Introducing 'Weekly Debates' - Exploring the Mariana Trench

As a part of ongoing expansion of this channel I would like to introduce a weekly discussion, whose intent is to ‘converse’ a particular topic. The topics themselves may be many and varied, but the intention is to lean towards the scintillating where possible, and at very least the downright interesting, we may occasionally dabbleinthedaft, or speak in hushedwhispers about aliens and reptiles.

Where ever the journey takes us we shall endeavour to bring you a weekly break-down roughly fitting the ideology framed above, the context would usually be set by this channel, and the ‘main responders’ will respond to the context provided in a discussion held over 4 days.
Each response is of course open for further discussion and voting by the community, and may even sway the opinions of the responders, regardless, the responders will do their best to stay true to their ‘determined stance’.

Please be advised that there is some planning that goes into the topics, and that specific points used in responses may attempt to encapsulate a range of views, there may too of course be ‘comic jabs/satire’ from time to time. Though we may occasionally offend, our intention is primarily intellectual, with a sprinkle of humour, and quite likely our fair share of inaccuracies on stances, experiences, and perceptions.

Our intention is never to cause hurt or harm.

We start off this week with a rather mild topic, in general the intention would be to initially release the topic on a Sunday evening. though I'm sure there may be some ‘fashoinably late’ posts on occasion.

Without further ado today’s context:

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The Mariana Trench, that frontier, so much closer than the final frontier, and yet to some extent less explored; well, it used to be.

In case you missed it ‘we’ have now been mostly to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean.

There has been a fair amount of exploration of the Trench, which lies some 200 miles off the coast of Guam. The specific area in question is called Challenger Deep, which is a rift some 11km deep.

One of the most recent (and deepest) visits has been a series of Challenger subs funded by National Geographic and Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron.

Some regard James Cameron as highly privileged or utterly mad to have wanted to do this, and yes he went alone in a tiny sub into this place which has been out of humanities reach for the 10 000 years of our ’somewhat modern’ evolution.

Naturally the sub was armed to the teeth with lights and cameras, and fortunately there was indeed some action to capture. The footage was shot in full 3D which is really awesome, however that footage is currently very much under lock and key due to National Geographic naturally wanting to keep that footage to themselves while they cut a feature length documentary. (no doubt with some ‘directorship’ in tow thanks to Mr. Cameron)

So we know some stuff, but not all of it currently, however, it would appear firstly that Cameron did not come eye to eye with Kthulu’s beast, as he reportedly returned ‘mostly sane’, so no mega giga monster down there then.

All in all exploration took place over around 3 hours with a touch down depth of 10 808 m, I do think that during that time something interesting must have been seen, so I’m sure with that kind of speculation that the documentary will do just fine on release.

There are some quite interesting findings that we do know of already though. For instance soil samples were unexpectedly rich with life, primarily ‘soft shelled’ single celled bacteria.

Oh and a now named 'snailfish', he's quite a cute guy once you get to know him. Perfectly adapted for the deeps, he presumably feeds on invertebrates 'raining down' the rolling sides of the trench. He is recorded to have been seen at a depth of over 8000m.

Cameron described the experience akin to ‘walking on another world’ and in a way it really is, not least due to sheer inaccessibility and utter alien conditions.

As exciting as the prospect of viewing the footage is, I’d like to nudge the line of questioning down a particular line.

Please discuss what are the implications if any from these findings. Of particular interest to me is whether this in anyway expands our understandings of ‘life itself'?

First Up will be Nomad: @your-nomad-soul , there after @DigitalPnut shall reply.
On the weekend a short podcast will be released featuring a discussion on this topic.

All steemians may feel generally free to rustle their SBD in our general direction, without having to actually give any of it away! We hope you shall support us, and more importantly, enjoy the journey and the content.