

Freak waves spotted from space (2004) - hardik
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3917539.stm

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overshard
I always find it amusing how little we know about most of our planet. Then I
get sad at the vast amount of scientists losing their jobs or having to work
for large-company-for-profit since they can't get enough funding to research
what they want.

Maybe we need to start getting scientists to use Kickstarter? "For $400,000 I
can make some serious headway into rogue wave research and will publish all of
my data in real time!" I'd toss a couple hundred at projects like this.

On a side note we need a website and very simple API for scientists to publish
research in real time... with a not-horrible interface like most science
websites have.

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mattsf
This exists. Petridish.org lets people help fund projects that wouldn't
otherwise get off the ground, Kickstarter style

~~~
overshard
Indeed, this does cover the first part, they need to work on getting their
name out there cause I've never seen this website before... Now for the 2nd
part!

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__alexs
Results of the MAXWAVE Project

W. Rosenthal

Institute of Coastal Research, Geesthacht, Germany

[http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.p...](http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.pdf)

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beerglass
On an average two large ships sink every week? Really? That's way too high
than what I had expected. Can anyone cite a source for this info?

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andrem
It's hard to get to the data but have a look at the latest vessel casualties
in the right hand column:

<http://www.lloydslistintelligence.com/>

Also, the project site leeds to
<http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/workp/wp4/wp4.html> where you can find
a map of ship casualties for a 4 year period
[http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/workp/wp4/casualties.j...](http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/workp/wp4/casualties.jpg)

I am surprised myself, but 2 a week actually seems low!

~~~
waterlesscloud
Thanks for the links. Googling some of the ships listed as casualties led me
to this page <http://www.vesseltracker.com/en/News/Home.html>

So it looks like the ships are not necessarily lost, and some of them aren't
all that big...

~~~
andrem
Yeah true - I think gravitystorm's comment is quite accurate when it comes
down to big vessels.

I did a bit more googling and found this site:

<http://www.cargolaw.com/presentations_cas.index.html>

Even though it looks this site is hosted on geocities, there are links to
current vessel casualties with details to damage, human casualties, etc.

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evoxed
This article is from 2004. For more information on the project as well as the
ugliest site you could possibly imagine, visit
<http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/>

Edit: Apparently parts of their server have sunk as well.

~~~
hessenwolf
I highly recommend visiting the site. It made me laugh. But then it made me
sad. It's like visiting a house after it has been abandoned.

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javert
Statistics about ship losses in this article are utterly wrong. The Wikipedia
article below explicitly calls out the press release this article appears to
be based upon.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave#Loss_estimates>

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dhx
Summary of ocean surface topography measurement using satellite altimetry:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_surface_topography>

~~~
emmelaich
Not really related to wave size.

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pohl
Out of curiosity, I went looking to see if this data has translated into
thinking about ship design:

<http://66.180.169.221/pdf/2007symp09.pdf>

[http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.p...](http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.pdf)

<http://www.ifremer.fr/web-com/molagnon/bv/Faulkner_w.pdf>

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majma
Article about the follow-up study from the German Space Agency, including some
kind of map.

<http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/18245/>

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manojlds
Freak waves and 2004 - thought it was about the 2004 tsunami.

