Please accept our Best Wishes for Mother and Child.
0
Photograph by Emory Kristof, National Geographic
Slipping beneath the waves on April 15, 1912, the R.M.S. Titanic famously disappeared from view until 1985, when it was rediscovered on the bottom of the North Atlantic (pictures of Titanic's rediscovery).
Now, scientists say, the legendary liner—beset by metal-eating life-forms, powerful currents, and possibly even human negligence—could be vanishing for good.
Titanic is falling apart.
Already explorers have documented caved-in roofs, weakening decks, a stern perhaps on the edge of collapse, and the disappearance of Titanic's crow's nest—from which lookout Frederick Fleet spotted history's most infamous iceberg. (Watch an animation of Titanic's iceberg collision, breakup, and sinking.)
"Everyone has their own opinion" as to how long Titanic will remain more or less intact, said research specialist Bill Lange of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
"Some people think the bow will collapse in a year or two," Lange said. "But others say it's going to be there for hundreds of years."
With Lange as optical-survey leader, a new expedition sets sail Sunday from St. John's, Newfoundland (map)—roughly 350 miles (560 kilometers) from the ship's 2.4-mile-deep (3.8-kilometer-deep) resting place (Titanic wreck-site map).
The goal: to virtually preserve Titanic in its current state and to finally determine just how far gone the shipwreck is, and how long it might last.
Source
