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"in pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C" Is this supposed to be terrifying? Anyone who woke up at night and walked to the bathroom faced pitch darkness an
by ucaetano 10y ago
"in pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C"
Is this supposed to be terrifying? Anyone who woke up at night and walked to the bathroom faced pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C!
- tremon 10y agoIt is possible the authors were just trying to illustrate the remoteness of the ecosystem, without meaning to evoke emotion. Regardless, I don't think many city dwellers have ever experienced pitch black.
- rangibaby 10y agoI don't think anyone has. When it's that dark you get a free light show courtesy of your eyes. It was quite disconcerting the first time it happened to me.
- bovermyer 10y agoClearly you've never been in the (real) middle of nowhere at night when it's cloudy. Rural North Dakota, for example.
- ucaetano 10y agoI think he means the noise you see in the complete absence of light, or Eigengrau.
- Retric 10y agoStars put out quite a bit of light in remote areas, cloud cover may block ~75% of this, but it's still far from 'pitch black'. One of the stranger things about caving is it just keeps getting darker as you go deeper. PS: As a kid I used to spend a lot of time walking around in starlight. I only ever really used a flashlight inside. I moved much closer to a city and light pollution is terrible to the point where there is little need to turn lights on in my apartment unless I want to read something.
- NetStrikeForce 10y agoIt adds to claustrophobia if you're descending through a narrow crack in the ground :-)
- kbart 10y agoCombine that with damp, low oxygen air, confined space and protective suit with all the equipment you must be wearing, and I'm sure it gets irritating pretty fast.
- infinity0 10y ago25 °C for British people is pretty terrifying :p
- dageshi 10y agoYou'd be complaining about the heat at that point.
- OJFord 10y agoWe need to start having conversations about whether the law compels people to go home from work and school at that sort of temperature.
- restlessmedia 10y agoI'd definitely be in shorts for that searing heat.
- fishnchips 10y agoGoogle's Irish datacenter does not even need the cooling since it never gets that warm in Ireland and in an unlikely case it did you can just shut down servers for that few hours of unexpected summer.
- wmil 10y agoI don't know where you live, but I bet it's not Canada.
- davidw 10y agoI was expecting a bit more extreme number myself after the 'alien place' buildup.
- pcrh 10y agoUnless linked to geothermal structures, most deeply underground caves are much cooler than that, around 10-15°C.
- djsumdog 10y agoIn a deep maze of subsurface caves filled with all kinds of creepy crawling bugs, where you could easily get stranded if your ropes to the surface get cut, then yes. Yes that's fucking terrifying.
- CWuestefeld 10y agoThat whole section of the article seemed pretty silly. Talking about rappelling down a rope, through a tight passage, and through twisty, turny little passages is really just another cave, in that respect. If you're claustrophobic it might put you off, but if you've done any spelunking, this is nothing at all to write home about.