maddbiker

I have a question for you, and would appreciate your feedback…. Would a large military submarine, whilst travelling below the sea surface, affect the Earth's geoid, enabling an extremely sensitive satellite based gradiometer, to detect the anomaly caused by a submarine, in comparison to a high-resolution reference map of the geoid? The submarine would most probably be at neutral buoyancy, with depth adjusted via its control surfaces. Rune Floberghagen, Esa's GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite) mission manager explained the sensitivity of GOCE as follows: "Imagine a snowflake, which has a fraction of a gram, slowly falling down on to the deck of a super tanker. The acceleration that the super tanker experiences from that snowflake is comparable to the sensitivity of our instrument" Whilst the overall structure of the submarine would be neutral in buoyancy, there would be a large internal volume where the water will be 100% displaced by air, and thus have almost nil mass in comparison to the water surrounding it. What do you think?