FLIP: The world's strangest research lab

FLIP which actually stands for Floating Instrument Platform is a unique piece of oceanographic equipment used by scientists at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. It isn’t a ship but rather a huge, 355 ft long, specialised buoy that resembles a baseball bat where researchers live and work on while they conduct scientific studies in the open ocean.

According to the institute's website, the concept of FLIP was created around 40 years ago to provide a more quiet, stable place than a regular research ship to study how sound waves behave under water. All the living and working areas are on the top part of FLIP and most of the bottom are empty compartments filled with air when FLIP is floating horizontally like a regular ship. When these compartments are filled with seawater, the lower 300 ft of FLIP sink under the water and the lighter end rises – literally flipping the entire vessel so it stands vertically. Most of the equipment and furniture in FLIP is also specially built to accommodate the flipping process.

One Positive Outcome of Global Warming

A recent report released by the US Arctic Research Commission (USARC) in March 2007, claims that the cost of shipping between Asia, the United States and Europe could be reduced significantly when melting ice due to global warming allows ships to take a shorter route through the Arctic.

Being one of the very few positive effects of Global Warming that primarily affects the Arctic marine transportation, the melting ice will enable ships to transit the North Pole via the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and thus shortening a typical 35-day journey by up to 13 days and in turn drastically cutting the cost for the same.

However, until the ice melts back far enough, cargo vessels will reportedly need tougher hulls to pass through the ice built up over several years even if transiting with the assistance of Russian icebreakers. Other impediments include current draft restrictions of 12.5m or less in certain places.

Researchers and naval archaeologists from the East Carolina University have announced that a shipwreck off the North Carolina coast that is believed to be that of the notorious English pirate, ‘Blackbeard’ could be fully excavated in three years.

The ship that reportedly ran aground in 1718 is believed to be a French slave ship that Blackbeard captured in 1717 and renamed Queen Anne’s Revenge. The wreck was first discovered in 1996 and so far, around 15 percent of the shipwreck has been recovered including jewellery, dishes and thousands other artefacts as well as 25 cannons which removed any doubt that the ship belonged to Blackbeard!

The artefacts are currently being studied by researchers to provide an insight into the era’s naval technology, slave trade and pirate life. In fact, it was supposedly the discovery of this same shipwreck that inspired Jerry Bruckheimer to produce the award-winning series of feature films, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Blackbeard, whose real name was widely believed to be Edward Teach, alias Edward Thatch was a true ‘Pirate of the Caribbean’ who had a reign of terror in the Caribbean and the Atlantic coast of North America. He was allegedly killed by volunteers from the Royal Navy in November 1718; around five months after the Queen Anne’s Revenge sank.