Johan Potgieter has an EXTREMELY close encounter with a Great White Shark off the coast of South Africa.
Film teaser : 47 Metres Down review – shark-cage thriller sinks to the bottom
This film labours unpretentiously in the shadow of Spielberg’s Jaws, before it is almost harpooned by an outrageous final twist
A follow-up to the recent great white shark cage breach accident video showing the whole story in context. It includes the original cage breach footage and an analysis. Even though the shark gets into the cage, it's not a shark attack. In the moment this was a horrifying shark encounter but it ended good for both the shark cage diver and the great white shark!
A follow-up to the recent great white shark cage breach accident video showing the whole story in context. It includes the original cage breach footage and an analysis.
Even though the shark gets into the cage, it's not a shark attack.
In the moment this was a horrifying shark encounter but it ended good for both the shark cage diver and the great white shark!
From Europeana Labs by Annapaula Freire de Oliveira Get making with our favorite world maps
We can hardly imagine our daily lives without the precise location information we have at our fingertips – on the screens of our mobile phones or computers.
The last century is considered to be a golden age of map-making.
It has transformed our everyday lives and knowledge of the world, and the digital revolution continues!
However, before globetrotters could trust digital maps to guide them to faraway places, early explorers had to resort to much simpler representations of the world, often drawing the maps themselves throughout their travels.
If you’re fascinated by maps and their history, join us as we outline how early cartographers represented the world as they knew it.
Check out our selection of freely to reuse world maps below to see how cartographers found different ways to represent their understanding of our planet.
T-O maps
The T-O map represents the physical world as first described by the 7th-century scholar Isidore of Seville.
Below a detail of a 14th century 'T-O' map of the world, with Asia, Europe, and Africa marked.
A mappa mundi is a medieval European map of the world.
Take a look at a reproduction of one of the world's most famous maps, named after the Hereford Cathedral in England.
Typical of many medieval maps, the center of the world is presented as the holy city of Jerusalem.
Earth is depicted as a disk and as land surrounded by seas.
Based on the account of the traveler Niccolo da Conti to Asia, the Genoese map is a 1457 world map that possesses a Genoese flag in its upper northwest corner, along with the coat of arms of the Spinolas, a prominent Genoese mercantile family.
An atlas is a collection of maps.
Find below a 16th century map from the Water Atlas of the World representing the proverbial "four winds", one from each of the cardinal points - North, South, East, West.
Next, an atlas containing 32 maps from around the world.
It’s divided in two parts: the first identical to the 1650 edition, the second one is an atlas of the ancient world dedicated to Greece and nearby regions.
Biblioteca Virtual Del Patrimonio Bibliográfico. CC BY.
Finally, check out a 17th century map with two hemispheres, one showing North and South America, the other Europe, Asia and Australia.
At the top and bottom there are illustrations depicting the elements "air","fire", "earth", and "water".
ARGOS has always connected mobiles everywhere on the planet.
CLS, which has operated the ARGOS satellite system since its creation, thus has all the ARGOS For NEXT GENERATIONS knowledge, professional skills, infrastructures and networks needed to work on ARGOS for Next Generations.
CLS’s mission will be to offer a new system which will give connected objects an entirely new dimension.
A universal connection, which will make the IoT available all over the world. ARGOS will be radically changing its scale of operation!
The satellite-based Internet of things (IoT) will be accessible everywhere, for a sustainable planet.
From location and data collection through to processing, the new-generation ARGOS system will offer information that has been integrated especially for its users’ professions.
Ship-owners, biologists, scientists, environmental protection stakeholders and fishery administrators will all benefit from improvements that enhance their studies, performance and daily management.
To achieve this, DATA ANALYTICS, BIG DATA and DATA MAPPING will be the watchwords for this entirely new generation ARGOS system.
The future system will usher in a radical change of scale.
A revolution in scale will be undertaken while respecting the values of CNES, CLS and the ARGOS system, with a view to protecting our planet, sustainably managing its marine resources and thus protecting humanity.
The Paris-Air Show at Le Bourget was an opportunity for CLS to begin preparing the next step in ARGOS’s future, with our full support.
The ARGOS system was one of the first satellite location and data collection systems.
It contributes a great deal to our knowledge of the environment and its protection. In this context, borne by the worldwide enthusiasm during the COP21, CLS decided to name this key, future system for the environment : “ARGOS for next generations”.
While 2020 will mark the launching of the 5G offer, the current decade is that of very high speed networks, including:
A fixed, very high speed fibre optic network, supported and deployed in France by the “France Très Haut Débit” plan.
A very high speed mobile network based on 4G.
As Internet connectivity improves, its role in economic growth and human activity is becoming essential.
How then can we accept that a significant part of our own country, just like most of Africa, has no Internet access?
Likewise, how can we imagine ourselves, whether representing a company or as an individual, not being connected while sailing across the oceans or flying over the sea or over practically uninhabited territories?
Well that’s the case today!
In France, in spite of all the private and public initiatives, more than 1.2 million homes will still lack a very high speed connection in 2022.
In Africa, South America, Asia and even some European regions, it is not possible to deploy mobile networks without satellites that link the relay antennas to the rest of the network in zones where the ground infrastructures are inadequate.
As for sailing or flying over the seas or vast, practically uninhabited landmasses, satellites remain the only conceivable connectivity solution.
However, the space sector, with support from the public authorities, has been able to innovate in time and prepare these new types of satellite.
Designed especially for Internet, they will convey data at a sustainable cost for new applications.
They will be offering unprecedented throughput.
In 20 years the total capacity of communication satellites has already been increased a thousand times!
This more or less matches the doubling every two years, predicted by Moore’s law for transistors.
Clearly the space industry is a fundamental source of innovation behind the current technological and industrial revolution.
This French space team has developed new geostationary platforms, called NEO; furthermore it has generalized the use of high-powered electrical propulsion, has designed high-capacity Internet payloads and has been able to produce and deploy the corresponding ground segments.
One might add as well, the integration of advanced digital processes to enable very flexible payloads;
All these innovations are essential building blocks that have been developed by the French space team.
Of course, apart from these innovations, one should also mention Ariane 6, which will be used to launch these new-generation satellites.
So there are solutions and it is now up to be operators to grasp and deploy them.
In parallel with the development of these geostationary satellites, which have accounted for practically the whole commercial SATCOM market for more than 20 years, projects for Internet satellite constellations in low or medium Earth orbit have emerged, such as O3B, Oneweb, Leosat and others which are apparently now being developed.
The space offer has diversified and grown to rapidly meet the many new need.
For the general public, this IoT may for instance take the form of sensors worn by individuals to monitor their health.
The signals produced are transmitted by mobile telephones to servers which analyse them.
For the industrial world, the IoT is a key component of tomorrow’s factories.
For these applications, satellites are of course not the standard solution.
But the Internet of Things also includes monitoring of the environment, tracking of aircraft and ships and monitoring logistics and supply chains from Chengdu to Cedar Rapids or Bourges: for those applications, only satellites are able to provide the worldwide coverage needed, by efficiently compensating for the limits of ground- based networks.
Some first-generation space systems have already been deployed.
They partially meet the needs for satellite-based IoT.
Several initiatives are now emerging, particularly in North America but also in China and Australia.
The French space team is already active in this field and, as I have already said, has the know- how for offering the most competitive solutions.
It is necessary however to work together, if possible, to pool the know-how and resources to launch a major initiative in the field.
CNES is completely committed to this strategy.
The work done by CLS is the right framework for this cooperation, and ARGOS is clearly the best system around which to build a satellite-based IoT!
Satellite-based IoT... ARGOS has been doing this for more than 30 years, by collecting data for scientific and environmental purposes across the entire planet!
CLS will have the full support of CNES and its engineers.
The same engineers who invented ARGOS 30 years ago!
The same engineers who have developed it right up to its fourth generation.
And no player is more qualified than CLS, which has been operating and marketing the ARGOS system, to supervise the upgrading of the system for new applications and services.
This will be done by adding a complement to the “historical” ARGOS system, based on three polar orbits, and to which we are and will remain fully committed.
CLS will have the full support of CNES and its engineers.
These same engineers who invented ARGOS 30 years ago!
The same engineers who have developed it right up to its fourth generation.
Any industrial companies that could contribute their know-how for defining the system and the satellite constellation are thus invited to contact CLS.
Likewise, for all those with business projects in the IoT field who would like to share this system and invest in it.
The ARGOS Goniometer is a direct receiver used to collect your data and decode GPS positions in real-time. The CLS goniometer has been designed by CLS to specifically allow users to find active ARGOS platforms in the field.
Depending on the altitude and the reception conditions the goniometer can detect all transmitting platforms within a radius of 100 km or more.
CNES will be carefully monitoring the progress of the project over the next few months.
IoT, the Internet of Things, is now emerging in consumer markets.
With ARGOS for NEXT GENERATIONS, CNES and CLS intend to make the IoT available anywhere on Earth.
CNES, with its visionary innovation, created the ARGOS satellite-based location and data collection system in the 1980s and for the first time ever, collected data from animals, drifting buoys, hydrology stations, volcano-monitoring platforms and fishing vessels.
The future of our fisheries depends to a large extent on our ability to preserve stocks effectively. CLS has been certified by most of the leading seaboard nations around the world and is already operating on thousands of vessels worldwide.
The ARGOS location and data collection system has always been a precursor:
It was the first constellation dedicated to the environment in the 1980s,
It became an international constellation in the 1990s,
It offered two-way broadband capability from 2000 on,
It added miniaturization in 2010; the smallest ARGOS transmitter only weighs 2 grams.
One of the main advantages of the system is that it requires very little power, which means small, autonomous transmitters can be manufactured.
The history of animal migrations has also been rewritten, with more than 100,000 animals tracked thanks to ARGOS.
Oceanography has become operational and is now used for weather forecasting and climate studies
Fishery administration has undergone a major revolution and it is now possible to track industrial ships at sea anywhere in the world, with a fully secure communications system!
Coordinates determined with ARGOS by means of Doppler location cannot be tampered with and thus enable authorities to monitor fishing vessel activities in an entirely secure way.
CLS solutions include a wide range of services based on proven and innovative space technologies. As a result of 30 years of close collaboration with governments and agencies in charge of maritime surveillance, and maritime industry operators.
ARGOS has always connected mobiles everywhere the planet.
CLS, which has operated the ARGOS satellite system since its creation, thus has all the knowledge, professional skills, infrastructures and networks needed to work on ARGOS for Next Generations.
CLS’s mission will be to offer a new system which will give connected objects an entirely new dimension.
A universal connection, which will make the IoT available all over the world.
ARGOS will be radically changing its scale of operation!
From location and data collection through to processing, the new-generation ARGOS system will offer information that has been integrated especially for its users’ professions.
Ship-owners, biologists, scientists, environmental protection stakeholders and fishery administrators will all benefit from improvements that enhance their studies, performance and daily management.
To achieve this, DATA ANALYTICS, BIG DATA and DATA MAPPING will be the watchwords for this entirely new generation ARGOS system.
The future system will usher in a radical change of scale.
Data collectors will hence become information providers.
The new ARGOS system which professionals will be able to use directly, will help them make decisions on a daily, operational basis.
A revolution in scale will be undertaken while respecting the values of CNES, CLS and the ARGOS system, with a view to protecting our planet, sustainably managing its marine resources and thus protecting humanity.
The Yara Birkeland, slated for launch late in 2018, will make short trips delivering fertilizer
Two Norwegian companies are taking the lead in the race to build the world’s first crewless, autonomously operated ship, an advance that could mark a turning point in seaborne trade.
Dubbed by shipping executives the “Tesla of the Seas,” the Yara Birkeland now under development is scheduled in late 2018 to start sailing fertilizer 37 miles down a fiord from a production facility to the port of Larvik.
Using the Global Positioning System, radar, cameras and sensors, the electric ship is designed to navigate itself around other boat traffic and to dock on its own.
The first commercial autonomous vessel in the world, and also the first commercial zero ballast vessel.
A game changer for the environment and for the shipping industry.
The vessel will cost $25 million, about three times as much as a conventional container ship of its size, but its backers say without need for fuel or crew it promises to cut annual operating costs by up to 90%.
The 100-container ship is scheduled to be in the water toward the end of next year, though initially it will be tested with a human at the controls.
The Birkeland is being jointly developed by agriculture firm Yara International ASA and Kongsberg Gruppen AS A, which builds guidance systems for civilian and military uses.
Petter Ostbo, Yara’s head of production who leads the project, said the company would look to invest in bigger ships and use them for longer routes once international regulations are in place for crewless vessels.
“Maybe even move our fertilizer from Holland all the way to Brazil,” he said.
Companies and universities are working together to develop automated cargo ships.
The Wall Street Journal looks at Rolls-Royce’s concepts for the next revolution in maritime transport.
Photo: Rolls Royce.
The International Maritime Organization, which regulates maritime travel, doesn’t expect legislation governing crewless ships to be in place before 2020.
Shipping executives say autonomous vessels will be popular for short sea routes, but doubt they will replace oceangoing ships that move thousands of containers across continents with an average crew size of around 25.
“It’s not a matter of technology, which is already there, but a business case,” said Lars Jensen, chief executive of SeaIntelligence Consulting in Copenhagen.
“Autonomous ships are expensive to begin with, and have to be built very robust, because if they break down, the cost of getting a team to fix them it in the middle of the ocean will be very high.”
In addition to reducing fuel and labor costs, the Birkeland project is being pitched as a way to cut emissions.
The ship is expected to replace 40,000 truck drives a year through urban areas in southern Norway, the companies say.
Ship operators increasingly are being asked to introduce cleaner fuels when sailing close to populated coastal areas, especially in the U.S. and Europe.
“We want to go zero emission,” said Mr. Ostbo.
“Even if some say climate change is not reality, it’s a business reality because clean sources of energy are more affordable than fossil fuels.”
An entire Norwegian fjord now opens for testing autonomous ship
technology. Test-site Trondheimsfjorden is right on the doorstep of a
world class research community - eager to take autonomous technology to
the next level.
The Birkeland will become autonomous in stages.
At first, a single container will be used as a manned bridge on board.
Then the bridge will be moved to shore and become a remote-operation center.
The ship will eventually run fully on its own, under supervision from shore, in 2020.
“When the bridge goes on land, it will be something like flying a drone from a command center,” said Kongsberg’s chief executive, Geir Haoy.
“It will be GPS navigation and lots of high-tech cameras to see what’s going around the ship.”
The Norwegians aren’t alone in looking into autonomous shipping.
British manufacturer Rolls-Royce Holding PLC is investing in similar technology and plans to launch robotic ships by 2020.
The first vessels will likely be tugboats and ferries, with cargo ships that can sail through international waters to follow.
“Once the regulation is in place, I can see this spreading fast,” Mr. Haoy said.
“There is a lot of interest from operators of coastal tankers, fish-transport vessels and supply ships that are knocking on our door.”
