LONDON — Researchers are hoping that new scan images of the HMS Titanic will provide some answers to what happened to the ship when it sunk in 1912.
A company called Magellan revealed images this week of the wreckage of the Titanic which is about 3,800 meters deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to the Washington Post.
Magellan said in a news release that it’s the first-ever full-sized digital scan of the ship and it provides a “unique” view of the wreckage.
The images create a 3D view of the ship and let you see the wreckage as if “the water has been drained way,” the BBC reported. The company is hoping that it will provide more information on what happened to the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912.
More than 1,500 people passengers and crew died after Titanic hit an iceberg during its journey from England to New York. Titanic analyst, Park Stephenson told the BBC that there are still lots of questions about the ship.
The new scans revealed a complete view of the ship in two parts with tons of debris around it.
Stephenson called the project a “gamechanger,” according to The Associated Press.
“We really don’t understand the character of the collision with the iceberg. We don’t even know if she hit it along the starboard side, as is shown in all the movies - she might have grounded on the iceberg,” he explained to the BBC.
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Magellan chief executive Richard Parkinson said in a statement obtained by the Washington Post that the amount of data the images have provided was “enormous.”
Parkinson said about 715,000 images have been collected from the ship, the AP reported.
The project took more than six weeks to complete in 2022, according to the Washington Post.
“It’s an absolutely one-to-one digital copy, a ‘twin,’ of the Titanic in every detail,” said Anthony Geffen, head of the documentary maker Atlantic Productions, according to the AP.
“All our assumptions about how it sank, and a lot of the details of the Titanic, comes from speculation because there is no model that you can reconstruct, or work exact distances,” Geffen said, according to the AP. “I’m excited because this quality of the scan will allow people in the future to walk through the Titanic themselves ... and see where the bridge was and everything else.”
The ship’s wreckage was discovered in 1985 at a depth of 12,500 feet, according to the AP.