Raising The Costa Concordia

In January, the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a rock off the shore of Isola del Giglio, in the Mediterranean.30 people on board the largest passenger wreck of all time lost their lives; two are still missing. Nearly a year later, the wreck is still sitting off the Italian coast, mostly submerged.

Because the Costa Concordia is in a nationally protected marine park and coral reef, it must be removed from the area before it can be dismantled, posing countless difficulties. In a report on the efforts to remove the wreck, 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl visited the site and recounted the remarkable salvage operation, which has a $400 million price tag.Not only is it the riskiest, most complicated, and most expensive salvage plan ever undertaken, but no one is sure if it will work.

The ship weighs 60,000 tons and is filled with seawater.

It is sitting on two underwater mountain peaks. 65 percent of it is below the surface.

The wreck is an official crime scene.

The operation, which will cost about $400 million, is being paid for by insurance companies.

The plan is to rotate the ship upright, and onto an underwater platform.

Then it will float up, leaving more of its structure above the surface.

And it can be towed away.

Before getting on the inclined ship, workers must take a 4-day mountain climbing course.

The underwater platform is being built in northern Italy. The steel must be transported through the Adriatic Sea, around the boot of Italy, and up to the wreck.

The steel that makes it up weighs three times as much as the Eiffel Tower. It will be embedded in the seafloor.

The drill bit will be enclosed in a large tube, to keep debris from contaminating the protected area.

For now, the ship is held in place by steel cables, but strong storms could dislodge it. Then it would sink to the seafloor, making the salvage operation near impossible.

111 salvage divers are currently working on the salvage operation around the clock, in 45-minute shifts. They attached the cables holding the ship where it is.

They all live in floating barracks, next to the wreck site.

How exactly will workers rotate Costa Concordia onto the platform?

The plan essentially involves "weld[ing] a new ship onto the shipwreck,"

Stahl reports.

That new "ship" will consist of huge, hollow steel boxes.

Called sponsons, the biggest are 11 stories tall.

9 will be welded onto the exposed side of the ship, with just 2 inches between them.

Then steel cables will connect the sponsons to the steel platform.

Hydraulic pulleys will pull the 'Costa Concordia' upright.

More sponsons will be welded onto the other side of the ship.

Once the ship is upright, the extra buoyancy should make it float.

The ship will be floated next summer.

Once the process begins, there is no way to stop it, even if something goes wrong.

The backup plan is to break it up where it lies, at a huge cost to the local environment.

If all goes well, the 'Costa Concordia' will be cut up for scrap, far from Giglio. It is so large, the process will take 2 years.

Publisher: Unknown - 10:12 PM

Grand Central Station, New York

Will she get a letter from the Queen? Grand Central station celebrates 100th birthday as New York landmark remains one of America's busiest transport hubs

By Reuters Reporter

PUBLISHED: 22:04 GMT, 30 January 2013 | UPDATED: 23:15 GMT, 30 January 2013

It made its debut in the heyday of cross-country train travel, faced demolition in the era of the auto, and got a new lease on life with a facelift in its eighth decade.

Now Grand Central Terminal, the doyenne of American train stations, is celebrating its 100th birthday as a spectacular collection of photographs captures the famous transport hub and popular tourist attraction in all its glory.

Opened on February 2, 1913, when trains were a luxurious means of traveling across America, the iconic New York landmark with its Beaux-Arts facade is an architectural gem, and still one of America's greatest transportation hubs. It is also the Big Apple's second-most-popular tourist attraction, after Times Square.

Grand Central Terminal, shown here around 1930, is one of New York's most iconic landmarks

Publisher: Unknown - 10:11 PM

Melting Ice Glacier

Majestic glacier towers over Arctic landscape in extraordinary pictures of ice melting into the ocean

• Breathtaking images captured by photographer Hans Strand, 57, on journey through Greenland, Iceland and Norway
  
• Mr Strand covered more than 1,000 miles of ocean on his daring expedition
• The Swedish tutor says he was once almost killed by a collapsing ice cave in the dangerous North
  

By Emma Reynolds
These remarkable pictures show water crashing from a melting glacier 160 feet into the ocean at the Arctic Circle.
Tiny seagulls flitting around the frozen landscape and fishermen's trawlers dwarfed by gigantic icebergs emphasise the awe-inspiring scale of the scene.
The images were captured by Swedish photographer Hans Strand, 57, who took his life in his hands by exploring the extreme climate of the inhospitable north on a small ship.

Ice sculpture: The frozen water forms unique shapes on the water in Svalbard, as brave photographer Hans Strand sails past on his tiny ship

Publisher: Unknown - 10:06 PM

What do you know about caffeine?

What do you know about caffeine? Other then the fact that many of us rely on it every morning for a quick perk-me-up, there is little else that is widely known about  America's legal drug of choice. Here are some interesting facts lying within your morning cup of joe.

Publisher: Unknown - 9:35 PM

CAMERing

CAMERing

Publisher: Unknown - 9:32 PM

Great Indian Sages who revolutionised the field of Science

Our illustrious past in the field of Science before the invasions of Islamic Portuguese hordes is worth noting. This should give inspiration to our young generation who will then realise what great scientists were produced in the golden era of India.

Aryabhatt (476 BCE) - Master Astronomer and Mathematician

Publisher: Unknown - 9:09 PM

Noah's Ark in Hong Kong

Publisher: Unknown - 9:52 PM

Moon Base

One small hut for man: European Space Agency unveils plans for mankind's first habitable MOON BASE... built almost entirely out of lunar soil by robots

• 3D printing technology will transform raw lunar soil into livable domes
• Will house four people and protect them from meteorites and gamma radiation
• Could be ready for humans to move in within the next 40 years
  

By Matt Blake

Blueprints for mankind's first habitable lunar base were unveiled today... and it will be build by robots almost entirely out of 'Moon soil'.
The outpost, designed by the European Space Agency, will be built using state-of-the-art 3D printing technology to transform raw lunar soil into livable domes.
The ESA teamed up with architectural firm Foster + Partners in a bid to set the wheels in motion for a permanent human presence on Earth's only natural satellite.
And experts say it could be ready for humans to move in within the next 40 years.

Built by robots: The structure will house four people, and can offer protection from meteorites, gamma radiation and vast temperature fluctuations

Autonomous robots will be used to 3D print a cellular structure to house four people, and can offer protection from meteorites, gamma radiation and vast temperature fluctuations.
The ESA's human spaceflight team's Scott Hovland said: '3D printing offers a potential means of facilitating lunar settlement with reduced logistics from Earth.'
The theory is that 90 per cent of the materials needed to build the structure already exists on the Moon, so only the robots and light-weight parts, such as inflatables and the solid connector and entry segments, will have to be ferried from Earth.

Ambitious: The ESA teamed up with architectural firm Foster + Partners in a bid to set the wheels in motion for a permanent human presence on Earth's only natural satellite

Autonomous robots will be used to 3D print a cellular structure fit for habitation
The few parts that would need to be made on Earth would be folded from a tubular module that can be transported by space rocket.
To ensure strength while keeping the amount of binding 'ink' to a minimum, the shell is made up of a hollow closed cellular structure similar to foam.

Publisher: Unknown - 9:45 PM

Garden in a Bottle

Thriving since 1960, my garden in a bottle: Seedling sealed in its own ecosystem and watered just once in 53 years

• David Latimer first planted his bottle garden in 1960 and last watered it in 1972 before tightly sealing it shut 'as an experiment'
  
• The hardy spiderworts plant inside has grown to fill the 10-gallon container by surviving entirely on recycled air, nutrients and water
• Gardeners' Question Time expert says it is 'a great example just how pioneering plants can be'
• By David Wilkes

To look at this flourishing mass of plant life you’d think David Latimer was a green-fingered genius.
Truth be told, however, his bottle garden – now almost in its 53rd year – hasn’t taken up much of his time.
In fact, on the last occasion he watered it Ted Heath was Prime Minister and Richard Nixon was in the White House.

Still going strong: Pensioner David Latimer from Cranleigh, Surrey, with his bottle garden that was first planted 53 years ago and has not been watered since 1972 - yet continues to thrive in its sealed environment

For the last 40 years it has been completely sealed from the outside world. But the indoor variety of spiderworts (or Tradescantia, to give the plant species its scientific Latin name) within has thrived, filling its globular bottle home with healthy foliage.

Yesterday Mr Latimer, 80, said: ‘It’s 6ft from a window so gets a bit of sunlight. It grows towards the light so it gets turned round every so often so it grows evenly.

‘Otherwise, it’s the definition of low-maintenance. I’ve never pruned it, it just seems to have grown to the limits of the bottle.’

The bottle garden has created its own miniature ecosystem. Despite being cut off from the outside world, because it is still absorbing light it can photosynthesise, the process by which plants convert sunlight into the energy they need to grow.

Lush: Just like any other plant, Mr Latimers's bottled specimen has survived and thrived using the cycle of photosynthesis despite being cut off from the outside world

HOW THE BOTTLE GARDEN GROWS

Bottle gardens work because their sealed space creates an entirely self-sufficient ecosystem in which plants can survive by using photosynthesis to recycle nutrients.
The only external input needed to keep the plant going is light, since this provides it with the energy it needs to create its own food and continue to grow.
Light shining on the leaves of the plant is absorbed by proteins containing chlorophylls (a green pigment).
Some of that light energy is stored in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that stores energy. The rest is used to remove electrons from the water being absorbed from the soil through the plant's roots.
These electrons then become 'free' - and are used in chemical reactions that convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, releasing oxygen.
This photosynthesis process is the opposite of the cellular respiration that occurs in other organisms, including humans, where carbohydrates containing energy react with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, water, and release chemical energy.
But the eco-system also uses cellular respiration to break down decaying material shed by the plant. In this part of the process, bacteria inside the soil of the bottle garden absorbs the plant's waste oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide which the growing plant can reuse.
And, of course, at night, when there is no sunlight to drive photosynthesis, the plant will also use cellular respiration to keep itself alive by breaking down the stored nutrients.

Because the bottle garden is a closed environment, that means its water cycle is also a self-contained process.
The water in the bottle gets taken up by plants’ roots, is released into the air during transpiration, condenses down into the potting mixture, where the cycle begins again.

Photosynthesis creates oxygen and also puts more moisture in the air. The moisture builds up inside the bottle and ‘rains’ back down on the plant.

The leaves it drops rot at the bottom of the bottle, creating the carbon dioxide also needed for photosynthesis and nutrients which it absorbs through its roots.

It was Easter Sunday 1960 when Mr Latimer thought it would be fun to start a bottle garden ‘out of idle curiosity’.
He said: ‘At the time the chemical industry had changed to transporting things in plastic bottles so there were a lot of glass ones on the market.

‘Bottle gardens were a bit of a craze and I wanted to see what happened if you bunged the thing up.’

Habitable zone: The spot under the stairs where Mr Latimer has kept the bottle garden for the past 27 years

Into a cleaned out ten gallon carboy, or globular bottle, which once contained sulphuric acid, he poured some compost then carefully lowered in a seedling using a piece of wire.

He put in about a quarter of a pint of water. It was not until 1972 that he gave it another ‘drink’.

After that, he greased the bung so it wedged in tightly... and has not watered it since.

The bottle stands on display under the stairs in the hallway of his home in Cranleigh, Surrey, the same spot it has occupied for 27 years after he and his wife Gretchen moved from Lancashire when he retired as an electrical engineer.

It was revealed to the world when he took a photograph of it in to BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time and asked the panel of experts if it is ‘of scientific or horticultural interest’.

Garden designer and television presenter Chris Beardshaw said: ‘It’s a great example of the way in which a plant is able to recycle... It’s the perfect cycle of life.’

He added that this process is one reason why NASA was interested in taking plants into space.

‘Plants operate as very good scrubbers, taking out pollutants in the air, so that a space station can effectively become self-sustaining,’ he said. ‘This is a great example of just how pioneering plants are and how they will persist given the opportunity.

‘The only input to this whole process has been solar energy, that’s the thing it has needed to keep it going. Everything else, every other thing in there has been recycled. That’s fantastic.’

Organic gardener Bob Flowerdew was less enthusiastic.

‘It’s wonderful but not for me, thanks. I can’t see the point. I can’t smell it, I can’t eat it,’ he said. Mr Latimer agrees the bottle garden is ‘incredibly dull in that it doesn’t do anything’, but remains fascinated to see how long it will last.

He hopes to pass on the ‘experiment’ to his grown-up children after he is gone.

If they do not want it, he will leave it to the Royal Horticultural Society.

Publisher: Unknown - 8:55 PM

MALDIVES RESORTS

MALDIVES RESORTS

Publisher: Unknown - 5:18 PM

Ice Tunnels Of French Alps

The ice tunnels of the French Alps: Breathtaking shots show climbers risking their lives in steep, narrow caves

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 11:03 GMT, 14 January 2013 | UPDATED: 12:08 GMT, 14 January 2013

These breathtaking photographs show climbers scaling a treacherous tunnel made entirely from ice to make their way out of a cave carved in a frigid glacier.

The brave explorers look as though they are on the verge of sliding down the swooping sides of the cave - a vertiginous drop of more than 20m onto jagged ice.

Braving freezing temperatures and a dangerous ascent, Alexandre Buisse clung to supports screwed directly into the walls of ice to photograph his friends scaling the Mer de Glace glacier in Chamonix, France.

Brave: Hulya Vassail climbs the sheer, treacherous walls of a moulin ice cave, formed by meltwater on Chamonix's Mer de Glace glacier

Publisher: Unknown - 4:49 PM