() — What was supposed to be a 10-hour journey to the Titanic wreck ended in tragedy, with all five passengers on the Titan submarine dying in a catastrophic implosion. Their deaths were confirmed Thursday, capping a week-long search for survivors that was closely watched around the world.
The US Navy picked up a sound that would coincide with an implosion on Sunday, the day it went missing, and search teams have since found fragments of the Titan submersible, confirming that those on board have perished.
But many questions remain as authorities continue to search for wreckage, including when the implosion occurred and what exactly went wrong with the sub.
This is what we know so far.
What is a catastrophic implosion?
An underwater implosion refers to the sudden collapse inward of the vessel, which would have been under immense pressure at the depths to which it was submerging.
It’s not clear where or how deep the Titan was when it imploded, but the Titanic’s wreckage lies nearly 13,000 feet (nearly 4,000 meters) below sea level. The submarine was approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the approximately 2-hour descent when it lost contact.
At the depth of the Titanic wreckage, there is about 5,600 pounds per square inch of pressure, several hundred times the pressure we experience at the surface, according to Rick Murcar, director of international training for the National Association of Cave Divers. .
A catastrophic implosion is “incredibly fast” and takes place in just a fraction of a millisecond, said Aileen Maria Marty, a former naval officer and professor at Florida International University.
“Everything would have collapsed before the people inside realized there was a problem,” he told . “Ultimately, among the many ways we can get through, that’s painless.”
Experts say bodies are unlikely to be recovered.
The US Coast Guard said Thursday it will continue the search in an effort to recover what it can, but warned it was “an incredibly unforgiving environment at the bottom of the sea.”
What’s next for the search effort?
In addition to searching for the passengers, authorities will also continue searching the seabed in hopes of uncovering more information about what led to the implosion.
It will take time to put together a specific timeline of events, the US Coast Guard said Thursday, calling the underwater environment “incredibly complex.”
So far, they have located the Titan’s nose cone and one end of its pressure hulls in one large debris field, and the other end of the pressure hull in a second, smaller debris field.
“What they would do now is go back to that site and, like cookie crumbs, try to find a trail of where it would lead to,” said Tom Maddox, executive director of Underwater Forensic Investigators, who was on a 2005 Titanic expedition.
He added that pieces of wreckage could still be “slightly buoyant” and carried further by ocean currents. “So the big project right now is going to be trying to collect those parts,” he said. “They will mark them, indicate where they were, and map out where those parts were found.”
What is the chronology timeline of the disaster?
The expedition left Newfoundland, Canada, on June 16, with the support ship Polar Prince ferrying participants to the Titanic wreck site.
Then, on Sunday June 18, the five passengers began their dive in the submersible, launched from the support ship, which remained on the surface.
They began the dive around 9 a.m., with their last communication with the surface at 11:47 a.m., according to Miawpukek Maritime Horizon Services, co-owner of the Polar Prince.
They were expected to resurface at 6:10 p.m., but were not seen; Authorities were notified at 6:35 p.m. and rescue operations began at that time, according to Maritime Horizon.
There appeared to be a brief window of hope after reports emerged that search teams on Tuesday heard banging every 30 minutes, though they were unable to locate the source of the noise.
But the sub had only been equipped with 96 hours of oxygen, setting Thursday as a key target for locating and recovering the sub. On Thursday afternoon, authorities confirmed the submersible had imploded and said there does not appear to be a connection between the crashing noises and where the wreckage was found.
A senior US Navy official told the noises were likely a natural life form or sounds made by other ships and vessels that were part of the search effort.
It is still unclear when exactly the vessel may have imploded. The Navy detected a sound that was “consistent” with an implosion on Sunday, but it was determined that it was “not definitive”, so the search for survivors or wreckage of the vessel continued.
