We’re going under the sea on today’s show. Or, rather, we will, once this giant undersea research station is in place.
It’s going to be called PROTEUS, and it’s been dreamed up by Fabien Cousteau.
You might recognize the last name, since he’s the grandson of the iconic underwater scientist and explorer Jacques Cousteau.
Essentially Fabien Cousteau is proposing we have an underwater equivalent of the International Space Station.
Scientists, educators, nongovernmental organizations and others can use the facilities to study the ocean and marine life and share their discoveries with the rest of us.
There’s a lab like this off the coast of Florida, called Aquarius, but PROTEUS will be much bigger, with 4,000 square feet in all.
The plans include a multimedia production studio, to make videos and do livestream chats with school groups, and an underwater greenhouse to grow some of its own food.
And food is one of the many logistical issues that will need to be sorted out, since Fabien Cousteau says people living underwater burn a lot more calories than those on the surface.
Plus, if you’re living in an underwater research station, an oven or a barbeque grill might not be the best things to have on hand, so they have to rethink how to prepare food as well.
Cousteau wants to build PROTEUS in the Caribbean and, if all goes well, put similar underwater stations in other parts of the world.
We’ve only explored about 5 percent of the world’s oceans, so there’s plenty still to uncover.
He hopes the more discoveries we make under the sea, the more we’ll all better appreciate and protect what’s down there.
And if we don’t build a big underwater station then Dr. No and SPECTRE will do it.
The Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin has released the winning entries in its annual Peeps Art Exhibition.
It was postponed in the spring but now it’s here, and as always, the entries are full of creativity, corny jokes and lots of little marshmallow birds and bunnies.
There’s a parody of Robert Indiana’s famous Love statue, with a Peep bunny in place of the O.
There’s a set of Peep folding matrushka dolls.
And Lin-Manuel Miranda would be proud of the lobby poster for the sweetest hip-hop musical of all time: Peepilton.
Fabien Cousteau Is Building PROTEUS, an Underwater ‘International Space Station’ (HowStuffWorks)
RAM 11th Annual International PEEPS Art Exhibition (Racine Art Museum)
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