Only Robots Can Visit Deep-Sea Vents. Now You Can--In Glorious VR!

The promise of virtual reality is that it can transport you to places you'd prefer not to go: the tops of the highest mountains, for instance, or the mosh pit of Norwegian party metal concert. Then there are the impossible places, like the roiling vents at the bottom of the deepest oceans, where crushing pressures and searing heat make an environment fit only for robots. In March, one of those robots, the straightforwardly-named Remotely Operated Vehicle for Ocean Sciences, spent a staggering 150 hours exploring an undersea volcano near Samoa. Not only were researchers from the Schmidt Ocean Institute able to capture VR video and upload it to YouTube so regular folk can explore the action themselves (check it out below), but they 3-D mapped a so-called black smoker vent so scientists around the world can study the phenomenon independently. But this wasn't all an exercise in delayed gratification.