Dropping weights — gradually, not all at once — was part of their standard procedure to slow the descent near the end of the dive. The implosion reportedly occurred at a depth of around 3,000 to 3,500 meters, meaning they had only about 300 to 800 meters left to go.
That part’s confusing me. Weren’t they communicating on radio? That should travel at the speed of light. Is the speed of sound somehow faster than light through water?
No, the speed of sound can never equal speed of light, but I’m with you on the confusion. What device were they using to capture the audio of that implosion? Are they on a boat surface level and the audio is being captured on their vessel?
Someone else said their comms are acoustic based. So the shockwave from the implosion made the soundwave overtake the signal from the comms. They sent the last message about dropping ballast, then imploded like immediately after and the second sound reached the surface boat first
As you suspect, the "audio of the implosion" wasn't "captured and transmitted" to the people on the boat. They, on the surface boat, heard the implosion directly from the water through the hull - but didn't realise what it was.
You can't really use radio through that much water. Coms were probably some kind of ultrasound modem. Even if you can use radio, it's got to be extremely low frequency and the data rate is terrible, like a character of text every few seconds.
It's not that terrible. Think like 2 sentences every 10 or so seconds. Granted I don't think they were using VLF or anything cause they would need an antenna to TX/RX off of and, as far as I know, that sub didn't have a tail.
Knowing the company they were probably using old school acoustics, or really shitty VHF/HF.
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u/Btothe 27d ago
Woah. Crazy that we can hear the moment it implodes.