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Paintsnifferoo t1_j992qzc wrote

Reply to comment by GabeDef in Previously unreleased footage from first submersible dives in July 1986 to the RMS Titanic shipwreck — British passenger liner that sank 14-15 April 1912 remains about 4,000 metres undersea in the Atlantic Ocean by marketrent

Very doubtful that there’s skeletal remains but not impossible.

Bodies nearly always float in salt water, and most of the ones from the Titanic were still on the surface a few days later. Any that didn't certainly would have been carried away by currents/turbulence well before the wreckage reached the bottom of the ocean. Which means the only bodies that might still be in the wreckage are those belonging to people who were trapped in the lower decks, of which there were very few. And given the fragility of the wreckage, we can't actually reach those areas to see if there's anything left after over a hundred years of predation (somewhat unlikely, given that the local microorganisms have done such a thorough job eating people's abandoned luggage.)

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czartaylor t1_j999053 wrote

That is actually not true. Whale falls exist so it's entire conceivable that bodies fell to the bottom intact and never refloated. In fact we have a couple photos of the wreck that indicate that some bodies did make it all the way down (there's a photo of two shoes side by side where a body landed, and everything else was eaten away but the shoes remained). Your buoyance as a human corpse is largely driven by a combination of the air in your lungs and post-death gas release. But at certain low temperatures and pressures (found in deep ocean), the death and pressure removes the air from your lungs, decomposition slows down significantly so there's no gas release, and thus you sink instead of float. The cold and pressure would actually in a vacuum do a better job of preserving your body than you'd think.

There is however no chance that any skeletal remains exist unless there's a room on the titanic that somehow miraculously was not flooded since the ship sank (no evidence to suggest this is true, but it's technically possible) , because anywhere water can get fish, crustaceans, and microorganisms that consume every single part of a human body can get. Some organisms can eat through bone. Organic material (bodies, wood, etc) was eaten away by ocean life long, long before the wreck was discovered.

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theeighthlion t1_j99civg wrote

if there were an unflooded room on the titanic what would it look like now? How deteriorated would it be?

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Sdog1981 t1_j99hief wrote

It’s impossible due to the pressure at that depth.

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amehatrekkie t1_j99mq2j wrote

The pressure is equivalent to the weight a 747 per square inch, that's the size of a postage stamp.

Nothing on the Titanic would have handled that.

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czartaylor t1_j99iabu wrote

the practical answer is 'it would look like it's underwater'. Between the sheer force of the impact of hitting the sea floor, the weight of everything above it, and a century of pressure, water, and sea life, nothing of the time could survive that.

If you hypothetically had a room that was airtight when the ship sank and could survive that long, what it would look like would depend on what organisms were alive in there before the ship sunk, so mild decomp most likely.

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