“New 3D Titanic Model Unveils Surprising Details of the Sunken Ship”

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Last summer, a team of researchers using two remote-controlled submersibles spent six weeks in the North Atlantic mapping the entire wreckage and the surrounding 3-mile debris field, which was strewn with personal belongings such as shoes and watches of the liner’s passengers.

Richard Parkinson, founder and CEO of deep-sea exploration company Magellan, estimates that the resulting data, including 715,000 images, is 10 times larger than any underwater 3D models attempted to date.

“It’s an absolutely one-to-one digital replica of the Titanic, with all the details,” said Anthony Geffen, president of Atlantic Productions, the documentary film maker.

The Titanic was on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York when it struck an iceberg off Newfoundland in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. The luxury ocean liner sank within hours, taking about 1,500 people with it.

The shipwreck, which was discovered in 1985, lies at a depth of about 3,800 meters, about 700 kilometers off the coast of Canada.

Geffen says that previous images of the Titanic were often limited by low lighting levels, allowing viewers to see only one part of the wreck at a time. He said the new photo-realistic 3D model shows clearly and in detail both the bow and stern parts that were separated at the time of the sinking, including the serial number on the propeller.

Researchers have spent seven months rendering the vast amount of data they collected, and the project is expected to be made into a documentary next year. But Geffen hopes the new technology will help researchers uncover the details of how the Titanic met its fate and allow people to interact with history in new ways.

“All of our assumptions about how it sank, and many details about the Titanic, come from speculation because there is no model to reconstruct or determine exact distances,” he said. “I’m excited because the quality of this scan will allow people in the future to walk around the Titanic themselves and see where the bridge and everything else was.”

Park Stevenson, a leading Titanic expert involved in the project, called the modeling “game-changing.”

“I’m seeing details that none of us have seen before, which allows us to build on everything we’ve learned so far and see the wreck in a new light,” he said. “We’ve obtained real-world data that engineers can use to study the true mechanics of the breakup and sinking, bringing us even closer to the true story of the Titanic disaster.”