When the expedition moves to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Ballard will send Hercules to investigate two Phoenician shipwrecks, dating back to 750 B.C., which lay buried under 1,000 feet (300 meters) of water.
"This should give us new insight into the legendary Phoenician mariners and the cargoes they carried across the Mediterranean," Ballard said before taking off on the expedition.
Mission Control
Ballard's expedition will also be the first to bring deep-sea exploration live to scientists, students, and the public via new satellite and Internet technologies.
The team of scientists will be able to capture video and audio images from the ocean floor and send them in real time to fellow scientists at the Innerspace Center, a "mission control" built by the EDS Corporation at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.
"This technology platform is a huge step forward in undersea exploration because it allows scientists to be a very real part of an expedition such as this without leaving the country," said Andy Allbee, manager of the EDS team that implemented the new technology.
When Ballard discovered the first hydrothermal vents off the Galápagos Islands in 1977 there were no other marine geologists with him. It took three years before another geologist could examine the discovery. Today, a geologist sitting in a U.S. laboratory could have made that analysis using real-time video.
Robots and Radar
A team of researchers from New York's Columbia University is bringing digital archaeology to the Egyptian desert. Studying the ancient ruins of Amheida at the Dakhla Oasis, a 13-hour drive from Cairo, the scientists are using a robot equipped with a remote-sensing device to create 3-D subterranean images that will help pinpoint where to begin excavations.
Archaeologists could also benefit from the work done in subterranean robotics for other fields, particularly the mapping and exploration of abandoned mines, buried pipes, and hazardous waste.
The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is developing an autonomous wheeled robot to explore and map the state's coal mines. The robot is armed with cameras, tilt and sinkage sensors, laser scanners, and a gyroscope to help it surmount obstacles it may encounter. It uses perception technology to build 3-D maps from its data.
"Archaeologists could use this robot to explore an ancient tomb," said Scott Thayer, one of the lead scientists on the mine mapping project.
The Robotics Institute has also developed robots that can search for meteorites in Antarctica. Using computer sensing, the robots can detect surface meteorites obscured to the human eye by blowing or drifting snow.
What's next? One thing is for sure, Lara Croft will have to shop for some better gadgetry if she wants to keep up with her archeological peers.
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