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This is a photo with the highest IQ in the world, which was taken at 1927 during the 5th Solvi conference. The people in the photo are the most powerful scientists at that time, including Einstein, Schrodinger, Lorenz, Madame Curie, Planck, Bohr ... Everyone in it can be called a person who can change the world.

Standing on the left in the back row of this photo is a tall man. His name is August Pikard, a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer. He is a magical figure who can "go to heaven and go to earth".

He once climbed to the altitude of 16 165 meters by hot air balloon, obtained a lot of upper gas information and completed the measurement of cosmic rays; He also drove the submersible Trieste to the Mariana Trench 1 1000 meters in the Pacific Ocean, which opened the most magnificent scene of human conquest of the ocean.

Trench is located in the ocean, and the ocean is the deepest place on the seabed. Generally, the depth is above 5000m, and the deepest point can reach10000m.

The main trenches on the earth are distributed around the Pacific Ocean. Among all trenches, Mariana Trench is the most famous.

According to relevant data, the Mariana Trench is located in the northeast of the Philippines and east of the Mariana Islands. This is the deepest trench known at present. Most of the water depth is above 8000m, and the deepest point is165,438+0034m. It is the deepest known place on the earth and is called "the place closest to the center of the earth". If Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, is placed at the bottom of the ditch, it is impossible for the peak to emerge from the water.

August piccard 1884+0 was born in Bern, Switzerland in June, and he was very interested in physics since he was a child. When he grew up, he studied at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He is Einstein's younger brother and one of Einstein's best friends.

In the 1920s, piccard learned that Einstein, his learning leader, was worried about how to collect cosmic ray data, so he came up with the idea of helping this senior.

At that time, in order to collect cosmic ray data, most astrophysicists took off in balloons with unsealed hanging baskets.

Piccard believes that if a sealed pod made of aluminum can be built, no matter how high the balloon flies, scientists can measure the atmosphere outside the capsule more intuitively, so that collecting cosmic ray data will become more accurate.

1930, sponsored by the Belgian national research foundation, piccard designed and made a spherical aluminum hanging basket (a hot air balloon with multiple hanging baskets), which took off from augsburg on May 27th 193 1 and finally rose to 1578 1 m.

During this flight, piccard collected a lot of data about the upper atmosphere and cosmic rays, which was very helpful for Einstein to study the universe.

After that, he made another 27 hot air balloon flights, breaking this record again and again, and finally raising the record to 23,000 meters. This record also marks that human research on the stratosphere has reached a new height.

Perhaps this is the explorer's natural desire to conquer. Since 1930s, piccard began to turn its eyes from the sky to the ocean. He thought: since the capsule can isolate the surrounding environment, can it also be used as equipment for deep-sea exploration?

Before piccard, many explorers had dived into the Mariana Trench for deep-sea exploration. This kind of exploration is not entirely to satisfy people's curiosity, because exploring the deep sea will help people better understand the earth and its creatures and help them discover new ecosystems and new life forms.

In order to complete the deep-sea exploration, piccard invented a steel deep-sea submarine that can withstand great external pressure, and named it "bathyscaphe" in ancient Greek, that is, "submersible". This has also become the collective name of all deep-sea detectors today.

Although the process of building submersible in piccard was delayed for many years because of the outbreak of World War II, for an explorer with persistent pursuit, war can't stop his dream.

1948, piccard finally completed his bubble submersible. This submersible can maintain normal cabin pressure even when the external water pressure exceeds 46 MPa.

Above it is a huge floating box, which can hold 10000 gallons of gasoline. These gasolines not only serve as fuel, but also maintain a constant buoyancy. The submersible is also tied with a detachable iron block weighing several tons to facilitate its diving and floating.

Piccard named the submersible "ferns -2" and used it to successfully dive to 4176m, setting a world record for the diving depth at that time.

From 65438 to 0957, piccard built its second deep-sea submarine "Trieste" on the basis of "Fern -2".

1960 65438+1On October 23rd, the submersible Trieste set off from Guam in the Pacific Ocean and dived to about11000m in the Mariana Trench, which opened the most magnificent scene of human conquest of the ocean.

Although piccard had great confidence in Trieste, he was 76 years old at that time. Physically, he couldn't dive to such a depth by himself, so he gave this glorious task to his son piccard Jr. and another explorer, Captain Walsh of the US Navy.

19601October 23rd, maybe God wants to test the submersible, so the weather is not ideal.

Although it is cloudy, the sunshine is not strong, and the waves on the ocean are 4 or 5 meters high. But piccard Jr. and Walsh, 38, have no fear. With their father's dream and belief in winning, they began to dive slowly from 7 am.

The sun's light, which is not strong, decays rapidly in seawater, and soon the submersible Trieste is completely shrouded in darkness.

Through the porthole, the two warriors saw colorful and wonderful lights flashing from time to time on the sea without sunshine. Little piccard knew that these were glowing microorganisms in the ocean.

He said humorously to Walsh, "Look, man, these sea spirits are here to show us the way!" " "

Trieste diving went well at first. But when diving to 9000 meters, the accident happened.

In the silent deep sea, piccard Jr. heard the glass outside the porthole of the submersible Trieste "click"-in the deep sea with the pressure of 9 1 MPa, the glass of the submersible finally failed to resist the high pressure and cracked!

Little Picard certainly knows what will happen if the glass of the submersible breaks. In front of nature, human beings are so small. As long as the glass is broken, the two will inevitably be pressed into patties by the extremely high pressure of seawater.

Walsh also heard the sound of the glass, a little flustered.

Piccard Jr. has great confidence in the submersible built by his father-because as early as 1948, after his father piccard discovered the porthole while driving Fens -2, piccard improved the porthole material and conducted several pressure tests. Finally, hard glass, melting time and other substances were excluded, and new materials such as propylene glass were selected.

After constant experiments, piccard Jr. had absolute confidence in the glass of the submersible.

The "click" of the porthole glass didn't scare piccard Jr. and Walsh. After diving for more than six hours, they finally came to the challenger abyss of Mariana Trench.

At this time, the instrument display depth of the submersible has reached10916m. What is this concept? In layman's terms, it is to bear the weight of 1000 kg or more in the area of human thumb nail size!

In this underwater world without the sun, two explorers made a 20-minute scientific investigation. They saw the yellow-brown soil on the seabed, and there were flounder-like fish swimming under the searchlight.

They also saw some small creatures moving, including a red shrimp about 2.5 cm long, swimming freely around the porthole.

This expedition confirmed the fact that even in the deepest part of the world's oceans, it is by no means a silent world, and there is still life.

Of course, the marine life here has its uniqueness in body color, visual organs, limbs, bones, feeding organs, luminous bodies, reproduction methods and so on.

While piccard was immersed in the beautiful underwater world, he suddenly heard a strange voice. According to Picard, the sound was like someone knocking at the hatch, like a polite gentleman coming to visit. This "tapping" sound is very rhythmic.

Walsh also heard the sound, and after careful search, the two did not find the source of the sound.

The two men looked at each other, and a sense of fear surged up inexplicably-after all, since the birth of the earth, no one has ever been here, and who knows how many secrets there are and what kind of strange creatures there are!

After staying at the bottom of the sea for 20 minutes, piccard Jr. and Walsh surfaced at 16: 56 with the joy of victory.

After returning to Guam, the US Navy sent a special plane to take back two heroes of deep-sea exploration to the United States.

To celebrate this great achievement, Washington officially announced to the world that President Eisenhower personally decorated two deep-sea explorers.

On February 9, the President of the United States also sent a personal congratulatory letter to Picard, expressing the gratitude of all American citizens to Picard Jr., Walsh and Picard Sr. ..

Piccard, who has been engaged in deep-sea exploration all his life, is 76 years old. Although he didn't take part in the expedition himself, he still had mixed feelings after hearing that his son had successfully explored the Mariana Trench, and his eyes were full of happy tears.

He has been attached to deep-sea exploration all his life. His son's deep-sea exploration changed people's understanding of the ocean, especially the deep sea, and further sublimated this understanding. This is the real reason for piccard's tears.

This deep dive by George W. piccard and Walsh created the highest record of manned diving in the deep sea in the world, and made more and more people know and love deep-sea diving exploration.

After them, scientists are not satisfied with the exploration method of deep-sea observation, but strive to improve the maneuverability of submersible and make it more flexible and convenient; Installing necessary instruments and equipment to improve the abilities of "vision", "hearing", "touch" and "smell" has opened a new chapter in deep-sea exploration.

Nowadays, the shape and performance of deep-sea submersible are not comparable to that of Trieste 1960.

At present, the most advanced submersible is the American nuclear-powered submersible "NR- 1", which weighs 400 tons and has a self-sustaining underwater capacity of 45 days. It has a gate-sealed entrance for divers to go in and out underwater, and can dock with submarines or other underwater structures, and transport and transfer inspectors and materials under normal pressure.

After this expedition, George W. Pilca later built four deep-water probes, including the world's first tourist submarine 1964, which carried tourists into Lake Geneva.

In 2009, George W. Picard died at the age of 86. The US government published a mourning article, saying that he was "one of the greatest explorers in the 20th century, diving deeper than anyone else, and the real' Captain Nemo' in jules verne's novel Two Wan Li under the Sea."

Half a century after George W. Pilca's expedition, no one dived to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

It was not until March 20 12 that James Cameron, the famous director who directed Titanic and Avatar, personally drove the Deep Sea Challenger to the "ultra-abyss zone" at the bottom of Mariana Trench, breaking the record of the deepest dive created by George W. Pilca.

The submarine Challenger is 7.3 meters high and weighs 12 tons. The pressure-bearing metal plate is 6.4 cm thick and the cockpit can accommodate one person.

In order to film his diving process, he installed lighting equipment and a high-definition 3D camera on the submarine, and made a 3D documentary called Deep Sea Challenge.

He believes that the greatest scientific achievement of this expedition is the discovery of a huge and possibly newly discovered amphipoda species at 27,000 feet in the New Britain Trench. "It's almost a foot long.

You must remember that the energy there is very limited and depends entirely on the nutrient flow for several miles above. So I was very surprised to see such a huge and lively animal. This may bring some enlightenment to solve the mystery of how early life on earth appeared. "

For Cameron's "crazy move", he also told those skeptics in the interview: "I don't know what benefits (this expedition) will bring.

People need to know this. A large part of the world is where we live and live, but we know nothing about it.

When the tsunami triggered by the earthquake swept Indonesia and killed 250,000 people in a few minutes, I think we need to know what happened in the deep ditch, and we need to know more. "

Although most of Pilca's exploration in 1960 was to satisfy curiosity, today, more and more scientists realize that the deep sea is a natural laboratory with excellent performance.

Professor bartlett from the Institute of Oceanography of the University of California said: "Exploring the Mariana Trench will help us better understand the earth and its creatures, help us discover new ecosystems and understand new life forms."

Today, more and more scientists show great interest in deep-sea research. For example, seismologists are going to set up an outcrop observation network on the deep seabed to reduce the damage of deep-sea earthquakes and tsunamis to coastal areas;

Even astrophysicists have to set foot in the ocean and imagine setting up a neutrino detector array in the deep sea, so that they can find neutrinos with the help of the deep sea with less interference.

But today, with the development of science and technology, it is no easier to go to the Mariana Trench than to the moon. In terms of the number of people, the number of people who reached the Challenger Abyss of Mariana Trench was not as high as that of astronauts who landed on the moon.

At 8: 00 on June/KOOC-0/65438+/KOOC-0/October/KOOC-0/2, 2020, China's manned submersible Endeavour successfully dived in the Mariana Trench, with a depth of/KOOC-0/0909 m, which set a new record for manned diving in China and brought back rocks, seawater and creatures at the bottom of the trench.

Endeavour is a 10,000-meter manned submersible developed by China. Founded on 20 16, it was undertaken by a research team focusing on the research and development of Jiaolong and Deep Sea Warrior manned submersible.

It combines the excellent pedigree of deep diving equipment, adopts a safe, stable and powerful energy system, and also has more advanced control system and positioning system, as well as more pressure-resistant manned ball cabin and buoyancy materials.

In the words of Hu Zheng, deputy chief designer of Struggler, "We are challenging the deepest part of the world. In particular, the narrow spherical manned cabin can carry three people to a depth of 10,000 meters, which is very remarkable in the world! "

At present, China has three deep-sea manned submersibles, namely Jiaolong, Deep-sea Warrior and Struggler, and a series of unmanned submersibles, such as Haidu, Qianlong, Haiyan, Haiyi and Hailong, which have initially established a pedigree of deep-sea submersibles and continuously achieved new breakthroughs and major leaps in the development of deep-sea equipment technology.

The successful development of Struggler marks that China has reached the world leading level in the field of deep manned deep diving, and also provides a powerful new platform for human beings to explore the 10,000-meter abyss.

In the near future, the 10,000-meter manned submersible independently developed by China will carry more China scientists to roam freely in the deepest part of the world's oceans, realizing the scientific dream of China people.

At that time, if there are any mysterious creatures knocking at the door, maybe we can solve the problem that left little Pilca unanswered until his death: Who is knocking at the door?

Yi Shi: The Legend of Mariana Trench

Wang Zhijun: March into the abyss: human exploration of the deepest part of the ocean

Luigi: James Cameron's deep concentration.