Could humans live in underwater cities?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2018
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The idea of creating underwater habitats has captured the imagination of writers, thinkers and scientists for decades. However, despite numerous grand visions, these dreams of aquatic metropolises have not yet come to fruition. Crowdscience listener and scuba enthusiast Jack wonders whether - given improved technology and the growing environmental pressures facing humans on land - it is time to reconsider the ocean as an alternative permanent living space for humans.
Marnie Chesterton dons her flippers for Crowdscience in search of the oceanographers and architects who have dedicated their lives to designing vessels, labs and underwater habitats. She explores whether oceanic cities remain a sci-fi dream or a realistic solution to some of our modern challenges. Can the oceans’ largely unexplored resources be harnessed to support living underwater?
(Photo: Illustration of a modern city under the sea. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. focused on space travel. I think that we'd be better served if we focused instead |
| 0:48.8 | on the Earth and specifically the oceans. |
| 0:53.0 | I'm Marnie Chesterton and this is crowd science from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:59.0 | Listeners can ask us any question. |
| 1:01.0 | And we find them a scientific answer. Listeners like Jack. My name is |
| 1:08.3 | Jack Kareluski and I live here in Davis, California. |
| 1:13.0 | My question is, I'm wondering about the possibility of underwater cities. |
| 1:20.0 | What would be the advantages and what would be the challenges of such an adventure? |
| 1:25.6 | If they were to build an underwater city, let's say 50 feet under the surface in the Gulf of Mexico. |
| 1:33.4 | I think it would be fascinating. |
| 1:35.3 | So in the next 50 years, could we be eating breakfast |
| 1:38.8 | whilst watching the fish swim outside the kitchen window |
| 1:42.2 | before heading off to work in an office under the ocean. |
| 1:45.9 | So Jack wants to know how the science and engineering is coming along with making his dream a reality. |
| 1:51.8 | And it isn't a new dream. The most ambitious project yet in |
| 1:56.6 | ocean research has just started here in the sheltered bay of a beautiful West Indian |
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