• Who gets the Titanic treasures?

    One century after the Titanic sank during its maiden voyage, the historic day is being commemorated around the world. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    Negotiations to decide the fate of a $189 million collection of artifacts from the Titanic are going into overtime.

    Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions, which is seeking to sell 5,500 items recovered from the shipwreck site over the past 25 years, said today that it's "in discussions with multiple parties" for the purchase of the collection. The legal rulings that paved the way for the sale require that the collection must be sold as a single lot — and that the buyer must make the artifacts available for public exhibition and research.

    The deadline for sealed bids passed more than a week ago, and since then Premier Exhibitions has been weighing the offers.

    "In order for the company to settle on the most appropriate bidder and maximize the ultimate value of the artifacts for shareholders, it conduct these negotiations and due diligence in confidence," Premier said in a statement. The company said it would "provide an additional update to shareholders as soon as practical," and would reschedule a news conference that had been planned for Wednesday to announce the winning bid.

    Premier's subsidiary, RMS Titanic Inc., is the only company with legal permission to recover objects from the Titanic, which ran into an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912, during its maiden trans-Atlantic voyage from Southampton to New York. More than 1,500 of the ship's 2,228 passengers and crew lost their lives in the disaster. The 100th anniversary of the tragedy is boosting interest in the Titanic to new heights.

    In addition to the physical artifacts, RMS Titanic has been collecting data and high-resolution imagery of the wreck site, two miles beneath the Atlantic surface. Its most recent expedition took place in 2010. The archaeological assets, including underwater video and 3-D mapping, are among the property being sold.

    "Titanic is slowly being consumed by iron-eating microbes on the sea floor and, at some point in the not-too-distant future, it will be only a memory," Mark Sellers, chairman of Premier and RMS Titanic, said back in January. "We are proud of what we have accomplished as salvor-in-possession of the wreck site and we believe we have faithfully honored the legacy of those who were lost. After all those efforts, we have determined that the time has come for us to transfer ownership of this collection to a steward who is able to continue our efforts and will preserve and honor her legacy."

    Actually, three major Titanic auctions are taking place this month. In addition to the Premier Exhibitions sale, which is being managed by Guernsey's auction house, there's a Bonhams auction set for Sunday in New York, and an RR Auction online sale due to begin April 19. Last month, the highlight of a London auction was the sale of a first-class menu from the Titanic's last lunch for $120,000.

    Ben Stansall / AFP - Getty Images

    A wreath floats in berths 43/44, the place from which the RMS Titanic set sail on its ill-fated maiden voyage 100 years ago, during a ceremony at Southampton's docks on April 10, 2012.

    It's not clear whether any more artifacts will ever be brought up from the Titanic site. Beginning on the 100th anniversary of the sinking, the remains of the Titanic will be covered by a 2001 U.N. convention on the protection of underwater cultural heritage. In a statement issued last week, UNESCO said parties to the convention can seize artifacts taken from the Titanic, and prevent exploration of the site that is "deemed unscientific or unethical."

    Neither the United States nor Canada are parties to that convention. However, UNESCO said the protections specified in the convention are also reflected in an international agreement on Titanic salvage that was signed by those two countries as well as France and Britain.

    One of the most outspoken critics of Titanic salvaging has been oceanographer Robert Ballard, who was one of the co-discoverers of the Titanic wreck site in 1985. He has long said that if he could do it all over again, he would not publicize the location of the wreck, and today on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," he said he now wishes he claimed the site for himself.

    "When I found the Titanic, I went to the courts, and I said, 'Well, can I own the Titanic?' And they said, yes. It's an abandoned shipwreck. All you have to do is go down and retrieve one object of saucer or plate or something, come into the courts, and we'll make you the owner. But we'll make you the owner under one condition, that you remove it from the bottom of the ocean. ... I was opposed to that. I wished I'd gone and got that one cup and brought it up and said, 'I want to turn it into an underwater museum.' I'd rather take people there through the technologies we now have, and I really regret I didn't do that."

    In retrospect, do you think that would have been the better course? Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts about the fate of Titanic artifacts in the comment space below.

    More about the Titanic:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Unused Titanic ticket on sale

    Bonhams

    This unused ticket to the launch of the Titanic in 1911 is expected to sell for as much as $70,000 at an auction scheduled for April 15, the 100th anniversary of the liner's sinking. The value is so high because the ticket is the only one of its kind known to exist in its untorn condition.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    It's prime time for Titanic memorabilia: We've already talked about the huge Guernsey's auction that's offering one big batch of 5,500 artifacts retrieved from the bottom of the Atlantic, and the RR Auction that's selling 180 lots of Titanic items, piece by piece. A third sale, organized by the Bonhams auction house, is set for April 15, the 100th anniversary of the luxury liner's sinking.

    "The interest in the Titanic far surpasses the sinking or wreck of any other ship, making it a historical 'bookmark,' Gregg Dietrich, Bonhams' maritime consultant, said in a pre-sale announcement. "This finely curated auction is completely dedicated to the finest and rarest Titanica that has come to market recently."

    The Bonhams sale, "RMS Titanic: 100 Years of Fact and Fiction," will take place at the firm's Madison Avenue location in New York. The high-profile items include:

    • An unused perforated ticket to the Titanic's launch from its Belfast shipyard in May 1911, almost a year before the fatal trans-Atlantic voyage. Bonhams says this is the only untorn ticket to the launch event that has come to light. After the launch, the Titanic went through a months-long process of installing the ship's engines and fitting out its interior. Even though this ticket was for the launch rather than the doomed voyage itself, Bonhams expects it to fetch a price ranging up to $70,000.
    • A two-page handwritten account of the tragedy by the captain of the Carpathia, the ships that picked up the Titanic's survivors. Estimated price: $90,000 to $120,000.
    • A first-class dinner menu that was retrieved either from Titanic's wreckage or from one of the bodies pulled out of the water. The menu is valued at $25,000 to $35,000.
    • Props from movies about the Titanic, including the ship's bell that was rung in the 1958 film "A Night to Remember" (pre-sale estimate: $10,000 to $15,000) as well as a reproduction of the "Heart of the Ocean" necklace made famous in James Cameron's 1997 version of "Titanic" (pre-sale estimate: $400 to $600).

    Some of the postcards being offered for sale could go for as little as $250. Online bids are being accepted, but if these items are still too pricey, you can always browse through the Titanic trinkets available through RMS Titanic Inc.'s online store.

    Update for 11:20 p.m. ET: Some commenters got the impression that the ticket being sold was for the 1912 maiden voyage rather than the 1911 launch from the shipyard, so I've added a few phrases in an attempt to head off that confusion.

    More about the Titanic:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Titanic treasures big and small are going on the auction block

    To mark the 100th anniversary of a ship that supposedly couldn't sink, thousands of artifacts recovered from the Titanic are being auctioned off. TODAY's Amy Robach reports.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    All the bids are in for the biggest-ever sale of Titanic artifacts, but there's still a chance to get in on a different round of bidding for more affordable memorabilia from the world's most famous shipwreck.

    Bidding closed on Monday in the sale of more than 5,500 items recovered from the wreck site at the bottom of the Atlantic, said Dara Busch, a spokeswoman for the New York-based Guernsey's auction house. The legal rulings that paved the way for the sale require that the collection, valued at $189 million in 2007, must be sold as a single lot — and that the buyer must make the artifacts available for public exhibition and research.

    Interest in the Titanic is reaching a peak this month, due to the 100th anniversary of the ocean liner's sinking on April 15, 1912. The ship hit an iceberg during its maiden voyage from England to New York, setting off a disaster that killed more than 1,500 of the ship's 2,228 passengers and crew. The wreck was rediscovered in a 1985 underwater expedition, and the items being auctioned were recovered by RMS Titanic Inc. in a series of dives between 1987 and 2004.

    Since their recovery, many of the items have been put on display by Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions, but RMS Titanic Inc. is now looking to sell it all in accordance with the court-mandated procedures.

    The artifacts range from a chef's hat, socks and other clothing ... to jewelry that was found in the Titanic's safe ... to a 20-ton section of the ship's hull known as "the Big Piece." Busch declined to tell me how many bids were received, but Guernsey's has been quoted as saying that the qualified bidders included individuals, museums, private companies and even governments.

    Busch said the auction house plans to reveal the identity of the winning bidder during a New York press conference on April 11.

    The losers can take comfort in the fact that another auction of Titanic memorabilia is due to get started on April 19, presented by New Hampshire-based RR Auction. The weeklong sale of 180 items will close on April 26 and is expected to raise $800,000 to $1 million, said Bobby Livingston, RR Auction's vice president of sales and marketing.

    Livingston emphasized that the sale isn't just for high rollers. "We have items that will sell for $100," he told me today. "There are lots of things in the auction that anybody can bid on and win."

    The lower-priced sale items are likely to include sheet music, books and flyers that touch on Titanic themes but have little connection to the tragedy itself. The big-ticket items are artifacts with a direct tie to the Titanic's first and final voyage, such as:

    • A letter written by the Titanic's bandleader to his parents, and dropped off during one of the voyage's early stopovers. "This is a fine ship and there ought to be plenty of money on her," Wallace Hartley wrote on April 10, 1912. Livingston said he considered the letter to be "the most incredible item because it's written on Titanic letterhead, and it's his last known letter. ... Just to have Hartley mention 'the band that played on' amid the screams and the panic to calm the passengers — it brings them to life." Hartley perished in the disaster, but the letter was delivered to his parents after his death. It's expected to bring a price of $100,000 to $200,000.

    RR Auction

    Auctioneers say this photograph was taken on the morning of April 16, 1912, by Mabel Fenwick, a newlywed passenger on the Carpathia. This photo was provided to another passenger, John Snyder. The picture appears to show two icebergs on the horizon, including a particularly ominous one near the right edge.

    • A picture of two icebergs floating in the North Atlantic, taken on April 16, 1912, by a passenger on the Carpathia, one of the ships that came to the Titanic's rescue. The lifeboat visible in the upper right corner of the picture is probably from the Titanic. Some news reports point to one of the bergs in the picture as the "killer iceberg," but Livingston said that can't be confirmed. "There were over 200 icebergs in the area, and it's never been determined which one the Titanic struck," he told me. "It's certainly possible that that's the iceberg." Expected price: $5,000 to $8,000.

    RR Auction

    This deck chair was swept off the Titanic as it sank and was recovered from the Atlantic by salvagers in April 1912.

    • A deck chair from the Titanic that was washed overboard and recovered by the vessel Mackay-Bennett during the cleanup of the ocean site in April 1912. "This is one of seven [Titanic deck chairs] that's known to exist today," Livingston said. Expected price: $100,000 to $150,000.

    RR Auction

    Water damage mars a portrait of Edward Herbert Keeping's wife in a gold locket that was recovered after the Titanic tragedy.

    • A gold locket that was found among the effects of Edward Herbert Keeping, a valet who died in the Titanic disaster. The locket was returned to his widow and remained in the family, occasionally going out on loan for exhibits. "The family came to us, the great-granddaughter, and asked us to auction it," Livingston said. Expected price: $100,000.

    Other items up for sale include a kimono belonging to fashion designer Lady Duff-Gordon, who was said to have worn such a "kimono-style wrap" when she escaped the Titanic on a lifeboat and made her way to the Carpathia; a mounted chip of mahogany wood salvaged from one of the Titanic's wrecked doors; and scores of Titanic pictures and postcards.

    Even everyday items, such as cardboard memorial cards printed after the disaster, can take on additional value due to the aura that surrounded the doomed ship. "The Titanic is one of those moments in history demonstrating the fallibility of humanity," Livingston told me. What kind of price tag can you put on that? Stay tuned: In a couple of weeks, we'll find out.

    Update for 7:35 p.m. ET April 5: I neglected to mention a third Titanic sale that's due to take place at Bonhams' New York auction house on April 15, offering items ranging from period postcards to an untorn ticket to the Titanic's launch ceremony and a handwritten account of the tragedy by the Carpathia's captain. Check out today's posting for the details.

    More about the Titanic:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • 'Titanic' director tweaks the sky

    Paramount Pictures / 20th Century Fox

    Film director James Cameron talks with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet during the shooting of a crucial post-sinking scene in "Titanic." The newly released 3-D version of the film will show the sky as it actually appeared that night, thanks to astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson's goading.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't mind that "Titanic" film director James Cameron called him a "son of a bitch" for shaming him into correcting the movie's constellations.

    "I take it as a frustrated expression of affection," Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, told me today. "As in, 'you son of a bitch, you got me there.'"

    Thanks to Tyson's persistence, moviegoers who go to "Titanic" in 3-D will see a truer representation of the night sky when Rose (played by Kate Winslet) looks up into the heavens after the ship sinks. "That sky, I would say, was the most important sky in the movie," Tyson said. And in the original 1997 version of the film, it was wrong.

    In a widely quoted interview with the British magazine Culture, Cameron said the sky scene was the only shot he fixed for this year's 3-D re-release:

    "It's because Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is one of the U.S.' leading astronomers, sent me quite a snarky email saying that, at that time of year, in that position in the Atlantic in 1912, when Rose is lying on the piece of driftwood and staring up at the stars, that is not the star field she would have seen, and with my reputation as a perfectionist, I should have known that and I should have put the right star field in.

    "So I said, 'All right, you son of a b**ch, send me the right stars for the exact time, 4:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, and I'll put it in the movie.' So that's the one shot that has been changed."

    Rose (Kate Winslet) looks up at the stars in this scene from "Titanic."

    The basic problem was that a space-savvy observer would see that the sky in the original version of the movie was unrecognizable, and in fact was produced by mirroring made-up stars on the left and right halves of the screen. Tyson saw that as a needlessly sloppy move, and he made that opinion known to Cameron and his team in a succession of letters, emails and personal encounters. He wrote about the "Titanic" trip-up and other Hollywood missteps in his 2007 book, "Death by Black Hole." You can watch him tell the tale about "Titanic" and other sci-fi movies in this video clip:

    Neil deGrasse Tyson on inaccuracies in science-fiction movies and the "Titanic" night sky.

    When Cameron's people finally asked Tyson to provide a better sky, the astrophysicist used a standard planetarium program to generate the star field for the proper latitude and time of night, captured a high-resolution image and sent it off to the filmmakers.

    "The Big Dipper came out nicely," Tyson said.

    The sky was initially fixed in the bonus materials for a special DVD version of "Titanic" a few years ago. "I took that as a triumph and let it be," Tyson told me. Now the corrected sky appears in the big-screen version of the film itself, thanks to post-production wizardry.

    Tyson said he can understand why it took a big re-release for Cameron to change the sky. "As a director, you don't want to have to rethink all that, and I respect that," he said. Tyson said his respect for Cameron has grown even more now that the right stars will be on display in theaters around the world.

    Will Cameron put the space-savvy S.O.B.'s name in the credits for the 3-D movie? Tyson says he doesn't know, and really doesn't care.

    "If he does, that's fine," Tyson told me. "I'm a servant of the public interest and the public's appetite for information about the universe. I get these calls all the time. ... The mere fact that an artist cares about getting the science right, and thereby transmitting that science literacy to the consumers of that art — that's enough reward for me."

    More about 'Titanic' and Neil deGrasse Tyson

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • 10 causes of the Titanic tragedy

    From 2010: NBC's Kerry Sanders reports on an expedition to map the wreckage of the Titanic.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    The "unsinkable" Titanic was sunk by an iceberg, but there are other reasons why the tragedy that occurred 100 years ago this month was as tragic as it was. Even a century later, the case of the Titanic illustrates how technological failures often result from a succession of omissions, missteps and bad luck rather than one big mess-up.

    "No one thing sent the Titanic to the bottom of the North Atlantic," Richard Corfield writes in a Physics World retrospective on the disaster that caused 1,514 deaths on April 14-15, 1912. "Rather, the ship was ensnared by a perfect storm of circumstances that conspired her to her doom. Such a chain is familiar to those who study disasters — it is called an 'event cascade.'"

    The iceberg that the Titanic struck on its way from Southampton to New York is No. 1 on a top-10 list of circumstances. Here are nine other suggested circumstances from Corfield's article and other sources:

    Climate caused more icebergs: Weather conditions in the North Atlantic were particularly conducive for corralling icebergs at the intersection of the Labrador Current and the Gulf Stream, due to warmer-than-usual waters in the Gulf Stream, Richard Norris of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told Physics World. "Oceanographically, the upshot of that was that icebergs, sea ice and growlers were concentrated in the very position where the collision happened," Norris said. 

    Tides sent icebergs southward: Last month, astronomers at Texas State University at San Marcos noted that the sun, the moon and Earth were aligned in such a way that could have led to unusually high tides in January 1912. They speculated that the tides could have dislodged icebergs that were stuck in the Labrador Sea, sending more of them toward the waters traversed by the Titanic a couple of months later.

    The ship was going too fast: Many Titanicologists have said that the ship's captain, Edward J. Smith, was aiming to better the crossing time of the Olympic, the Titanic's older sibling in the White Star fleet. For some, the fact that the Titanic was sailing full speed ahead despite concerns about icebergs was Smith's biggest misstep. "Simply put, Titanic was traveling way too fast in an area known to contain ice; that's the bottom line," says Mark Nichol, webmaster for the Titanic and Other White Star Ships website.

    Iceberg warnings went unheeded: The Titanic received multiple warnings about icefields in the North Atlantic over the wireless, but Corfield notes that the last and most specific warning was not passed along by senior radio operator Jack Phillips to Captain Smith, apparently because it didn't carry the prefix "MSG" (Masters' Service Gram). That would have required a personal acknowledgment from the captain. "Phillips interpreted it as non-urgent and returned to sending passenger messages to the receiver on shore at Cape Race, Newfoundland, before it went out of range," Corfield writes.

    The binoculars were locked up: Corfield also says binoculars that could have been used by lookouts on the night of the collision were locked up aboard the ship — and the key was held by David Blair, an officer who was bumped from the crew before the ship's departure from Southampton. Some historians have speculated that the fatal iceberg might have been spotted earlier if the binoculars were in use, but others say it wouldn't have made a difference.

    The steersman took a wrong turn: Did the Titanic's steersman turn the ship toward the iceberg, dooming the ship? That's the claim made in 2010 by Louise Patten, who said the story was passed down from her grandfather, the most senior ship officer to survive the disaster. After the iceberg was spotted, the command was issued to turn "hard a starboard," but as the command was passed down the line, it was misinterpreted as meaning "make the ship turn right" rather than "push the tiller right to make the ship head left," Patten said. She said the error was quickly discovered, but not quickly enough to avert the collision. She also speculated that if the ship had stopped where it was hit, seawater would not have pushed into one interior compartment after another as it did, and the ship might not have sunk as quickly.

    Reverse thrust reduced the ship's maneuverability: Just before impact, first officer William McMaster Murdoch is said to have telegraphed the engine room to put the ship's engines into reverse. That would cause the left and right propeller to turn backward, but because of the configuration of the stern, the central propeller could only be halted, not reversed. Corfield said "the fact that the steering propeller was not rotating severely diminished the turning ability of the ship. It is one of the many bitter ironies of the Titanic tragedy that the ship might well have avoided the iceberg if Murdoch had not told the engine room to reduce and then reverse thrust." 

    The iron rivets were too weak: Metallurgists Tim Foecke and Jennifer Hooper McCarty looked into the materials used for the building of the Titanic at its Belfast shipyard and found that the steel plates toward the bow and the stern were held together with  low-grade iron rivets. Those rivets may have been used because higher-grade rivets were in short supply, or because the better rivets couldn't be inserted in those areas using the shipyard's crane-mounted hydraulic equipment. The metallurgists said those low-grade rivets would have ripped apart more easily during the collision, causing the ship to sink more quickly that it would have if stronger rivets had been used. Other researchers have contested that claim, however.

    There were too few lifeboats: Perhaps the biggest tragedy is that there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate all of the Titanic's more than 2,200 passengers and crew members. The lifeboats could accommodate only about 1,200 people — which was still in excess of the 1,060-person capacity that was the legal requirement for that time. "It seems that in 1912, in a way not dissimilar to our own box-ticking, responsibility-avoiding culture today, lack of effective oversight on the part of the authorities caused the consequences of the disaster to be much worse than they might have been," Corfield wrote.

    Do these 10 causes cover everything, or are there still more factors I'm forgetting? Are there some lessons still unlearned from the Titanic tragedy? Feel free to weigh in with your reflections on the Titanic centennial in the comment space below.

    More about the Titanic:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • How the Titanic tore apart

    RMS Titanic Inc.

    The bathtub and shower plumbing in Captain Edward Smith's private bathroom are still visible within the Titanic shipwreck. Smith's bedroom was in the empty space to the right.

    Experts are still analyzing their newly made 3-D maps of the Titanic shipwreck site, but they can already see that the great ship’s breakup was messier than most folks, including "Titanic" film director James Cameron, may have thought. “It wasn’t quite the way Cameron showed it in his movie,” expedition co-leader Dave Gallo observed.

    In a post-expedition interview, Gallo said the fates of the 1,517 people who died in the 1912 tragedy were never far from his mind — especially when a doll’s arm turned up on the HD video from the seafloor.

    Gallo and his colleagues spent weeks sailing back and forth between the research vessel Jean Charcot's port in St. John's, Newfoundland, and the North Atlantic spot where the Titanic went down. The expedition was interrupted by two hurricanes, Danielle and Igor, leading to last week's earlier-than-expected end.

    Gallo, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said he considered this the first purely scientific mission to the Titanic since the original survey of the site in the mid-1980s. Numerous voyages have been conducted in the intervening quarter-century, but "all of those have had science as a sidebar," Gallo told me.

    "The primary mission of most of those was either recovery of artifacts, by RMS Titanic, or adventure tourism, with Deep Ocean Adventures," he observed. "Sure, they all came back with exciting images, but was that science? No."

    Chris Davino, president of RMS Titanic Inc., said the past month's expedition was aimed at bringing together experts in deep-sea diving and salvaging with the scientific experts from Woods Hole, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and elsewhere. "It resonated more with me when I was out there that what we did will have real implications for deep-sea exploration and wreck-site archaeology," Davino told me. "The tools that these experts brought to bear are game-changing."

    The expedition's primary aim was to use robotic vehicles equipped with cameras and sonar devices to create unprecedented maps of the Titanic. The survey covereed a 3-by-5-mile area — with high-resolution, 3-D mapping of the central 1-by-1.5-mile box. "We achieved our primary objective," Davino said.

    So far, the biggest surprise has to do with how spread out the debris was. Gallo said he expected to see one or two well-defined debris trails, but "the breakup was a little more complicated than that." Unlike the largely intact (and iconic) bow section, the back section of the ship was "absolutely mangled by its trip to the bottom," he said.

    "It's almost like you cracked it open and spilled everything out," Gallo said. "You see pieces of the engine, boilers ... where we thought there might be one or two big things, we found five. ... When we start to piece together how Titanic actually made its way to the bottom, those pieces will be key."

    The maps now being created will precisely pinpoint all those big pieces, so that future researchers (including Gallo, if he has his way) will be able to gauge how the site has changed over time. Gallo noted that the wreck was constantly pounded by deep-ocean currents that were stronger than the experts expected. "I don't know if 'sandblasted' is the word, but it's certainly being buffeted," he said.

    The 3-D survey mapped huge dunes of sediment as well as giant boulders that were "more than likely carried by icebergs," Gallo said. Could one of those boulders have come from the iceberg that Titanic ran into? There's no way of knowing.

    Gallo thought the survey would turn up many more personal effects than it did — but there were still ample reminders of the tragedy that occurred 98 years ago on that "night to remember." Like that porcelain arm from a child's doll, or a bowler hat sitting by itself on the seafloor.

    "Just when you feel like you're lulled into this quiet world, you get this jolt from Neptune that this is also the resting place of this wonderful ship. ... At bottom, it is a gravesite," Gallo said.

    RMS Titanic Inc. has exclusive rights to salvage the Titanic, and it has incorporated thousands of recovered artifacts into traveling exhibitions to turn a profit — but not without controversy along the way. During this expedition, not a single artifact was brought up, although the more than 50 hours' worth of high-definition 3-D video will no doubt be used in commercial as well as scientific applications. "Just seeing the bow in 3-D provided new perspective," Davino told me. "You literally felt as if you were walking on the deck of the ship."

    Davino said he and his colleagues haven't yet decided whether or not to retrieve artifacts during future expeditions.

    "I'm open-minded to the possibilities on both sides," he told me. "It has to really start with an understanding of what the wreck site holds today — what its condition is likely to be over the course of time, how best to preserve Titanic's legacy. Should it remain in its current form, a sanctuary? Certain people — other than me, people from the government and other sectors that have been opposed to salvage operations generally — suggest that it might be appropriate to target the mailroom, or some personal effects, to bring up more about the passengers, to tell more about their stories if those items are going to be otherwise lost."

    What do you think? Should the Titanic be left alone, to rust away into nothingness during the years and decades to come? Or should more of its remains be gathered up, in cooperation with scientists and historians? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

    More about the Titanic:

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  • Underwater frontiers still beckon

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    The Expedition Titanic crew pulled into port in Newfoundland today, ending their North Atlantic adventure earlier than planned. But this isn't the final chapter of the historic shipwreck's saga.

    For one thing, there are mountains of data to go through — including HD video of the site in 3-D as well as sonar readings gathered by high-tech vehicles operating two and a half miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. The main aim of Expedition Titanic is to create the most comprehensive maps and visual record where the ship tragically came to rest 98 years ago. The Titanic was considered "unsinkable," but it struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and went down, taking 1,517 victims with it.

    The RV Jean Charcot had to leave the site late Wednesday due to the approach of Hurricane Igor, a monstrous storm stretching across 1,000 miles of the Atlantic. But researchers say they were able to get what they came for despite the forced early exit.

    "We certainly have all the data we talked about — the clues to what happened to the Titanic," Dave Gallo, expedition co-leader and a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, says in a video clip sent back from the ship. "What story can we tell from what we've seen? Are we going to change the story that exists, or are we going to come up with a new story? We haven't had the time — we've been collecting the data — to go back and look at it. ... Now we need to go back and start to look at all these things."

    One of the tales to untangle has to do with the Titanic's largely intact bow, which has become the wreck's signature image. Why does the front of the ship seem to be in such good shape? Did the bow plow into the ocean bottom directly, or did a different area of the ship take the brunt of the impact, allowing the bow to settle in more gently?

    The detailed imagery is likely to help researchers refine their models for the Titanic's breakup and descent. P.H. Nargeolet, expedition co-leader and director of underwater research for RMS Titanic Inc., talks about what is known and still not known in the must-see video displayed above. He also says time is running out. Corrosion in the form of "rusticles" is clearly taking its toll on some key sections of the shipwreck, but not so much on others.

    "In a few years, all the deck will collapse. That's for sure," Nargeolet says. "There's no question about that. The hull itself will be here for a long time."

    Gallo says the Titanic's impermanence makes this expedition critically important. "The techniques that we're using here can be applied to other shipwrecks, if we find other wrecks," he says. "But in terms of protection of this site, it's invaluable. How do you protect something if you don't know what's here?"

    Here's another first-run video that features highlights from the bow section. Pay particularly close attention to these artifacts:

    • 00:00: The camera looks down at a cargo crane that is still largely intact.
    • 00:30: A space heater, especially designed for use in the Titanic's best suites, lies out of place where third-class passengers exercised and took the sea air.
    • 00:45: A door marks the entrance to third-class accommodations, not far from the crew's mess hall.
    • 00:55: The Titanic's chains look as strong as they were 98 years ago.
    • 01:10: One of the ship's anchors is encrusted with rusticles.
    • 01:25: Sections of the hull are torn apart.

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    Will this be the last visit to the Titanic? Not on your life. Deep Ocean Expeditions is touting a 2011 trip that features visits to the site in Russian submersibles for $40,000 per person ($5,000 if you just want to stay on the ship). The next year marks the centennial of the Titanic's sinking, and cruise packages are already being set up for the 100th anniversary. The 2012 cruises will include topside memorial services and perhaps even virtual visits to the underwater site itself, thanks to remotely operated vehicles.

    But you won't have to sail to the North Atlantic to get in on the Titanic treatment in 2012. James Cameron, the film director who turned the tragedy into an Oscar-winning movies, has said that "Titanic" will be re-released in 3-D just in time for the centennial. That's old hat for Cameron: He pioneered 3-D moviemaking techniques back in 2003 for his Titanic documentary, "Ghosts of the Abyss," and turned 3-D into box-office gold in "Avatar."

    The Titanic shipwreck site isn't the only underwater frontier that's in Cameron's sights. This week Australia's NewsCore reported that the director was commissioning the construction of a deep-sea submersible to take him down the planet's deepest ocean trench, Challenger Deep. The idea would be to capture footage for use in his "Avatar" sequel, which is set in an alien world's ocean, or perhaps in two other deep-sea movies that Cameron has in mind.

    Cameron said that the submersible was "about half-completed," and that he planned to begin preparations for the dive sometime this year. "Avatar 2" is expected to come out in 2014.

    More on the Titanic and 3-D views:

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  • Expedition bids farewell to Titanic

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    An expedition to document the Titanic shipwreck site in 3-D has been brought to a quick end due to the approach of yet another hurricane.

    The RV Jean Charcot headed back from the site in the North Atlantic at midnight and is due back in port at St. John's, Newfoundland, on Friday.

    "Safety first," the Expedition Titanic team declared in a Facebook update. "The accelerated movement of Hurricane Igor means that we are leaving the wreck site earlier than expected. ... Even though we're leaving early, we still have plenty of great photos and videos to share over the coming weeks and months."

    Some of those images document areas of the debris field that have been little-seen since the 98-year-old wreck of the luxury liner was rediscovered in 1985.

    Anyone who's watched the movie "Titanic" is familiar with the ship's jutting bow  — which was the site of Leonardo DiCaprio's "King of the World" scene and now serves as the shipwreck's signature image. The bow was most recently featured in NBC News' reports from the expedition, aired last month before Hurricane Danielle forced a weeklong break in the action.

    You can almost imagine the ghosts of the Titanic's 1,517 victims wafting along nearly intact decks and rusted-out staterooms. Not so with the stern, however. The area around the ship's backside, which has been the focus of the expedition's underwater survey for the past week, reveals the full violence of the Titanic's clash with an iceberg and its resulting breakup.

    In the video above, which is being made available to the public here for the first time, you can see the steel of the hull broken off and peeled away like the skin of an orange. Whole sections of the hull are stacked on the seafloor, with portholes staring up like the eyes of dead fish.

    You can also see a ship propeller lying amid the debris, and there's a close-up look at the conical top of a high-pressure cylinder from the Titanic's main engines. With a diameter of 54 inches and a stroke of more than 6 feet, this cylinder produced about 3,750 horsepower when the Titanic was moving full steam ahead.

    Another video, shown for the first time below, surveys the debris field around the stern: a splayed-out section of the hull here, a porcelain basin there, the intricately wrought side piece from a bench sitting atop mangled metal, a brass grate gleaming dully in the deep.

    Even though the expedition is winding down, there's lots more to see: The Expedition Titanic website provides a great overview of the effort, and you can count on RMS Titanic Inc.'s Facebook page, Twitter feed, Flickr photo site and YouTube video channel to point you to the latest imagery. The Waitt Institute and WHOI's Dave Gallo are filing updates as well. If you haven't seen Kerry Sanders' reports on the expedition, check 'em out now. And stay tuned for more pictures and first-run video in a follow-up Cosmic Log posting.

     For something completely different, you can tune in at 9 p.m. ET tonight (6 p.m. PT/SLT) and hear me chat with Jay Ackroyd on "Virtually Speaking" about the future of NASA. The show is being simulcast on Second Life and BlogTalkRadio. If you miss it, don't worry: The show will be archived. Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

  • Titanic quest turns to new territory

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Researchers have returned to the site of the Titanic shipwreck, after a break that was forced by Hurricane Danielle. Now they're turning their attention from the well-known hulk's bow to its stern, to take a look at areas of the debris field that haven't been studied since the Titanic was rediscovered in 1986.

    The research vessel Jean Charcot began its high-definition, 3-D survey of the underwater site last month, with the aim of documenting the historic wreck in unprecedented detail before it disintegrates. NBC News' Kerry Sanders was in on the adventure when the first pictures were beamed up from robot vehicles operating two and a half miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. (In comparison, the remotely operated vehicles involved in the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were a mere mile down.)

    Unfortunately, Hurricane Danielle's storm track came a little too close for comfort, and the Jean Charcot had to head back to port in Newfoundland at the end of August. This week, the team sailed back to resume their survey.

    Expedition Titanic's two autonomous underwater vehicles (nicknamed Ginger and Mary Ann, after the "Gilligan's Island" women) and its camera-laden remotely operated vehicle have been back in the water already, although the seas were too choppy for remote operations today. Among the shots that have shown up on the expedition's Facebook page are eerie pictures of the officers' cabins and the first-class promenade deck.

    In a video clip, research specialist Bill Lange (who was involved in the 1986 rediscovery expedition) discusses the shift in operations from the ship's bow to its stern. The plan laid out by Lange calls for spiraling out from the stern section and checking a list of high-interest targets. "We hit this one, we're covering new ground, because no one's looked at this since '86," Lange said.

    It's been 98 years since the Titanic ran into an iceberg and sank, causing more than 1,500 deaths. The ship is slowly disintegrating into scrap, and yet it retains a powerful grip on the popular imagination — in part because the wreck was lost for so long, and in part because the sinking of an unsinkable ocean liner serves as "the world's largest symbol of man's mortality and vulnerability," as The Onion put it in a famous parody.

    The difficulties that Expedition Titanic has had to weather so far simply reinforce the metaphor's message: Never assume you can beat Mother Nature.

    I've been in touch with a couple of folks on the expedition and will keep you posted as it proceeds. But communication is spotty. "We are dealing with a very low bandwidth satellite dish out here," team member Bob Sitrick told me via e-mail. You can also check these resources for updates:

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