By Sylvia Hui
LONDON (AP) --Deep-sea researchers have completed the first full-size digital scan of the Titanic, showing the entire wreck in unprecedented detail and clarity, the companies behind a new documentary on the wreck said Thursday.
Using two remotely operated submersibles, a team of researchers spent six weeks last summer in the North Atlantic mapping the whole shipwreck and the surrounding 3-mile debris field, where personal belongings of the ocean liner's passengers, such as shoes and watches, were scattered.
Richard Parkinson, founder and chief executive of deep-sea exploration firm Magellan, estimated that the resulting data — including 715,000 images — is 10 times larger than any underwater 3D model ever attempted before.
"It's an absolutely one-to-one digital copy, a 'twin,' of the Titanic in every detail," said Anthony Geffen, head of documentary maker Atlantic Productions.
The Titanic was on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City when it hit an iceberg off Newfoundland in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. The luxury ocean liner sank within hours, killing about 1,500 people.
The wreck, discovered in 1985, lies some 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) under the sea, about 435 miles (700 kilometers) off the coast of Canada.
Geffen says previous images of the Titanic were often limited by low light levels, and only allowed viewers to see one area of the wreck at a time. He said the new photorealistic 3D model captures both the bow and stern section, which had separated upon sinking, in clear detail — including the serial number on the propeller.
Researchers have spent seven months rendering the large amount of data they gathered, and a documentary on the project is expected to come out next year. But beyond that, Geffen says he hopes the new technology will help researchers work out details of how the Titanic met its fate and allow people to interact with history in a fresh way.
"All our assumptions about how it sank, and a lot of the details of the Titanic, comes from speculation, because there is no model that you can reconstruct, or work exact distances," he said. "I'm excited because this quality of the scan will allow people in the future to walk through the Titanic themselves … and see where the bridge was and everything else."
Parks Stephenson, a leading Titanic expert who was involved in the project, called the modelling a "gamechanger."
"I'm seeing details that none of us have ever seen before and this allows me to build upon everything that we have learned to date and see the wreck in a new light," he said. "We've got actual data that engineers can take to examine the true mechanics behind the breakup and the sinking and thereby get even closer to the true story of Titanic disaster."
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More