John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean

25,519 views ・ 2010-07-28

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:16
For a moment, what I need to do
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is project something on the screen of your imagination.
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We're in 17th century Japan
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on the west coast,
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and a little, wizened monk
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is hurrying along, near midnight,
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to the crest of a small hill.
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He arrives on the small hill,
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dripping with water.
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He stands there,
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and he looks across at the island, Sado.
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And he scans across the ocean, and he looks at the sky.
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Then he says to himself, very quietly,
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"[Turbulent the sea,]
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[Stretching across to Sado]
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[The Milky Way]."
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Basho was a brilliant man.
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He said more with less
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than any human
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that I have ever read or talked to.
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Basho, in 17 syllables,
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juxtaposed
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a turbulent ocean
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driven by a storm now past,
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and captured the almost
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impossible beauty
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of our home galaxy
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with millions of stars,
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probably hundreds and hundreds of -- who knows how many -- planets,
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maybe even an ocean
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that we will probably call Sylvia in time.
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As he was nearing his death,
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his disciples and followers
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kept asking him,
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"What's the secret?
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How can you
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make haiku poems so beautiful so easily?"
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And toward the end, he said,
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"If you would know the pine tree,
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go to the pine tree."
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That was it.
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(Laughter)
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Sylvia has said we must use
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every capacity we have
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in order to know the oceans.
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If we would know the oceans,
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we must go to the oceans.
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And what I'd like to talk to you today about, a little bit,
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is really transforming
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the relationship, or the interplay,
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between humans and oceans
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with a new capability
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that is not at all routine yet.
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I hope it will be.
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There are a few key points.
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One of them is the oceans are central
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to the quality of life on earth.
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Another is that there are bold, new ways
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of studying oceans
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that we have not used well yet.
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And the last is that these bold, new ways
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that we are exploring
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as a community
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will transform the way we look at our planet, our oceans,
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and eventually how we manage
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probably the entire planet, for what it's worth.
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So what scientists do when they begin
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is to start with the system.
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They define what the system is.
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The system isn't Chesapeake Bay.
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It's not the Kuril arc. It's not even the entire Pacific.
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It's the whole planet,
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the entire planet, continents and oceans together.
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That's the system.
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And basically, our challenge
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is to optimize the benefits
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and mitigate the risks
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of living on a planet that's driven by only two processes,
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two sources of energy,
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one of which is solar,
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that drives the winds, the waves,
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the clouds, the storms and photosynthesis.
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The second one is internal energy.
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And these two war against one another
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almost continuously.
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Mountain ranges, plate tectonics,
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moves the continents around, forms ore deposits.
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Volcanoes erupt.
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That's the planet that we live on.
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It's immensely complex.
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Now I don't expect all of you to see all the details here,
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but what I want you to see is
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this is about 10 percent
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of the processes that operate within
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the oceans almost continuously,
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and have for the last 4 billion years.
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This is a system that's been around a very long time.
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And these have all co-evolved.
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What do I mean by that?
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They interact with one another constantly.
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All of them interact with one another.
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So the complexity of this system that we're looking at,
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the one driven by the sun --
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upper portion, mostly --
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and the lower portion is partly driven
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by the input from heat below
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and by other processes.
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This is very, very important
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because this is the system, this is the crucible,
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out of which life on the planet came,
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and it's now time for us to understand it.
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We must understand it.
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That's one of the themes that Sylvia reminds us about:
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understand this ocean of ours,
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this basic life support system,
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the dominant life support system on the planet.
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Look at this complexity here.
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This is only one variable.
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If you can see the complexity,
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you can see how
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tiny, little eddies
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and large eddies and the motion --
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this is just sea surface temperature,
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but it's immensely complicated.
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Now a layer in,
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the other two or three hundred processes
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that are all interacting,
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partly as a function of temperature, partly as a function of all the other factors,
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and you've got a really complicated system.
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That's our challenge, is to understand,
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understand this system in new and phenomenal ways.
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And there's an urgency to this.
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Part of the urgency comes from the fact
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that, of order, a billion people on the planet currently
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are undernourished or starving.
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And part of the issue
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is for Cody --
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who's here,
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16 years old --
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and I have permission to relay this number.
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When he, 40 years from now,
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is the age of Nancy Brown,
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there are going to be
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another two and a half billion people on the planet.
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We can't solve all the problems
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by looking only at the oceans,
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but if we don't understand
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the fundamental life support system of this planet
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much more thoroughly than we do now,
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then the stresses that we will face,
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and that Cody will face,
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and even Nancy, who's going to live till she's 98,
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will have really problems coping.
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All right, let's talk about another perspective
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on the importance of the oceans.
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Look at this diagram, which is showing
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warm waters in red,
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cool waters in blue,
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and on the continents, what you're seeing in bright green,
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is the growth of vegetation,
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and in olive green, the dieback of vegetation.
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And in the lower left hand corner there's a clock ticking away
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from 1982 to 1998
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and then cycling again.
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What you'll see is that the rhythms
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of growth, of vegetation --
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a subset of which is food on the continents --
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is directly tied to the rhythms
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of the sea surface temperatures.
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The oceans control,
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or at least significantly influence,
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correlate with,
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the growth patterns and the drought patterns
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and the rain patterns on the continents.
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So people in Kansas, in a wheat field in Kansas,
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need to understand that the oceans
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are central to them as well.
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Another complexity: this is the age of the oceans.
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I'm going to layer in on top of this
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the tectonic plates.
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The age of the ocean, the tectonic plates,
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gives rise to a totally new phenomenon
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that we have heard about
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in this conference.
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And I share with you some very high-definition video
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that we collected in real time.
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Seconds after this video was taken,
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people in Beijing,
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people in Sydney, people in Amsterdam,
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people in Washington D.C. were watching this.
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Now you've heard of hydrothermal vents,
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but the other discovery
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is that deep below the sea floor,
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there is vast reservoir of microbial activity,
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which we have only just discovered
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and we have almost no way to study.
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Some people have estimated
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that the biomass
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tied up in these microbes
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living in the pours and the cracks
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of the sea floor and below
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rival the total amount of living biomass
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at the surface of the planet.
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It's an astonishing insight,
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and we have only found out about this recently.
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This is very, very exciting.
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It may be the next rainforest,
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in terms of pharmaceuticals.
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We know little or nothing about it.
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Well, Marcel Proust has this wonderful saying
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that, "The real voyage of discovery
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consists not so much in seeking new territory,
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but possibly in having new sets of eyes,"
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new ways of seeing things,
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a new mindset.
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And many of you remember
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the early stages of oceanography,
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when we had to use what we had at our fingertips.
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And it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy in those days.
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Some of you remember this, I'm sure.
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And now, we have an entire suite of tools
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that are really pretty powerful --
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ships, satellites, moorings.
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But they don't quite cut it. They don't quite give us what we need.
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And the program that I wanted to talk to you about
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just a little bit here,
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was funded, and it involves autonomous vehicles
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like the one running across the base of this image.
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Modeling: on the right hand side,
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there's a very complex computational model.
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On the left hand side, there's a new type of mooring,
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which I'll show you in just a second.
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And on the basis
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of several points,
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the oceans are complex, and they're central to the life on earth.
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They are changing rapidly, but not predictably.
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And the models that we need to predict the future
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do not have enough data to refine them.
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The computational power
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is amazing.
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But without data, those models
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will never ever be predicted.
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And that's what we really need.
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For a variety of reasons they're dangerous,
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but we feel that OOI,
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this Ocean Observatory Initiative,
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which the National Science Foundation
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has begun to fund,
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has the potential to really transform things.
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And the goal of the program is to
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launch an era of scientific discovery
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and understanding
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across and within the ocean basins,
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utilizing widely accessible,
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interactive telepresence.
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It's a new world.
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We will be present throughout
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the volume of the ocean, at will,
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communicating in real time.
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And this is what the system involves,
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a number of sites in the southern hemisphere,
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shown in those circles.
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And in the northern hemisphere there are four sites.
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I won't talk a lot about most of them right here,
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but the one on the west coast, that's in the box,
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is called the regional scale nodes.
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It was once called Neptune.
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And let me show you what's behind it.
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Fiber: next-generation way of communicating.
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You can see the copper tips on these things.
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You can transmit power,
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but the bandwidth is in those tiny, little threads
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smaller than the hair on your head in diameter.
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And this particular set here
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can transmit something of the order of
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three to five terabits per second.
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This is phenomenal bandwidth.
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And this is what the planet looks like.
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We are already laced up
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as if we're in a fiber optic corset, if you like.
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This is what it looks like.
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And the cables go really continent to continent.
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It's a very powerful system,
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and most of our communications consist of it.
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So this is the system that I'm talking about,
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off the west coast. It's coincident with the tectonic plate,
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the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.
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And it's going to deliver abundant power
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and unprecedented bandwidth
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across this entire volume --
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in the overlying ocean,
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on the sea floor and below the sea floor.
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Bandwidth and power
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and a wide variety of processes
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that will be operating.
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This is what one of those primary nodes looks like,
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and it's like a sub station with power and bandwidth
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that can spread out over an area the size of Seattle.
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And the kind of science that can be done
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will be determined by a variety of scientists who want to be involved
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and can bring the instrumentation to the table.
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They will bring it and link it in.
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It'll be, in a sense, like having time on a telescope,
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except you'll have your own port.
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Climate change, ocean acidification,
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dissolved oxygen,
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carbon cycle, coastal upwelling,
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fishing dynamics --
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the full spectrum of
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earth science and ocean science
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simultaneously in the same volume.
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So anyone coming along later
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simply accesses the database
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and can draw down the information they need
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about anything that has taken place.
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And this is just the first of these.
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In conjunction with our Canadian colleagues, we've set this up.
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Now I want to take you into the caldera.
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On the left hand side there
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is a large volcano called Axial Seamount.
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And we're going to go down into the Axial Seamount
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using animation.
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Here's what this system is going to look like
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that we are funded to build at this point.
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Very powerful.
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That's an elevator that's constantly moving up and down,
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but it can be controlled by the folks on land
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who are responsible for it.
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Or they can transfer control
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to someone in India or China
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who can take over for a while,
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because it's all going to be directly connected
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through the Internet.
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There will be massive amounts of data flowing ashore,
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all available to anyone who has any interest in using it.
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14:15
This is going to be much more powerful
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than having a single ship
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in a single location,
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then move to a new location.
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We're flying across the caldera floor.
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There is a number of robotic systems.
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There's cameras that can be turned on and off at your will,
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if those are your experiments.
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The kinds of systems that will be down there,
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the kinds of instruments that will be on the sea floor,
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consist of -- if you can read them there --
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there's cameras, there's pressure sensors,
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fluorometers, there's seismometers.
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It's a full spectrum of tools.
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Now, that mound right there
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actually looks like this.
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This is what it actually looks like.
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And this is the kind of activity
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that we can see with high-definition video,
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because the bandwidth of these cables
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is so huge
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that we could have five to 10
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stereo HD systems
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running continuously
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and, again, directed through robotic techniques from land.
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Very, very powerful.
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And these are the things that we're funded to do today.
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So what can we actually do tomorrow?
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We're about to ride the wave
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of technological opportunity.
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There are emerging technologies throughout
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the field around oceanography,
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which we will incorporate into oceanography,
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and through that convergence,
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we will transform oceanography into something even more magical.
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Robotics systems are just incredible these days,
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absolutely incredible.
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And we will be bringing robotics of all sorts
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into the ocean.
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Nanotechnology: this is a small generator.
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It's smaller than a postage stamp,
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and it can generate power just by being
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attached to your shirt as you move.
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Just as you move, it generates power.
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There are many kinds of things that can be used in the ocean, continuously.
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Imaging: Many of you know a good deal more about this type of thing than I,
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but stereo imaging at four times the definition
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that we have in HD
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will be routine within five years.
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And this is the magic one.
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As a result of the human genome process,
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we are in a situation where
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events that take place in the ocean --
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like an erupting volcano, or something of that sort --
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can actually be sampled.
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We pump the fluid through one of these systems,
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and we press the button,
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and it's analyzed for the genomic character.
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And that's transmitted back to land immediately.
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So in the volume of the ocean,
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we will know, not just the physics and the chemistry,
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but the base of the food chain
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will be transparent to us
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with data on a continuous basis.
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Grid computing: the power of grid computers
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is going to be just amazing here.
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We will soon be using grid computing
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to do pretty much everything, like adjust the data
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and everything
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that goes with the data.
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The power generation will come from the ocean itself.
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And the next generation fiber
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will be simply magic.
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It's far beyond what we currently have.
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So the presence of the power
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and the bandwidth in the environment
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will allow all of these new technologies
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to converge in a manner that is just unprecedented.
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So within five to seven years,
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I see us having
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a capacity to be completely present
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throughout the ocean
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and have all of that connected to the Internet,
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so we can reach many, many folks.
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Delivering the power and the bandwidth into the ocean
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will dramatically accelerate adaptation.
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Here's an example.
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When earthquakes take place, massive amounts
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of these new microbes we've never seen before
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come out of the sea floor.
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We have a way of addressing that,
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a new way of addressing that.
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We've determined from the earthquake activity that you're seeing here
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that the top of that volcano is erupting,
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so we deploy the troops.
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What are the troops? The troops are the autonomous vehicles, of course.
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And they fly into the erupting volcano.
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They sample the fluids coming out of the sea floor
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during an eruption,
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which have the microbes that have never been
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to the surface of the planet before.
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They eject it to the surface where it floats,
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and it is picked up
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by an autonomous airplane,
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and it's brought back to the laboratory
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within 24 hours of the eruption.
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This is doable. All the pieces are there.
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A laboratory: many of you heard what happened
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on 9/7.
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Some doctors in New York City removed
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the gallbladder of a woman in France.
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We could do work on the sea floor that would be stunning,
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and it would be on live TV,
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if we have interesting things to show.
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So we can bring an entirely new telepresence
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to the world, throughout the ocean.
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This -- I've shown you sea floor --
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but so the goal here is real time interaction
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with the oceans from anywhere on earth.
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It's going to be amazing.
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And as I go here,
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I just want to show you what we can bring into classrooms,
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and indeed, what we can bring into your pocket.
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Many of you don't think of this yet,
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but the ocean will be in your pocket.
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It won't be long. It won't be long.
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So let me leave you then
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with a few words
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from another poet, if you'll forgive me.
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In 1943,
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T.S. Eliot wrote the "Four Quartets."
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He won the Nobel Prize for literature
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in 1948.
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In "Little Gidding" he says --
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speaking I think for the human race,
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but certainly for the TED Conference and Sylvia --
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"We shall not cease from exploration,
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and the end of all our exploring
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will be to arrive where we started
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and know the place for the first time,
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arrive through the unknown remembered gate
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where the last of earth left to discover
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is that which was the beginning.
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At the source of the longest river
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the voice of a hidden waterfall
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not known because not looked for,
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but heard, half heard
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in the stillness beneath the waves of the sea."
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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