay, but that window up
there has cracked.
Aarati (36:03):
okay
Arpita (36:04):
They looked out into the porthole so they did have a
window, and basically, a lot ofwhat they saw was just like silt
and sand, but once they got alittle bit deeper, they saw a
lot of bioluminescence, which isvery cool.
And Don said that, even as deepas we were, which is not a very
(36:26):
thickly populated part of theocean because there aren't very
many nutrients that far fromland bioluminescence is rampant,
which was super interesting.
Aarati (36:35):
That's super cool.
Arpita (36:36):
And then Jacques said, quote,"By far, the most
interesting find was the fishthat came floating by our
porthole, even at quite thatdepth" end quote.
And they were really surprisedto find marine life at all,
because at that point marinebiologists figured that there
couldn't be any life at thatdepth, partially because there
(36:57):
was no light and the other partbecause there was so much
pressure.
They were like, nothing couldpossibly survive in that kind of
environment.
Aarati (37:05):
Yeah.
Arpita (37:06):
While they were descending at 30, 000 feet,
another window cracked, and sothey are basically descending
for over four hours because thisis all happening so slowly.
They're floating down.
So it took them almost fourhours.
And the whole time they aresending out sound waves with
radar to try to understand wherethe ocean floor is because they
(37:28):
can't see anything.
It's completely dark.
And so they're like, have wereached the bottom?
Where is the bottom?
We have no idea.
And so they're kind of justlike, keep sending out signals
to figure out how far they areaway.
Aarati (37:39):
I feel like I I know i'm not in it, but I feel like i'm
in it, you know I'm, i'm likegripping my chair.
I'm like, please make it pleasemake it please make it
Arpita (37:50):
So finally they do get to the bottom, and they touch
down and they, neitherapparently neither of them, so.
Let me back up.
Jacques wrote a piece forNational Geographic in 1960,
basically explaining all ofthis.
That's where all these quotesare from because it's their
record of when they were talkingabout this.
And I guess neither guy was veryemotional or really was one for
(38:13):
speeches.
So they got to the bottom andthen they quote,"We looked at
each other, we shook hands andwe said, well, we did it." End
quote.
I was like,
Aarati (38:24):
Okay, but you know what to be fair like I can imagine my
brother doing exactly the samething.
So I get it.
Like I get it.
You make this huge achievementand everyone's like, oh my god
And he's just like yeah.
Arpita (38:37):
Yep.
Aarati (38:39):
Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
What do you think we did allthis for we did achieved it It
went exactly as planned.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Why are you all freaking out?
Arpita (38:48):
That's exactly what happened.
Aarati (38:49):
That's so funny.
Arpita (38:52):
So then they are looking out the porthole and they're
trying to see if they can seeanything, but because they've
now touched down onto the floor,all of the sand came up.
And so they basically couldn'tsee anything.
And Don said, quote,"It lookedlike looking into a bowl of
milk." So they really couldn'tsee anything because it was just
so much sand had come up throughthere.
(39:12):
Because they basically put,displaced everything and then
all the sand comes up.
Aarati (39:15):
Uh, gotcha.
Arpita (39:17):
Um, and so then they, because they were worried that
now these two portholes hadcracked, they were like, I think
we should get out of here.
So they only stayed at the oceanfloor for 20 minutes.
Aarati (39:27):
That's still quite a, quite a while though.
Arpita (39:30):
Well, they, Well,
Aarati (39:31):
enough.
Arpita (39:32):
hours to get there.
Aarati (39:33):
I know, but for me, I'd be like, okay, let's go back up
now.
Like constantly, I'm likeconstantly like, okay, let's
leave.
Let's leave.
Let's leave.
20 minutes is good enough.
Let's go.
Arpita (39:45):
So then they dropped their ballast of iron pellets,
which was keeping them heavy,and they started their long
ascent.
So even though their ship wasdamaged, it only took them about
three hours to come back up, andnothing dramatic happened on
their way back up, which isgreat.
Wait
Aarati (40:01):
so did they ever figure out what made the banging happen
on their way down?
Arpita (40:07):
It was the port hole.
It was the porthole cracking.
Aarati (40:08):
It was the porthole cracking from the pressure.
It wasn't like, because I wasthinking it might have been like
an animal or something that hitthem, but no?
Arpita (40:14):
No, it's porthole cracking.
Yeah, like the glass breakingand steel and Yeah, cuz then
again hitting against the steel.
So it's like depressurizing andhitting against the steel
Aarati (40:27):
Okay.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Arpita (40:29):
And when the Treist finally bobbed up to the
surface, Don and Jacques climbedup the long ladder to go top
side and they perched on top oftheir vessel.
And while they waited for theirsupport ships, they reflected on
how successful their missionwould open up the way for like
exploration of the MarianaTrench.
And they were trying to figureout when the next people would
(40:51):
be there.
And they decided that it wouldbe somewhere between two or
three years before the nextpeople were down there to do
more deep sea exploration.
Jacques said,"On reaching theTrieste's deck, I had the
impression of emerging in themiddle of an air meet.
Several Navy jets and a plane ofthe Guam Air Rescue Unit were
sailing down above us with aninfernal racket, dipping their
(41:15):
wings to greet us.
A few miles away, the Lewis andbehind her the Wendek were
approaching rapidly." That wasthe names of the two support
vessels that were carrying themaround.
Um, and so he felt like he was,you know, like a soldier
returning from war and he feltvery excited by all of this.
And really something interestingabout this was the fact that
(41:36):
they saw any fish at all, like Imentioned, was scientifically
very interesting because, like Imentioned, they didn't believe
that life could survive at suchhigh pressures.
But because this wasn't aresearch vessel, they didn't
collect any samples.
They didn't record anything.
So there was nothing to analyzeafter the fact, but it did show
(41:56):
the scientific community thatdeep sea exploration, especially
of the ocean floor was A)possible and B) actually
worthwhile because there waslife down there.
So from a scientific perspectivethose were the two big takeaways
aside from the fact that theydid something and achieved
something that no one else haddone before.
Aarati (42:16):
Yeah, I mean, even today, that's one of the things
that we still haven't fullyexplored, right?
Like, we don't know about allthe life forms that live down in
our ocean trenches and cansurvive down there.
So that's huge.
I feel like I'm glad thescientific community actually
believed them because for asecond there, I was afraid that
(42:37):
you were going to say, like,they were like, no, that's
impossible.
We don't believe you.
There's only two guys.
You must've been hallucinatingunder the pressure or something,
Arpita (42:45):
I mean, I guess there that is a version of it
happening, but it
Aarati (42:48):
I'm glad that didn't happen.
Arpita (42:49):
...go well.
Which I mean, kind of seguesinto the next thing, which this
was a really historic dive andit got worldwide attention and
Jacques wrote an account of itcalled Seven Miles Down, which
was the excerpt that waspublished in National
Geographic.
That was what I was basicallyreading from.
Um, and they wanted to plan areturn mission, but it never
(43:12):
really happened.
The Trieste was really expensiveto maintain and operate.
And it also.
Because of the way it wasstructured, because the cabin
was so small, there was no wayfor them to collect any samples,
and they also couldn't reallytake any photographs because
there was no light down there,so there was really no good way
for them to collect anyscientific data with this
(43:36):
specific vessel, so a returntrip on the Trieste didn't
really happen.
But, like I mentioned, it reallywas a major step forward in
environmental protection.
It really highlighted, like Isaid, the evidence of life where
no one had expected to find any,but it also induced governments
to abandon the idea of dumpingtoxic waste in ocean trenches,
(43:58):
because now they realized thatthere was ocean life down there,
um, and required environmentalprotection, where previously
people were like, there'snothing there, we're just gonna
Aarati (44:08):
Just dump your waste there
Arpita (44:09):
waste in
Aarati (44:10):
there.
Yeah.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah
Arpita (44:13):
So by the end of the 60s, the US Navy had abandoned
manned exploration of theMariana Trench It was too risky
and it was also like I mentionedso expensive to maintain a
vessel that could dive thatdeep.
Um, and so they, the Navydecided to limit craft depths
(44:33):
above 6000 meters.
And so the next generation ofany research done on the ocean
floor was done with robots.
And so once they could buildcrafts that could go deeper,
they were mostly unmanned justfor safety reasons is what the
Navy said.
Aarati (44:50):
Okay, that's more my speed.
I could stay on the surface andlike, guide a robot around.
That I can do.
Arpita (44:57):
But for true believers like Don Walsh, he said, quote,
"The ability of a man to observeand modify his program on site
is pretty important.
You can't surprise aninstrument." So they maintain
that the best way to do it wouldbe for a manned exploration.
But the Navy was arguing we canexplore 98 percent of the ocean,
(45:18):
everything but these mysterioustrenches.
And they're like, no, but that'swhere the cool shit is.
So
Aarati (45:23):
Yeah.
It's like,
Arpita (45:25):
Bit of disconnect for sure.
Aarati (45:26):
That makes sense.
Yeah, it's like, we can look ateverything except the most
interesting part of the trench.
Arpita (45:31):
They're like, I want to go over there and they're like,
you can't go over there.
And they're
Aarati (45:34):
Yeah,
Arpita (45:34):
like that's where I want to go.
Aarati (45:36):
I do.
I do agree that there'ssomething to be said for the
human experience if you're braveenough to actually do that.
You know, like I don't think Iwould ever.
I would just be like I'm goodwith my robots But hey, if you
want to go down there and youwant to go see it firsthand.
I'm not gonna stop you
Arpita (45:54):
Exactly.
So after the success of theirChallenger Deep mission, Jacques
and his father designed a newsubmersible called a Mesoscaphe.
And this vehicle was built andwas called the Auguste Piccard
after the dad.
And it was the world's firstpassenger submarine and they
used it to transport more than33, 000 tourists beneath Lake
(46:17):
Geneva during the Swissexhibition of 1964.
So they were really trying toget more people involved with
this.
And so Jacques had highconviction that ecological
problems had to be urgentlyaddressed and he denounced all
forms of pollution, especiallydumping in lakes and seas and
oceans.
(46:38):
So he created the Foundation forthe Study and Protection of the
Seas and Lakes.
And he was really a pioneerfighting against pollution, and
he contributed through press andarticles that he wrote the
awakening of ecologicalawareness, and he was a solid 30
years ahead of when globalwarming even became a word that
(46:58):
we talk about.
Aarati (46:59):
I love that.
He's like already just thinkingabout ocean life.
And yeah, just amazing.
I guess like seeing it firsthandwould do that to you though,
like you see the wonder ofsomething and you want to
protect it and make sure thatfuture generations also have the
ability to have that same senseof wonder.
So I love that.
Arpita (47:19):
So he is still at it, he builds, um, an even newer
submarine and he calls this onethe Ben Franklin and it was
specifically used for scientificresearch.
And it was one of the firstvessels to chart the Gulf
Stream.
On July 14th, 1969, the BenFranklin was towed to the center
of the Gulf Stream off the coastof Vietnam.
(47:40):
Palm Beach, Florida.
And once it was on site with itssix man international crew
descended to 1, 000 feet off ofthe Riviera Beach, Florida and
drifted 1, 444 miles north.
And then they came up nearMaine.
Um, so they basically, yeah,traverse the entire
Aarati (47:59):
They just went all the way, all the way up.
Arpita (48:01):
Yep.
All the way up.
So this crew consisted ofJacques as the mission leader.
They had another Swiss man namedErwin Aebersold and he was the
pilot and the remaining crewmembers included a Navy
submariner, an acousticspecialist from the Royal Navy,
and a NASA astronaut.
And they spent more than fourweeks in this vessel studying
(48:24):
the currents for the U.
S.
Navy, and this mission providedvaluable data about long
duration travel in confinedspaces for the U.
S.
space program, and it also gavethem a lot of understanding
about currents and weather inthe Gulf Stream.
And so this data, actually endedup being really, really valuable
for all of the Apollo missionsinto space because they
(48:46):
understood, because like a lotof times astronauts will do test
dives in the ocean because a lotof the similar constraints of
pressure, darkness, small spacesare there so then you can
practice in the ocean.
And so this gave them a lot ofdata to help understand once
they sent out their Apollomissions, which is really cool.
Aarati (49:05):
Did you say how long it took them to go traverse the
entire Gulf Stream?
Arpita (49:10):
Four weeks.
Aarati (49:11):
Four weeks.
Wow.
That is, that is quite a longtime to be underwater.
Arpita (49:15):
Yeah.
In a tiny little space with sixdudes.
Aarati (49:18):
Yeah.
You better really like yourcompanions.
I bet they test for that too,though, like
Arpita (49:24):
Yeah, yeah.
Aarati (49:25):
and everything.
You got to test for.
Yeah, character and, you know,personality and everything.
Arpita (49:31):
I agree.
Probably the opposite of whatthey do on reality shows, you
know?
Like, looking and seeing mostcompatible instead of, like,
least compatible on
Aarati (49:37):
Oh my god.
I just had a, like, vision of,like, year 3025, when we have,
like, reality shows in space.
And it's like, we put the most,two most unlikely astronauts
together.
Let's watch the drama unfold.
Arpita (49:52):
So in 1971, Jacques spent the next few years as a
science consultant for theAmerican for American deep sea
research organizations,including Grumman Aircraft, and
his work with the ocean showedhim the dangers posed by human
activity.
And so in the late 1970s, hefounded the foundation.
(50:12):
Like I mentioned, and then in aninterview, he said that the sea
could only be saved by dramaticchanges in relation to fishing
and pollution.
And he was very, very steadfastthat we should protect all
bodies of water, especially withpollution.
Aarati (50:27):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (50:28):
Um, and this was something that he remained very
interested in throughout therest of his life.
In 1990, Jacques designed a 16seat tourist submarine for
series production.
So he was trying to replicatewhat he did previously in Lake
Geneva, and then have this besomething that gets more mass
produced.
And his goal was to taketourists and educate them about
(50:49):
the needs to protect the oceans.
So the 16 seater submersible hadbig, large portholes, and then
they did test dives in LakeZurich.
And in addition to theseadvancements, he was really
hoping that He could get fundingto start a company to do this
basically at a larger scale toshow people what the oceans had
and so that they could be moreinvested in saving them.
Aarati (51:12):
Oh, cool.
Whole ocean tourism.
Arpita (51:14):
Yeah ocean tourism, basically exactly it.
And he unfortunately neverraised enough money to do this,
but that was his vision.
Aarati (51:21):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (51:22):
And Jacques did have a son.
I was trying to figure out somedetails about his personal life
and his son kind of justappears.
And this is also the end of thestory.
This is, I know there's someparts of the story that are very
detailed than other parts that Ireally couldn't find as much on.
But his son is continuing hisfamily tradition.
So his son actually commandedthe first nonstop hot air
(51:45):
balloon flight.
around the world in March 1999,and then the first solar powered
plane flight around the world inthe December of 2009.
I
Aarati (51:55):
Oh, wow.
That's pretty amazing.
Oh my gosh, this whole familyof, like, explorers.
Yeah, these Piccards.
I was gonna ask does the lastname Piccard have anything to do
with Star Trek?
Did they get, like, any of theinspiration from there?
Arpita (52:11):
I don't know, but maybe, I
Aarati (52:13):
interesting.
Yeah, because it just seems likeexploration and, like, these
scientists.
It seems like a very nerdyoverlap.
Arpita (52:22):
Clear connection.
I think you must be right.
Aarati (52:25):
Yeah, it does say that Star Trek creator Gene
Roddenberry named Piccard forone or both of the twin
brothers, August Piccard andJean Piccard, 20th century Swiss
scientists.
Arpita (52:38):
Oh.
Yeah, I guess that's rightbecause that would be the dad.
Aarati (52:41):
Yeah,
Arpita (52:41):
twin brother.
Aarati (52:43):
yeah, I didn't realize that.
Okay, great.
Arpita (52:45):
Um, in November 2008, Jacques passed away in his sleep
in his Lake Geneva home inSwitzerland, and he was 86 years
old.
Aarati (52:58):
Wow.
Arpita (52:59):
And yeah, that's the, that's the story.
I found a really interestingarticle that was like three
generations of Piccards, becauseall three of them were such
amazing explorers.
Aarati (53:10):
Oh my gosh, amazing story.
I'm so glad that you followed upon our promise from last episode
to do, to do ocean trenches.
that's
Arpita (53:19):
Yeah,
Aarati (53:19):
amazing.
Great story.
I was on the edge of my seat theentire time, pretty much.
Like,
Arpita (53:26):
I'm so glad
Aarati (53:27):
yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm so glad they came back safe.
And they're, you know,everything's okay.
Yeah,
Arpita (53:35):
understand the stress though.
Aarati (53:36):
Yeah.
I was stressed just listening toit.
And so I'm like, Oh, phew,relief.
I'm very glad that they're,they're back safe.
Everything worked out and it wasa happy ending.
So wonderful.
a I love...
Arpita (53:47):
Ending.
Aarati (53:47):
I love a happy ending.
Thanks for listening.
If you have a suggestion for astory we should cover or
thoughts you want to share aboutan episode, reach out to us at
smartteapodcast.
com.
You can follow us on Instagram,TikTok, and BlueSky at Smart Tea
Podcast, and listen to us onSpotify, Apple Podcasts,
YouTube, or wherever you getyour podcasts.
(54:09):
And thanks for leaving a ratingor comment, it really helps us
grow New episodes are releasedevery other Wednesday.
See you next time!
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Smart Tea Podcast,
where we talk about the lives ofscientists and innovators who
shape the world.
How are you doing, Arpita?
Arpita (00:20):
I'm feeling kind of slow today.
Like it's so cold and rainy andI feel like it's making me feel
like I just want to cuddle up inmy bed and hold a cat and not do
very much else.
Aarati (00:32):
Yeah, it is.
Arpita (00:34):
What about you?
Aarati (00:35):
Yeah, we've been hunkering down over here too.
I did, go to San Francisco thisweekend.
I was, like, visiting mycousins, but since it was
raining, we couldn't really,like, do a whole bunch of stuff,
so we just kind of, like, hungout at this cafe, and then we
ended up going to this reallyrandom shop called Paxton's
(00:58):
Gate, and it was full of, like,witchy things.
It was really very interesting.
Like, if you want a skeleton ofanything, that's where you go,
apparently, to get like, youknow, rodent skeletons or bird
skeletons, right?
I was like, how did I end uphere?
My cousin was like, let's justgo into this store real quick.
Arpita (01:20):
Where was it?
Aarati (01:21):
I, it's, it was in The Mission.
Um,
Arpita (01:24):
I was just going to say, I feel like I've seen this story
in The Mission.
Is it on Valencia?
Aarati (01:28):
Yeah, yeah, it is and it's like it has all these
crystals and it was so funnybecause like we had gone to this
bookstore and we had gone to oneother store, but I was feeling
really proud of myself I waslike, I haven't I haven't bought
anything and I'm being so goodwith my money Like I'm so
responsible and then of allplaces in this like random
(01:50):
witchy store.
I broke down and I there waslike a section that had vacuum
sealed tumblers that had likechemistry molecules all over it
and it said"The Chemistry ofTea" and there was one that had
"The Chemistry of Coffee" andthey had all these molecules
(02:10):
that you find in tea and coffeethere was a whiskey one and
there was a beer one and I wasjust like.
Oh my gosh, well, this isperfect for my nerdy little
brother who does not have atumbler and loves all things
chemistry.
And I was like, yeah, you, youmade me break down, you witchy
store.
You did it.
(02:30):
You worked your magic on me.
Arpita (02:32):
Is he coffee or tea?
Aarati (02:34):
He's tea.
We're all
Arpita (02:35):
tea.
He's tea.
You're all a tea family.
Aarati (02:37):
Yeah, well my my grandma and my parents will drink coffee
in the morning, but thenafterwards they'll drink tea.
Arpita (02:44):
They all switched to tea.
Aarati (02:45):
Yeah, but me and my brother are tea all the way
Arpita (02:48):
That's so funny.
I Didn't realize that caffeinesensitivity was genetic until
Logan told me Because I willdrink one cup of coffee and then
I'll drink maybe a second onearound 10 a.
m.
If I'm still feeling a littlesleepy But Logan doesn't drink
coffee at all because he'sreally caffeine sensitive and so
(03:10):
like if he's really feeling likehe wants to focus then he will
drink a little bit or drinkmatcha Um, but he's not at a
baseline for caffeine and it'sso fascinating to me I'm, like
what's it like being better thanthe rest of us because I can't
relate to that
Aarati (03:27):
Yeah,
Arpita (03:28):
However, on a tangent, I have decided recently, for no
particular reason, that I'mswitching to decaf.
Um, and the reason that I neverdid before is because decaf is
disgusting and it tastesterrible relative to coffee.
But apparently there's new waysof processing coffee to
(03:49):
decaffeinate it without losing alot of the flavor profile.
It's like something with likesugarcane.
I don't know.
It's like sugarcane waterprocessing or something.
I don't know, but decaf has comea long way.
It doesn't taste like assanymore.
And so I've been just likecurious to be like, can I, can I
switch to decaf?
So today I'm on day four ofdecaf only.
(04:11):
And today I didn't have aheadache.
So.
Aarati (04:14):
Amazing.
Arpita (04:15):
Thank you so much.
Thank you
Aarati (04:17):
you!
Arpita (04:17):
So The last couple days, I definitely had a headache and
I was, I was texting my friendwho was the one who told me
about the new processing and Iwas like,"I think I'm going to
die." He was like, he was like,"Keep with it.
Like, it's going to get better.
Like, I promise." But today Ifeel normal.
Aarati (04:36):
I think there is something like a three day hump.
Like once you get, like when youstart, I feel with sugar too, I
feel like I've heard that.
Like if you try to quit sugar orsomething, or maybe it's just
like, A lot of type of addictivetype of things that if you can
make it past three days, it'slike you, you powered through
(04:56):
the hardest part of it and
Arpita (04:58):
Wow.
Okay.
That makes me feel betterbecause I am in fact on because
today's Thursday.
I started on Monday.
So today's my fourth day.
Um, and yeah, also the, thecompany that I work at, um,
because we are a quote unquotehealth company,
Aarati (05:14):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (05:14):
Our CEO doesn't want us to have junk food in the office
at all and I'm like, okay forsure like to a certain extent
I'm on board with that.
But also there's like there's nosweet treats anywhere.
There's no cookies.
There's not any, like, there'snothing.
Like, the snacks are trail mixand Chex mix and nuts.
(05:36):
And I asked the office managerone day, I was like, hey, I was
like, could we get, like, candy?
Aarati (05:42):
Is that allowed?
Arpita (05:43):
And she was like, she was like, no, we can't.
And we also don't have chips.
There's no...
there's no chi- If you want likea salty snack or something?
There's no, there's no chips.
We have um, God, what are theycalled?
Um, pop chips or something?
I don't know.
Aarati (06:01):
Like those airy of...?
Arpita (06:02):
Kind of look like rice cakes.
Yes, they kind of look like ricecakes almost.
And I'm like, this is garbage.
This is not what I
Aarati (06:08):
I'm talking potato chips.
Like,
Arpita (06:11):
I want Ruffles.
Aarati (06:12):
Yes.
Yes.
Arpita (06:14):
It is honestly so devastating.
Aarati (06:16):
But you can't even bring your own in like,
Arpita (06:18):
Oh, yeah, you could bring your own, but like, yeah,
you could, you can
Aarati (06:21):
I was going to say, I feel like that crosses a line,
Arpita (06:24):
not, it's not like a ban, but will
Aarati (06:26):
It's the company provided snacks.
Got it.
Arpita (06:29):
And so now I'm making, my new goal is to make a
petition for, um, have you seenthose, like, smart snacks at
Whole Foods or something?
Aarati (06:37):
No, I haven't seen those.
Arpita (06:38):
I don't even know what they're made out of, but they're
probably like erythritol or someother sort of sugar alternative,
um, but their whole schtick isthat it's only like, One or two
grams of sugar for the wholeserving
Aarati (06:51):
Uh huh.
Arpita (06:52):
I mean, I would take that.
I would take that at this pointbecause I would like a sweet
treat at the end of my lunch.
Just like a little baby one.
Anyway, this is a huge tangent,but this is the biggest problem
in my life right now.
Aarati (07:04):
No, that's great.
Arpita (07:06):
I'm pretty mad about it.
Aarati (07:09):
Congratulations, though, for switching to decaf and it
actually sticking.
But I know what you mean.
Like, even my favorite tea, itwas a black tea, and it was like
this sweet cinnamon tea that Iloved.
And Whenever I got the decafversion, it sucked and
Arpita (07:27):
It's disgusting.
It's so real.
No, it's a real thing.
it
Aarati (07:30):
Yeah, it is.
Yeah.
So I totally get it.
I don't know about coffee, butlike, I know about decaf tea and
yeah, you're right.
It's not the same.
So that's, that's a really bigachievement.
So I'm glad you don't have aheadache.
I'm glad it's going well.
Yeah.
Arpita (07:47):
Thank you so much.
I
Aarati (07:48):
Yeah.
Um, oh, the other thing I wantedto say, we got a really nice
comment on our YouTube channel,and I just want to share.
So this person wrote on the JackParsons episode.
Um, they wrote, wonderfulpodcast, glad I found this
channel.
There aren't much I found thatare dedicated to exploring
(08:10):
people in science and theirbackground, especially lesser
known or discussed figuresthroughout history.
I'm thrilled you are doing this.
Please keep it up.
Arpita (08:20):
Oh, that's very sweet.
Aarati (08:21):
Very happy by that.
I was just like, oh my gosh, Ilove you too.
Whoever you are, random internetstranger.
You got, you're amazing.
Yes.
Yeah.
Arpita (08:31):
Um, that was really great.
Thank you for sharing.
Um, I have a very left turn totake, um, in our topic of
discussion.
It has nothing to do withcoffee.
Aarati (08:45):
Well, the whole thing was a tangent, I guess.
Arpita (08:47):
The whole thing was a tangent.
Um, but I am excited to talk tothis person.
But it was inspired by our lastepisode when I was talking about
the fact that we haven't doneanybody who is an ocean
scientist, and I am going totalk about the first person to
get to the deepest part of theocean, which is the Mariana
Trench.
Aarati (09:07):
Oh my goodness.
You really took that to heart,yay!
Arpita (09:11):
Well, I googled it to be like, is there something
interesting there?
Because sometimes when I'mresearching a story, I think
there's going to be aninteresting story there.
And then it's actually not aninteresting story.
You know, it's like some dudewent to this college and then he
did this thing and then that wasthe end of his life.
Like, I don't
Aarati (09:29):
sometimes there's like just not
Arpita (09:31):
there's not
Aarati (09:31):
a lot about their life or like, yeah, yeah,
Arpita (09:34):
there's just nothing there in terms or like,
sometimes I'll hope that there'slike one interesting scientist
or someone who has more aboutthem on the Internet.
And sometimes it's like,actually so many scientists, but
it's actually kind of hard toreally pin it down into one
thing, but
Aarati (09:50):
mm hmm.
Arpita (09:51):
one actually ended up being literally one guy.
And it's also kind of a weirdstory.
So, I'm kind of interested tosee what you think.
Aarati (09:59):
Well I would imagine that because I feel like anyone
who is willing to traverse tothe depths of the ocean has to
be a little bit weird.
I feel the same way about space,too, though.
Anyone who's willing to leavetheir comfort bubble, like, I'm
very much a homebody, so anyonewho's willing to, like, go
places, I'm like, I don't knowif we can be friends.
Arpita (10:21):
No, in comparison to most of the people we've done,
he's actually quite normal, um,but it is kind of an interesting
story, okay.
So let's dive in.
We're talking about JacquesPiccard.
He was born in Brussels inBelgium on July 28th, 1922.
And his dad, Auguste Piccard,was also an adventurer, and he
(10:43):
had actually set two worldrecords, and he reached the
highest altitude in a hot airballoon in 1931, and then he
beat his own record in 1932.
Aarati (10:53):
Wow.
Arpita (10:54):
That, that's his dad.
And so growing up, he went toprivate school in Switzerland.
And then in 1943, he went tocollege in Geneva, where he
studied physics and economics.
And then he took a year off in1944 to spend some time in the
French army.
And then when he left the armyin 1946, he started teaching
(11:15):
high school economics.
There's really not a lot ofstuff about his childhood that
was kind of about it.
But this is kind of where thestory starts to get a little bit
more interesting.
So his dad had done this wholething with the hot air balloons
and had like traveled into, Iwas going to say space, but I
guess it is actually not spacebecause he did not leave the
atmosphere, but into the sky,into the sky.
Aarati (11:38):
Still high enough.
Yeah, high.
Arpita (11:40):
He went high.
And he was trying to use thesame buoyancy technique from hot
air balloons to then go theother way.
So he was trying to develop adeep sea submersible, but he was
trying to use similar conceptsof buoyancy to do this.
So he's like, cool.
I've already checked off thesky.
Now we're going to gounderwater.
Aarati (12:00):
That seems so counterintuitive, though, to try
and use the same, like,techniques to go down, like, I
would, I would think with goingup, you want to get lighter and
lighter in order to go up, andthen if you want to go down, you
need to get heavier and heavier.
Arpita (12:16):
Yes, there actually is...
This was not part of my deepdive, so I only know a little
bit about this, but there isactually like buoyancy is a
little bit complicated.
So to a certain point of depth,depending on your mass, you will
sink.
So if you jump into a lake orsomething, you will sink, but
then you depending on how bigyour body of water is.
(12:39):
So, like, let's just say it'slike an ocean.
And for this case, you won'tactually just fall to the bottom
of the ocean.
Because of there's so muchpressure coming up from
underneath you, you thenactually need force to propel
yourself downwards.
Aarati (12:52):
Oh,
Arpita (12:53):
Scuba divers need their fins and all this stuff to swim
actively downwards because youwon't sink after a certain
point.
And then the same principlehappens when you are coming back
up.
One, you can't come back up tooquickly because of water
pressure and all that.
burst your eardrums, like badthings will happen to you.
But also, the water will, buoyyou upwards to a certain extent.
(13:16):
And then after that, you have toactively swim out.
So it's the opposite thathappens on the way out.
Aarati (13:21):
Oh, interesting.
I never knew that.
Arpita (13:23):
So the same thing is true for anything that's trying
to basically go underwater.
And it has to do with theproportion of mass to pressure.
Don't ask me what thatcalculation is, but
Aarati (13:33):
Okay.
No, I believe you.
Arpita (13:35):
Yeah.
You wouldn't just sink is thebottom line.
Aarati (13:38):
Yeah.
Oh, that's fascinating.
I, I never, like, consideringI've never been in anything
deeper than a swimming pool, youknow, like.
Arpita (13:45):
Yeah.
So the interesting thing is I'mnot actually sure how this so I
feel like something like LakeTahoe or something where it's
really deep.
It probably be similarprinciples to an ocean, but I
wonder if it is more like alandlocked lake or something if
that would actually still be thesame if it wasn't that deep if
you would actually just sink tothe bottom.
Aarati (14:06):
Well, I wonder if the salt content also, like, changes
things
Arpita (14:10):
100%
Aarati (14:11):
The The higher the salt content, like, the more you're
gonna be buoyed up, right?
So.
Arpita (14:16):
yeah.
Aarati (14:17):
How Interesting.
Arpita (14:18):
so Yeah, many factors that are not, you know being
discussed at this moment, but itis a little bit tricky to do
that.
Anyway, yeah, so he's trying touse similar buoyancy techniques
and he's basically trying tocome up with different ways to
make himself sink and then makehimself float again.
So he does have to not only getpast a certain depth, but then
(14:42):
he also has to be able to comeback up.
So needs two things.
He needs two mechanisms.
Aarati (14:47):
So there's no, like, submarines at this point that's
what it sounds like.
Like, not really.
Arpita (14:53):
No, there, there is, but it, they only go to a certain
depth and his goal is to go asdeep...Oh, he wants to go as
deep as possible.
He wants to go deeper.
So this is, this is post worldwar two, or like, this is like
getting to the end of world wartwo.
And there was definitelysubmarines in world war two.
Aarati (15:07):
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Arpita (15:08):
So this is, it's not a new technology altogether.
He is just trying to solve thisbuoyancy problem and get deeper.
Aarati (15:18):
Yeah.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Arpita (15:21):
So he develops this deep sea submersible called a
bathyscaphe, which is basicallyan underwater blimp, but imagine
if the blimp was rigid.
Like, that's what it looks like.
Aarati (15:31):
Okay.
Arpita (15:32):
Um, and so it's a vessel that can dive and maneuver
untethered from a ship.
This is, this is straight fromWikipedia.
This is in contrast to abathysphere, which is tethered.
I've never heard of either ofthese words, but apparently it's
a thing.
Aarati (15:48):
Me neither.
Arpita (15:49):
And so in the years following Jacques and his father
built three bathscapes between1948 and 1955, and they recorded
depths of 4, 600 feet and 10,000 feet respectively.
And this was a really, reallybig accomplishment up until this
point, the deepest submarinethat had.
The deepest the submarine hadgotten was only 3, 500 feet,
Aarati (16:13):
Oh, wow.
Arpita (16:13):
which is for The record, very deep, but they were able to
get up to 10, 000 feet and theywere so happy with their success
that Jacques left his teachingjob and then he goes to work
with his dad full time toimprove bathyscaphe for
exploration.
So he's like, I'm all in.
And so then in 1953, theydeveloped a new vehicle called
(16:36):
the Triest.
Triest?
Triest?
This is the name of theirbathscape.
They named this one.
It's called the Triest.
Trieste, T R I E S T E.
Aarati (16:46):
Okay.
Arpita (16:46):
They're also, they also probably speak French, so like,
I don't know, there's probablylike a French way to say this.
I do not speak French.
Trieste te, I don't know.
Um, and then this vehicle wasable to reach 10, 168 feet.
And they were testing this inthe Mediterranean Sea off the
coast of Italy.
And so Trieste consisted of, um,a heavy, Crew sphere, so it's
(17:12):
like this big sphere that thecrew can be in and it's
suspended from the hull of theblimp containing tanks that are
filled with gasoline forbuoyancy and ballast hoppers
filled with iron and floodablewater tanks in order to make
them sink.
So gasoline floats in water.
And the more important thing isthat it is not compressible,
(17:35):
which is really important as youdive deeper and the pressure
increases.
That's something else that Ilearned is that.
Depending on if there is airthat's trapped in the liquid, it
will compress and not actuallyhelp you to float back up.
So they needed something thatwas so buoyant that it floated
in water that would help propelthis ship upwards.
(17:56):
And then the sphere, the crewsphere, um, had enough space for
two crew members and they couldaccess it via vertical shaft
through the hull.
So basically imagine like a bigcircle and then around it, it's
like attached this big hull withbig tanks that either hold
gasoline or iron shot.
Aarati (18:17):
Okay.
Arpita (18:18):
Yeah, it's basically a big blimp is what it is.
Aarati (18:21):
That's really interesting, though, that
they're using gasoline.
Like, I hadn't thought aboutthat.
Like, when you said gasoline, Ithought immediately, like, oh,
they're gonna use that for fuelto, like, move around, but no,
it's actually for buoyancy.
Arpita (18:34):
Yeah, exactly.
No, exactly.
There is a, there is a motor,but the motor is not for them to
propel downwards.
They're using the iron shot toget themselves down.
So it's floating down basically.
Aarati (18:48):
So the motor is just to go kind of back and forth
horizontally, and you have thegasoline to go up and down, and
the iron shot.
Arpita (18:56):
The gasoline and iron.
Yes.
So that's why the hot airballoon thing kind of makes
sense is because they're tryingto use these ideas of, you know,
releasing gas in order to makeit float and then turning it off
to let it cool to let it comeback down.
So they're floating in thewater.
They're not propellingthemselves up and down.
I don't actually know why thatis now that I'm saying that
(19:17):
loud.
I'm actually not sure why theydidn't just create a really
strong motor, but maybe it waslike, did the motors...
Aarati (19:24):
I mean, I'm sure it would be like an energy thing
too, because like to have thatamount of fuel that would drive
you down, it's probably a lotless energy intensive to just
like have iron shot that willcarry you down just like that.
Naturally kind of throughgravity and through just being
more dense than water like it'svery passive.
Arpita (19:45):
That's it.
Aarati (19:45):
helpful.
Yeah, like with my work, withclimate change, people are, a
lot of people are trying to likeremove carbon, carbon dioxide or
methane or like these greenhousegases from the environment and
either store it or recycle it insome way, make it some useful
thing, but one of the bigproblems is the carbon dioxide
(20:10):
and methane in our air is sokind of dilute that in order for
you to capture enough carbondioxide or enough methane you
would have to kind of create afan that blows air through the
machine And so if you're, if youhave a fan, you need energy.
And if you need energy, wheredoes that energy come from?
(20:32):
If it's not coming from solar,if it's not coming from, you
know, a clean energy source, andyou're using gasoline or fossil
fuels to power the fan, like,are you actually doing anything?
And so that's like a big thingright now that everybody's
trying to always find the leastenergy intensive ways in order
(20:53):
to capture carbon and so, like,the lower energy or the more
efficient your machine can bethe better it is and the lower
the carbon footprint is.
So, like, a lot of my clientsare thinking about it from that
perspective.
And that's just why I'm alsothinking, like, maybe they're,
like, not from an environmentalpoint of view, because they
(21:14):
didn't care about this backthen.
It wasn't a big issue probablyback then.
But just in terms of like, youknow, we don't want to be
carrying around a ton of fuel,or maybe it's just not practical
to carry around a ton of fuel,maybe doing something a bit more
passive in terms of just havingiron ore to carry them down made
(21:34):
more sense.
I don't know.
But oh, I see.
I see what you're saying,though, about like the hot air
balloon traveling through airand then they're kind of
treating the water as if it'slike just another medium that we
have to get through withdifferent density properties.
And so we can use the same kindof ideas of physics.
It's just instead of movingthrough air, we're moving
(21:57):
through a different substance,which is water.
I get it.
Okay.
Arpita (22:01):
That's exactly right.
You said it perfectly.
That's exactly what they'retrying to do here.
So, yeah, they have this littleblob that they're floating
around and then there's room fortwo people inside and then also
the hull or basically the entirething is made out of really
thick steel walls, which wasdone intentionally to withstand
all of the pressure of the deepocean.
Aarati (22:21):
hmm.
Mm hmm.
Arpita (22:23):
Also, interestingly, I was googling this and couldn't
find an answer, but they didn'thave a method to pressurize the
cabin or where the crew weresitting.
So I think they were just, itwas just really thick steel and
they were, hoping for the bestthat the pressure would not
equalize is really what it waslike It basically a vacuum is
(22:45):
what they were they were in avacuum And so there wasn't
really a way to actuallynormalize the pressure when they
closed it at the surface I thinkthey were just hoping that it
was a seal
Aarati (22:54):
Oh, that's so scary.
Arpita (22:56):
I
Aarati (22:56):
scary.
Yeah.
Arpita (22:58):
Which is relevant later in the story
Aarati (23:01):
Yeah,
Arpita (23:02):
So Jacques and his father have built the Triest,
and they are really excitedabout it, and they wanted to
keep testing and exploring, butthey were running out of money.
However, at the same time, theU.
S.
military was exploring new waysof designing underwater vessels
for research, and they werelike, hey, you guys seem like
you know what you're doing.
We're, we'll fund you.
(23:23):
So, they were really interestedin both of them, they like
welcomed Jacques and his dad andthey, you know, had like a fair
basically to like see what theywere up to.
And they were like, okay.
This seems really cool.
We're really interested in yourresearch.
And they tested the Trieste forseveral months and then Jacques
and his dad sold their design tothe U.
(23:45):
S.
Navy in 1958.
So now the U.
S.
Navy owns the Trieste and theyhave this bathyscaphe and it
doesn't exist anywhere else inthe world because it's a novel
design and they were like wedon't have anyone to actually
pilot this now that we own thisand unsurprisingly, nobody
(24:07):
pilots a bathyscapes, so thenthey put out a call for
volunteers, uh, in all submarinecrews on the West Coast, United
States, two people answered thiscall.
One was Jacques.
Aarati (24:20):
okay I'll pilot the machine.
I just sold you.
Arpita (24:26):
Yeah, literally.
And the other
Aarati (24:28):
was his dad.
Arpita (24:30):
No, it wasn't his dad.
I think his dad at this pointwas like, kind of done.
I think he was too old and waskind of.
Like I think he was interested,but I think he also acknowledged
that he was perhaps aging out.
Aarati (24:41):
Like, yeah, time for me to retire.
Arpita (24:43):
Yeah
Aarati (24:45):
Yeah.
Arpita (24:45):
The other person was a Navy lieutenant and submariner
named Don Walsh.
Don was from California and hewas a very buttoned up Navy man,
and he had lots of experiencediving but Don said, quote,"It
was like the first two airplanesin the world.
Who are you going to get to flythem?" Like basically like who
(25:05):
is going to answer this call?
Like nobody wants to do this.
And also most Navy men didn'tapply because they didn't see
the point.
They didn't think the bathscapehad any potential for
advancement.
They were basically like, whatis this random thing that these
two random dudes built?
Like, I don't want to do that.
There's no potential there.
And Don said that he didn't careabout any of that.
He just thought it would be fun.
Aarati (25:27):
He just wants to go down in history, kind of.
Like, he just wants to be partof, part of the new thing.
Arpita (25:33):
I guess.
Yeah, he was just like, yeah,I'm down.
And so now that the U.
S.
Navy owns the Trieste, theytested for many months off the
coast of Guam, and they werefinally able to reach 24, 000
feet, and they at this pointdecided to take on an even
greater challenge to try toreach the deepest point of the
ocean.
(25:54):
So then they spent a couple moreyears making modifications and
doing test dives, and then theyfinally decided that the Trieste
was ready for its big dive tothe bottom of the Mariana
Trench.
So the Mariana Trench is anoceanic trench in western
Pacific Ocean.
It's kind of near Guam, which isbasically why they were testing
(26:14):
it there.
And it's the deepest trench onEarth.
It's crescent shaped, and itmeasures about 1, 580 miles long
and 43 miles wide.
And its deepest point, it's thesouthern end, and it's called
Challenger's Deep, and it's over36, 000 feet deep, which is over
(26:36):
1.
2 miles deeper than MountEverest is tall.
So if you put Mount Everestupside down into the ocean from
its surface, there would stillbe 1.
2 miles to go from its tip toget to the ocean floor.
Aarati (26:49):
Oh my god.
And you said the deepest theyhad gone until this point was
24, 000?
So like one third more or yeah.
12, 000 miles more.
Oh
Arpita (27:00):
exactly, feet, 12, 000 feet more.
Aarati (27:03):
Feet.
Sorry.
Okay.
Miles.
Did I say miles?
Miles would be crazy.
Arpita (27:07):
You said miles.
Aarati (27:08):
Okay, we'd be, yeah, we'd be through the earth and
into space on the other side.
Arpita (27:12):
yeah, yeah.
Aarati (27:13):
Okay.
Sorry.
Arpita (27:14):
And the first time that we actually found out about how
deep the Mariana Trench was, wasin 1875, and it was first
sounded, which is basicallywhere they send out sound waves
and they're measuring the radarback, um, that was in 1875,
which was Honestly, like, forthis time period, we're in the
fifties, is quite a long timeago.
(27:37):
Um, but in Jacques lifetime hadnever actually been explored.
So we never actually sentanything down there other than
sound waves.
Aarati (27:43):
Wow.
Makes sense though.
I mean, it's, it's one thing tojust measure something.
It's another thing to actually
Arpita (27:50):
it's like you, you, like, they like stuck their
finger in, they were like, yep,it's deep.
Like
Aarati (27:57):
It's one thing to see the moon.
It's quite another thing to gothere.
Arpita (28:01):
A hundred percent.
That's a, that's very goodanalogy.
Aarati (28:04):
Mm hmm.
Hi everyone, Aarati here.
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If so, and you wish someonewould tell your science story, I
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(28:26):
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Check us out at sykommer.
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That's S Y K O M M E R dot com.
(28:47):
Okay, back to the story.
Arpita (28:50):
So, on January 20th in 1960.
they were like, okay, we'reready for this adventure.
So they had a command ship, atugboat, and the bathyscaphe,
and they all set out from Guam.
And the first task that they hadto do was to find the deepest
part of the Challenger Deep fromthe surface.
Um, but because the depthsounder on the ship couldn't
(29:12):
measure such extreme depths, thecrew employed a very crude
method.
They lit fuses on blocks of TNT.
And I don't know why this keepscoming up in every episode and
also Don Walsh agrees with usand he joked that quote"boys
like to play with firecrackers"and they do.
Aarati (29:31):
Yeah, we've only done like, 25 or 26 episodes and it's
like, it feels like 10 of themhave explosives.
Arpita (29:38):
the time.
It does.
There's a lot of explosive.
So they.
Took the TNT, they lit it, andthen they heaved them over the
side to explode underwater.
And then they used thestopwatches to count the seconds
until the blast sound wavesbounced off of the distant sea
floor and echoed back into theship's hydrophone.
So 12 seconds for the soundwaves to come back is deeper
(30:00):
than 7 seconds.
And so they went back and forthacross the ocean surface for a
couple days, lighting andthrowing over and blowing up
TNT.
And then they finally identifieda target area that was about 1.
6 kilometers wide and 11kilometers long.
And this was their target to tryto reach the deepest point from
the surface,
Aarati (30:20):
Gotcha.
So I'm assuming that when theyactually try to go, they're just
going to go straight down istheir plan.
Like, there's not gonna be awhole lot of steering involved.
Gotcha.
Arpita (30:31):
So then early in the morning on January 23rd, Don and
Jacques climbed down the ladderinto the Trieste entrance tunnel
and they entered this reallytiny cramped cabin.
And so Jacques was 6'4 and hedesigned this cabin to basically
accommodate exactly him.
So the cabin was exactly 6'4inches in diameter, which is
(30:51):
pretty funny.
And Don apparently was muchshorter.
I don't actually know his exactheight, but he apparently could
move around the cabin veryeasily, but Jacques barely fit
because he was trying tomaximize space, so he made it so
he could exactly fit, basically.
Aarati (31:04):
That's so funny.
Arpita (31:06):
I know.
So they let go of a little bitof gasoline to quote"get heavy"
and then the iron ballast beganto pull the ship downward and
their mission started.
So at 1500 feet, they had tostop and put on warmer clothes
because the ocean's temperaturewas starting to seep in, and
around this point there's nomore sunlight, and so you can't,
(31:28):
like, it's completely dark, andthen it Mm started to get cold.
Aarati (31:31):
Oh my god that's so scary like I was like picturing
it from the outside before likeI was just picturing like an
ocean scene with this steelblimp thing sinking down but
like.
Arpita (31:42):
No, but they're in like a bubble.
They're in a six foot widebubble.
Aarati (31:47):
like, I wasn't imagining it from their perspective until
you just said that and it's justlike pitch black.
You can't see anything and it'scold.
Oh, my god that's so scary.
Arpita (31:57):
Also, six feet wide is not very wide.
I'm pretty sure my dining tableis probably six feet wide.
And then there's two people inthat space.
So not only is it a small spacefor one person, it's small space
for two people.
Aarati (32:09):
Yeah.
I don't really consider myselfclaustrophobic, but I think that
would do it.
Like,
Arpita (32:14):
Oh 100%.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Okay, so the thick steel doordid offer some insulation, but
once they got to around 2000feet, that just wasn't a thing
anymore.
And so at this point, the lightvanished and they fell further
and further into the dark, andthey were very deeply aware of
the pressure that was outsidetheir steel chamber.
(32:35):
And like I mentioned before,they were kind of just hoping
that they had made a vacuumseal.
Um, and then once they got toabout 9, 400 feet, they heard a
loud bang that shook through thecabin and then they both started
shaking.
And Don said, quote, we lookedat all of our indicators, our
instruments, and everything wasnormal.
(32:57):
End quote.
They didn't know what had causedthe noise and it didn't really
seem to be affecting the shipitself.
So they just decided to keepgoing.
And they were hoping that theymade the right decision.
I know.
Aarati (33:09):
Oh my god.
Balls of steel.
Like, I cannot.
I would be like, nope.
Nope.
Uh, nope.
Take me up.
Take me up.
Arpita (33:17):
At this point they haven't even reached their
record, which was 24, 000 feet.
So they're not even anywhereclose there.
But at this point, they are alsoreally aware that the pressure
outside the cabin is reallyhigh.
So they estimated that it wasabout 103 megapascals or about
15, 000 pounds per square inch.
(33:38):
And so what this basicallymeans, because there's not
really a comparator for us toreally conceptualize this is, if
there was any sort of breach ofthe vessel at this point, the
entire thing would have implodedso quickly, like it would have
just closed in upon itself,because there would have been so
much pressure.
And Don said, quote,"we'd havebeen dead before we even knew we
(34:01):
were dead."
Aarati (34:02):
That's what they're thinking happened to the Ocean
Gate Titan, right?
Like, that's, that was in thenews a few months ago.
Yeah.
Just like, immediately imploded.
Arpita (34:13):
Immediately implodes.
Yeah, there's nothing you cando.
I don't know.
I was trying to find like an,like a, what does 15, 000 pounds
per square inch mean?
And like, there's just like allthese like heavy machinery
things.
I'm like, none of this meansanything to me, but really the
most important thing is theywould have just imploded.
Aarati (34:30):
Yeah, just, Like, I can't, I can't imagine just
being with that stress.
Like, this could be my lastbreath for that constant
feeling.
Arpita (34:41):
So also just to like, keep in mind, they've done this
a bunch of times before, so theyhaven't.
Yeah, gone this deep, but evengetting to this point, they've
done this before, so it's notthe first time that it's
happening.
Period.
Aarati (34:55):
True.
That's true.
So I'm like not the type ofperson who would even take the
first journey down like 10 feet.
I'd be like, I'm 10 feet down.
That's enough.
Thank you.
They're going like thousands offeet and okay.
It's a different, it's adifferent breed.
It's a different type of personwho can do that.
It's not me.
Arpita (35:13):
To a certain extent, they are expecting a lot of
this.
Aarati (35:17):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (35:18):
You know, like they are, they've done this enough times
where they've desensitized tocertain things and they're like
expecting certain things tohappen.
Aarati (35:25):
Gotcha.
Arpita (35:25):
They just haven't beat their record, is all.
Aarati (35:28):
Okay.
Arpita (35:30):
So At this point, they found out that in the entrance
tunnel, which is separate fromtheir cabin, because they have a
tunnel that they crawl into,right, they crawl down into a
tunnel, and there's a hatch, andnow they're in their cabin.
They found out that theplexiglass window in the
entrance tunnel, which is notpart of the cabin, had cracked
(35:51):
under the pressure, but theywere safe in their little cabin
because they were protected bythe steel hatch.
So.
They're like, okay, I thinkwe're okay, but that window up
there has cracked.
Aarati (36:03):
okay
Arpita (36:04):
They looked out into the porthole so they did have a
window, and basically, a lot ofwhat they saw was just like silt
and sand, but once they got alittle bit deeper, they saw a
lot of bioluminescence, which isvery cool.
And Don said that, even as deepas we were, which is not a very
(36:26):
thickly populated part of theocean because there aren't very
many nutrients that far fromland bioluminescence is rampant,
which was super interesting.
Aarati (36:35):
That's super cool.
Arpita (36:36):
And then Jacques said, quote,"By far, the most
interesting find was the fishthat came floating by our
porthole, even at quite thatdepth" end quote.
And they were really surprisedto find marine life at all,
because at that point marinebiologists figured that there
couldn't be any life at thatdepth, partially because there
(36:57):
was no light and the other partbecause there was so much
pressure.
They were like, nothing couldpossibly survive in that kind of
environment.
Aarati (37:05):
Yeah.
Arpita (37:06):
While they were descending at 30, 000 feet,
another window cracked, and sothey are basically descending
for over four hours because thisis all happening so slowly.
They're floating down.
So it took them almost fourhours.
And the whole time they aresending out sound waves with
radar to try to understand wherethe ocean floor is because they
(37:28):
can't see anything.
It's completely dark.
And so they're like, have wereached the bottom?
Where is the bottom?
We have no idea.
And so they're kind of justlike, keep sending out signals
to figure out how far they areaway.
Aarati (37:39):
I feel like I I know i'm not in it, but I feel like i'm
in it, you know I'm, i'm likegripping my chair.
I'm like, please make it pleasemake it please make it
Arpita (37:50):
So finally they do get to the bottom, and they touch
down and they, neitherapparently neither of them, so.
Let me back up.
Jacques wrote a piece forNational Geographic in 1960,
basically explaining all ofthis.
That's where all these quotesare from because it's their
record of when they were talkingabout this.
And I guess neither guy was veryemotional or really was one for
(38:13):
speeches.
So they got to the bottom andthen they quote,"We looked at
each other, we shook hands andwe said, well, we did it." End
quote.
I was like,
Aarati (38:24):
Okay, but you know what to be fair like I can imagine my
brother doing exactly the samething.
So I get it.
Like I get it.
You make this huge achievementand everyone's like, oh my god
And he's just like yeah.
Arpita (38:37):
Yep.
Aarati (38:39):
Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
What do you think we did allthis for we did achieved it It
went exactly as planned.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Why are you all freaking out?
Arpita (38:48):
That's exactly what happened.
Aarati (38:49):
That's so funny.
Arpita (38:52):
So then they are looking out the porthole and they're
trying to see if they can seeanything, but because they've
now touched down onto the floor,all of the sand came up.
And so they basically couldn'tsee anything.
And Don said, quote,"It lookedlike looking into a bowl of
milk." So they really couldn'tsee anything because it was just
so much sand had come up throughthere.
(39:12):
Because they basically put,displaced everything and then
all the sand comes up.
Aarati (39:15):
Uh, gotcha.
Arpita (39:17):
Um, and so then they, because they were worried that
now these two portholes hadcracked, they were like, I think
we should get out of here.
So they only stayed at the oceanfloor for 20 minutes.
Aarati (39:27):
That's still quite a, quite a while though.
Arpita (39:30):
Well, they, Well,
Aarati (39:31):
enough.
Arpita (39:32):
hours to get there.
Aarati (39:33):
I know, but for me, I'd be like, okay, let's go back up
now.
Like constantly, I'm likeconstantly like, okay, let's
leave.
Let's leave.
Let's leave.
20 minutes is good enough.
Let's go.
Arpita (39:45):
So then they dropped their ballast of iron pellets,
which was keeping them heavy,and they started their long
ascent.
So even though their ship wasdamaged, it only took them about
three hours to come back up, andnothing dramatic happened on
their way back up, which isgreat.
Wait
Aarati (40:01):
so did they ever figure out what made the banging happen
on their way down?
Arpita (40:07):
It was the port hole.
It was the porthole cracking.
Aarati (40:08):
It was the porthole cracking from the pressure.
It wasn't like, because I wasthinking it might have been like
an animal or something that hitthem, but no?
Arpita (40:14):
No, it's porthole cracking.
Yeah, like the glass breakingand steel and Yeah, cuz then
again hitting against the steel.
So it's like depressurizing andhitting against the steel
Aarati (40:27):
Okay.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Arpita (40:29):
And when the Treist finally bobbed up to the
surface, Don and Jacques climbedup the long ladder to go top
side and they perched on top oftheir vessel.
And while they waited for theirsupport ships, they reflected on
how successful their missionwould open up the way for like
exploration of the MarianaTrench.
And they were trying to figureout when the next people would
(40:51):
be there.
And they decided that it wouldbe somewhere between two or
three years before the nextpeople were down there to do
more deep sea exploration.
Jacques said,"On reaching theTrieste's deck, I had the
impression of emerging in themiddle of an air meet.
Several Navy jets and a plane ofthe Guam Air Rescue Unit were
sailing down above us with aninfernal racket, dipping their
(41:15):
wings to greet us.
A few miles away, the Lewis andbehind her the Wendek were
approaching rapidly." That wasthe names of the two support
vessels that were carrying themaround.
Um, and so he felt like he was,you know, like a soldier
returning from war and he feltvery excited by all of this.
And really something interestingabout this was the fact that
(41:36):
they saw any fish at all, like Imentioned, was scientifically
very interesting because, like Imentioned, they didn't believe
that life could survive at suchhigh pressures.
But because this wasn't aresearch vessel, they didn't
collect any samples.
They didn't record anything.
So there was nothing to analyzeafter the fact, but it did show
(41:56):
the scientific community thatdeep sea exploration, especially
of the ocean floor was A)possible and B) actually
worthwhile because there waslife down there.
So from a scientific perspectivethose were the two big takeaways
aside from the fact that theydid something and achieved
something that no one else haddone before.
Aarati (42:16):
Yeah, I mean, even today, that's one of the things
that we still haven't fullyexplored, right?
Like, we don't know about allthe life forms that live down in
our ocean trenches and cansurvive down there.
So that's huge.
I feel like I'm glad thescientific community actually
believed them because for asecond there, I was afraid that
(42:37):
you were going to say, like,they were like, no, that's
impossible.
We don't believe you.
There's only two guys.
You must've been hallucinatingunder the pressure or something,
Arpita (42:45):
I mean, I guess there that is a version of it
happening, but it
Aarati (42:48):
I'm glad that didn't happen.
Arpita (42:49):
...go well.
Which I mean, kind of seguesinto the next thing, which this
was a really historic dive andit got worldwide attention and
Jacques wrote an account of itcalled Seven Miles Down, which
was the excerpt that waspublished in National
Geographic.
That was what I was basicallyreading from.
Um, and they wanted to plan areturn mission, but it never
(43:12):
really happened.
The Trieste was really expensiveto maintain and operate.
And it also.
Because of the way it wasstructured, because the cabin
was so small, there was no wayfor them to collect any samples,
and they also couldn't reallytake any photographs because
there was no light down there,so there was really no good way
for them to collect anyscientific data with this
(43:36):
specific vessel, so a returntrip on the Trieste didn't
really happen.
But, like I mentioned, it reallywas a major step forward in
environmental protection.
It really highlighted, like Isaid, the evidence of life where
no one had expected to find any,but it also induced governments
to abandon the idea of dumpingtoxic waste in ocean trenches,
(43:58):
because now they realized thatthere was ocean life down there,
um, and required environmentalprotection, where previously
people were like, there'snothing there, we're just gonna
Aarati (44:08):
Just dump your waste there
Arpita (44:09):
waste in
Aarati (44:10):
there.
Yeah.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah
Arpita (44:13):
So by the end of the 60s, the US Navy had abandoned
manned exploration of theMariana Trench It was too risky
and it was also like I mentionedso expensive to maintain a
vessel that could dive thatdeep.
Um, and so they, the Navydecided to limit craft depths
(44:33):
above 6000 meters.
And so the next generation ofany research done on the ocean
floor was done with robots.
And so once they could buildcrafts that could go deeper,
they were mostly unmanned justfor safety reasons is what the
Navy said.
Aarati (44:50):
Okay, that's more my speed.
I could stay on the surface andlike, guide a robot around.
That I can do.
Arpita (44:57):
But for true believers like Don Walsh, he said, quote,
"The ability of a man to observeand modify his program on site
is pretty important.
You can't surprise aninstrument." So they maintain
that the best way to do it wouldbe for a manned exploration.
But the Navy was arguing we canexplore 98 percent of the ocean,
(45:18):
everything but these mysterioustrenches.
And they're like, no, but that'swhere the cool shit is.
So
Aarati (45:23):
Yeah.
It's like,
Arpita (45:25):
Bit of disconnect for sure.
Aarati (45:26):
That makes sense.
Yeah, it's like, we can look ateverything except the most
interesting part of the trench.
Arpita (45:31):
They're like, I want to go over there and they're like,
you can't go over there.
And they're
Aarati (45:34):
Yeah,
Arpita (45:34):
like that's where I want to go.
Aarati (45:36):
I do.
I do agree that there'ssomething to be said for the
human experience if you're braveenough to actually do that.
You know, like I don't think Iwould ever.
I would just be like I'm goodwith my robots But hey, if you
want to go down there and youwant to go see it firsthand.
I'm not gonna stop you
Arpita (45:54):
Exactly.
So after the success of theirChallenger Deep mission, Jacques
and his father designed a newsubmersible called a Mesoscaphe.
And this vehicle was built andwas called the Auguste Piccard
after the dad.
And it was the world's firstpassenger submarine and they
used it to transport more than33, 000 tourists beneath Lake
(46:17):
Geneva during the Swissexhibition of 1964.
So they were really trying toget more people involved with
this.
And so Jacques had highconviction that ecological
problems had to be urgentlyaddressed and he denounced all
forms of pollution, especiallydumping in lakes and seas and
oceans.
(46:38):
So he created the Foundation forthe Study and Protection of the
Seas and Lakes.
And he was really a pioneerfighting against pollution, and
he contributed through press andarticles that he wrote the
awakening of ecologicalawareness, and he was a solid 30
years ahead of when globalwarming even became a word that
(46:58):
we talk about.
Aarati (46:59):
I love that.
He's like already just thinkingabout ocean life.
And yeah, just amazing.
I guess like seeing it firsthandwould do that to you though,
like you see the wonder ofsomething and you want to
protect it and make sure thatfuture generations also have the
ability to have that same senseof wonder.
So I love that.
Arpita (47:19):
So he is still at it, he builds, um, an even newer
submarine and he calls this onethe Ben Franklin and it was
specifically used for scientificresearch.
And it was one of the firstvessels to chart the Gulf
Stream.
On July 14th, 1969, the BenFranklin was towed to the center
of the Gulf Stream off the coastof Vietnam.
(47:40):
Palm Beach, Florida.
And once it was on site with itssix man international crew
descended to 1, 000 feet off ofthe Riviera Beach, Florida and
drifted 1, 444 miles north.
And then they came up nearMaine.
Um, so they basically, yeah,traverse the entire
Aarati (47:59):
They just went all the way, all the way up.
Arpita (48:01):
Yep.
All the way up.
So this crew consisted ofJacques as the mission leader.
They had another Swiss man namedErwin Aebersold and he was the
pilot and the remaining crewmembers included a Navy
submariner, an acousticspecialist from the Royal Navy,
and a NASA astronaut.
And they spent more than fourweeks in this vessel studying
(48:24):
the currents for the U.
S.
Navy, and this mission providedvaluable data about long
duration travel in confinedspaces for the U.
S.
space program, and it also gavethem a lot of understanding
about currents and weather inthe Gulf Stream.
And so this data, actually endedup being really, really valuable
for all of the Apollo missionsinto space because they
(48:46):
understood, because like a lotof times astronauts will do test
dives in the ocean because a lotof the similar constraints of
pressure, darkness, small spacesare there so then you can
practice in the ocean.
And so this gave them a lot ofdata to help understand once
they sent out their Apollomissions, which is really cool.
Aarati (49:05):
Did you say how long it took them to go traverse the
entire Gulf Stream?
Arpita (49:10):
Four weeks.
Aarati (49:11):
Four weeks.
Wow.
That is, that is quite a longtime to be underwater.
Arpita (49:15):
Yeah.
In a tiny little space with sixdudes.
Aarati (49:18):
Yeah.
You better really like yourcompanions.
I bet they test for that too,though, like
Arpita (49:24):
Yeah, yeah.
Aarati (49:25):
and everything.
You got to test for.
Yeah, character and, you know,personality and everything.
Arpita (49:31):
I agree.
Probably the opposite of whatthey do on reality shows, you
know?
Like, looking and seeing mostcompatible instead of, like,
least compatible on
Aarati (49:37):
Oh my god.
I just had a, like, vision of,like, year 3025, when we have,
like, reality shows in space.
And it's like, we put the most,two most unlikely astronauts
together.
Let's watch the drama unfold.
Arpita (49:52):
So in 1971, Jacques spent the next few years as a
science consultant for theAmerican for American deep sea
research organizations,including Grumman Aircraft, and
his work with the ocean showedhim the dangers posed by human
activity.
And so in the late 1970s, hefounded the foundation.
(50:12):
Like I mentioned, and then in aninterview, he said that the sea
could only be saved by dramaticchanges in relation to fishing
and pollution.
And he was very, very steadfastthat we should protect all
bodies of water, especially withpollution.
Aarati (50:27):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (50:28):
Um, and this was something that he remained very
interested in throughout therest of his life.
In 1990, Jacques designed a 16seat tourist submarine for
series production.
So he was trying to replicatewhat he did previously in Lake
Geneva, and then have this besomething that gets more mass
produced.
And his goal was to taketourists and educate them about
(50:49):
the needs to protect the oceans.
So the 16 seater submersible hadbig, large portholes, and then
they did test dives in LakeZurich.
And in addition to theseadvancements, he was really
hoping that He could get fundingto start a company to do this
basically at a larger scale toshow people what the oceans had
and so that they could be moreinvested in saving them.
Aarati (51:12):
Oh, cool.
Whole ocean tourism.
Arpita (51:14):
Yeah ocean tourism, basically exactly it.
And he unfortunately neverraised enough money to do this,
but that was his vision.
Aarati (51:21):
Mm hmm.
Arpita (51:22):
And Jacques did have a son.
I was trying to figure out somedetails about his personal life
and his son kind of justappears.
And this is also the end of thestory.
This is, I know there's someparts of the story that are very
detailed than other parts that Ireally couldn't find as much on.
But his son is continuing hisfamily tradition.
So his son actually commandedthe first nonstop hot air
(51:45):
balloon flight.
around the world in March 1999,and then the first solar powered
plane flight around the world inthe December of 2009.
I
Aarati (51:55):
Oh, wow.
That's pretty amazing.
Oh my gosh, this whole familyof, like, explorers.
Yeah, these Piccards.
I was gonna ask does the lastname Piccard have anything to do
with Star Trek?
Did they get, like, any of theinspiration from there?
Arpita (52:11):
I don't know, but maybe, I
Aarati (52:13):
interesting.
Yeah, because it just seems likeexploration and, like, these
scientists.
It seems like a very nerdyoverlap.
Arpita (52:22):
Clear connection.
I think you must be right.
Aarati (52:25):
Yeah, it does say that Star Trek creator Gene
Roddenberry named Piccard forone or both of the twin
brothers, August Piccard andJean Piccard, 20th century Swiss
scientists.
Arpita (52:38):
Oh.
Yeah, I guess that's rightbecause that would be the dad.
Aarati (52:41):
Yeah,
Arpita (52:41):
twin brother.
Aarati (52:43):
yeah, I didn't realize that.
Okay, great.
Arpita (52:45):
Um, in November 2008, Jacques passed away in his sleep
in his Lake Geneva home inSwitzerland, and he was 86 years
old.
Aarati (52:58):
Wow.
Arpita (52:59):
And yeah, that's the, that's the story.
I found a really interestingarticle that was like three
generations of Piccards, becauseall three of them were such
amazing explorers.
Aarati (53:10):
Oh my gosh, amazing story.
I'm so glad that you followed upon our promise from last episode
to do, to do ocean trenches.
that's
Arpita (53:19):
Yeah,
Aarati (53:19):
amazing.
Great story.
I was on the edge of my seat theentire time, pretty much.
Like,
Arpita (53:26):
I'm so glad
Aarati (53:27):
yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm so glad they came back safe.
And they're, you know,everything's okay.
Yeah,
Arpita (53:35):
understand the stress though.
Aarati (53:36):
Yeah.
I was stressed just listening toit.
And so I'm like, Oh, phew,relief.
I'm very glad that they're,they're back safe.
Everything worked out and it wasa happy ending.
So wonderful.
a I love...
Arpita (53:47):
Ending.
Aarati (53:47):
I love a happy ending.
Thanks for listening.
If you have a suggestion for astory we should cover or
thoughts you want to share aboutan episode, reach out to us at
smartteapodcast.
com.
You can follow us on Instagram,TikTok, and BlueSky at Smart Tea
Podcast, and listen to us onSpotify, Apple Podcasts,
YouTube, or wherever you getyour podcasts.
(54:09):
And thanks for leaving a ratingor comment, it really helps us
grow New episodes are releasedevery other Wednesday.
See you next time!
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