After the recent streak of robotic failures that we've seen, it's refreshing to see yet another success story come our way. Just as it did in February, the two-meter wide DepthX (Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer) robotic submarine successfully mapped out a massive sinkhole in Mexico, but this time was quite a bit more rewarding. The cavern that it ventured into was the El Zacatón Cenote, which is better known as the world's deepest water-filled sinkhole, and the machine was able to delve some 270-meters down to "create the first map of the giant cavity." The hole itself is large enough to "swallow New York's Chrysler Building," and while the endeavor was indeed a success, researchers are hoping to get it back down there in the near future to better analyze a mysterious slope that it wasn't quite able to probe. Godspeed, DepthX.

[Via Slashdot]

With all the great underwater nature documentaries available in high definition these days, we have no real interest in actually getting out of our chairs to go exploring among sharks, fish, and seaweed, but it's nice to know that there will soon be a non-self-powered personal submarine on the market in case we ever do decide to take the plunge. After three years of furious design, development, and testing, a Dutch company called U-Boat Worx is finally ready to release its battery-powered C-Quester 1 to aquatic enthusiasts worldwide, which will allow them to cruise down to depths of 50 meters at a maximum speed of 3 knots for up to two-and-a-half hours. The main advantage of this craft over traditional scuba diving is the fact that its cabin maintains a constant pressure of one atmosphere, meaning that you can surface immediately without having to sit through those boring decompression periods -- and if for some reason you can't surface, the on-board oxygen tanks and CO2 scrubbers will keep you alive for 36 hours or until help arrives, whichever comes first. Scheduled to ship sometime this month, the CQ1 is conspicuously missing a pricetag on the company's website; you have to call or write if you're interested, which probably means that pricing falls somewhere between a Sea-doo and a 7-series BMW.

[Thanks, Sytse S.]