Hi,

Very unfortunate tragedy. It is almost unbelievable that this could happen in this day of computer modeling and such, but humans will be human and that means making stupid decisions sometimes.

My view of extreme pressure on an asymmetrical and inhomogeneous object like the eyeball is that it would deform violently. This would be due to a pressure differential not the outside pressure itself. The water may only compress by 1 percent, but the structure holding it would break down.

The only good thing we can say about this I think is that it happened so fast that they literally had no idea it was happening.
A pseudo good thing is that this may have taught future developers to consider safety more aggressively.

It's hard to think about this, but I've also thought about the time it takes for a large jet airliner to crash into something. Given the speed of the plane could be 500 mph, how long is it between the time the nose hits until the tail hits. That's also pretty gruesome.

An airliner travels its own length in about 1/8 to 1/4 of a second, which is right about what human reaction times are. By the time you sense that impact is occurring, you are probably already dead. During a crash, the tail will, of course, be decelerating, but not by as much as might be imagined. The inertia is too much for the kind of forces needed to be transmitted back through the structure, so the structure collapses in on itself instead. I think the analysis of the video footage from 9/11 showed something like a half a second.

 

An airliner travels its own length in about 1/8 to 1/4 of a second, which is right about what human reaction times are. By the time you sense that impact is occurring, you are probably already dead. During a crash, the tail will, of course, be decelerating, but not by as much as might be imagined. The inertia is too much for the kind of forces needed to be transmitted back through the structure, so the structure collapses in on itself instead. I think the analysis of the video footage from 9/11 showed something like a half a second.

Yeah like an open tin can hitting a brick wall at 90 mph.

This horrific scenario is hard to imagine in detail.

 

It's like adding glue to a rope and then expect it to work well as a column.

Which is how the best bicycle frames are made today! Actually they have to carefully cross hatch the fibers to make it work.

 

Which is how the best bicycle frames are made today! Actually they have to carefully cross hatch the fibers to make it work.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

What could possibly go wrong?

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The goal is lighter weight. Those are expensive too.
Maybe that was the goal for the sub too. Too bad though a failure there is totally catastrophic.

 

But there's soft tissue to consider, like fat and muscle and even cartilage. And I have no idea of how they would react.

Anything that isn't a gas compresses very little, probably no more than water. As @BobTPH noted, recreational divers can be exposed to 4 atmospheres (at 30m depth) and don't feel the pressure except for the required equilibration of ears and lungs. Indeed humans have experienced over 50 atm without damage. Avoiding poisoning by the breathing gases is the limiting factor; both oxygen and nitrogen become toxic at high pressures and you have to use helium.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

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I have a sister-in-law that did professional mountain bike racing. A failure like that more-or-less ended her career.

I searched but couldn't find the picture of a carbon fiber sailboat that basically cracked in half during (I think) the America's Cup race.

That's the problem with carbon fiber: sudden and catastrophic failure.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

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Well, mine has not done that. I did get an unexpected flat though last week. Had to change a tube for the first time in decades.

 

Well, mine has not done that. I did get an unexpected flat though last week. Had to change a tube for the first time in decades.

I'm pretty sure if you're just doing the "biking around town" kind of thing, you'll be fine. It's when you get into the more extreme stuff that it becomes a question of safety. I have a carbon-fiber tennis racket that's lasted for years without any issues. (But then again I just whack a 2 oz ball with it!)

 

Then there are the bats, which used to be made from ash. The Emerald Ash Borer beetle has decimated the ash trees, so now they are made from oak or maple. There are several broken bats in every MLB game. They used to last years.