
Large Underwater Observatory Disappears Without a Trace - dwighttk
https://gizmodo.com/large-underwater-observatory-disappears-without-a-trace-1837897180
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corndoge
Thorough discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20886458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20886458)

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dang
Thanks!

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jcoffland
> Or, it could be the result of a nefarious military operation conducted by an
> unknown state actor, but that’s pure speculation.

My bet is that it was due to natural causes. Underwater currents, seafloor
landslide or something similar.

That humans did this undetected is possible but why would anyone with the
capability bother? It would likely cost more to pull off than it could
possibly be worth. And, for a state actor, the consequences of getting caught
far outweigh any benefit.

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ianai
Russia just had a nuclear explosion. The details are not known. They’ve
clearly been taking monitoring stations offline to hide any data from the
event getting to the world. This would be another.

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ceejayoz
> The station collected data about water temperature, nutrients, salinity, the
> speed of water flow, and concentrations of chlorophyll and methane.

Doesn't seem like this thing would've collected much interesting data about a
nuclear explosion.

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pvaldes
Any sudden peak in temperature and speed would be registered for example. Any
sudden change in salinity would be even more interesting. Another possibility
is an explosion wave that could dislodge the materials and move it to other
places

If I'm understanding correctly, they have the exact hour of signal loses.
Ships have predictable and registered routes, (except military). First thing
to do should be to take a look to the ships in the area around this timestamp.

If trying to save people and all nations with science was not enough
difficult, now with a 30% more of sabotage. Fantastic.

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ClumsyPilot
The incident in Russia was too small to have these kind of effects this far.

It is only really traceable through radiation, because our instruments are
very accurate and the signal is very clean - it does not change much through
natural causes.

Russia was my first thought, but you can't hide a submarine depth of 22
meters.

Conversely, get a small boat, commodity diving gear and 3 dudes, and this is
easy to do. You get this kit for a few grand.

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ianai
That really doesn’t matter to a kgb agent who wants to keep secrets. Don’t
know anything about the depth, but seems deep enough.

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ClumsyPilot
I do not follow what you are saying

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ianai
It doesn’t matter whether a nuclear scientist and a fully staffed lab were in
that sensor “bed” or not. It’s near enough for them to want it destroyed.

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ceejayoz
It's a thousand miles away. It's not at all near to the Russian nuclear
accident.

The depth is an issue because a submarine can't go deep enough to be
undetected there. It'd be visible to aircraft and boats in water that shallow.

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pvaldes
> Another possibility is an explosion wave that could dislodge the materials
> and move it to other places

In this paragraph I was including the possibility of somebody blowing
deliberately the station with dynamite for example.

Those things are expensive so the question to ask here is if the station is
still lying in the seafloor or was removed by somebody. If is possible to
recover it, even partially, could make a big difference for the research team.

I remember putting into the ocean a cylinder full of sensors. It was
relatively small, an R2-D2 sized thing or so. The main researcher of the
oceanographic campaign was literally sweating with the idea of some chain
breaking in the process and losing the small cube property of the university.
Each time it was used was like dumping the economic equivalent to a luxury car
in the open sea hanging on a chain and hoping that all went ok, several times
in a day.

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corey_moncure
Bottom-trawling commercial fishing.

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fh973
Here is its homepage:
[https://www.bokniseck.de/de](https://www.bokniseck.de/de)

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ohiovr
made me think of this story [https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-submarine-
losharik-un...](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-submarine-losharik-
undersea-cables-media-speculation-2019-7)

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wfbarks
I first read this as “Large Underwear Observatory”

