Technology
A German aerospace engineer has set a new world record, after living for 120 days under the sea in an attempt to prove that humans could expand to living beneath the oceans.
For the record attempt, Rudiger Koch lived in a fairly comfortable environment 11 meters (36 feet) under the sea, off the coast of Panama. The 59-year-old spent his time inside a 30-square-meter (320-square-foot) capsule, complete with most modern conveniences, including a toilet, a bed, a TV, internet access, and an exercise bike to keep him active. The capsule, while underwater, had a vertical access tube, allowing visitors to keep him company during his stay. Along with the fish outside his windows, of course, which use the capsule as an artificial reef.
"In the night, you can hear all the crustaceans," Koch told AFP in December. "There's the fish out there, and there's all that stuff, and that wasn't here before we came."
Guinness World Records confirmed Koch beat the previous record for underwater living in a fixed habitat set by American Joseph Dituri off the coast of Florida by a full 20 days, emerging from his capsule on Friday, January 24.
"It was a great adventure and now it's over there's almost a sense of regret actually. I enjoyed my time here very much," Koch told AFP after rejoining the surface-dwellers.
"It is beautiful when things calm down and it gets dark and the sea is glowing," he added. "It is impossible to describe, you have to experience that yourself."
After climbing the small spiral staircase out of the ocean, Koch was greeted with champagne and a cigar, before jumping into the ocean in celebration. While a neat record, the team behind it has bigger goals in mind; showing that the oceans could be a viable place for humans to live.
"Moving out to the ocean is something we should do as a species," Koch told AFP in December. "What we are trying to do here is prove that the seas are actually a viable environment for human expansion."
While there aren't any current plans for permanent habitable underwater apartments, it's a cool proof-of-concept that humans can survive comfortably underwater, even if there was no room for a shower.
