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The Universe Below: Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea
Pulitzer Prize winner William J. Broad takes us on an adventure to the planet's last and most exotic frontier -- the depths of the sea. The Universe Below examines how we are illuminating its dark recesses as a wave of advanced technology quietly opens the Earth's largest and most mysterious environment.
Broad takes us on breathtaking dives and expeditions -- to the Azores, to the Titanic , to hot springs teeming with bizarre life, to icy fissures aswarm with gulper eels, vampire squids, and gelatinous beasts longer than a city bus. We meet legendary explorers and researchers and go with them as they probe the ancient mysteries of a universe that encompasses the vast majority of the Earth's habitable space and holds millions of humanity's lost artworks and treasures.
The Universe Below is an unforgettable trip to our last great unexplored frontier.
Broad takes us on breathtaking dives and expeditions -- to the Azores, to the Titanic , to hot springs teeming with bizarre life, to icy fissures aswarm with gulper eels, vampire squids, and gelatinous beasts longer than a city bus. We meet legendary explorers and researchers and go with them as they probe the ancient mysteries of a universe that encompasses the vast majority of the Earth's habitable space and holds millions of humanity's lost artworks and treasures.
The Universe Below is an unforgettable trip to our last great unexplored frontier.
432 pages, Paperback
First published April 17, 1997
13 people are currently reading
401 people want to read
About the author
William J. Broad
19 books26 followersWilliam J. Broad is a best-selling author and a senior writer at The New York Times. In more than thirty years as a science journalist, he has written hundreds of front-page articles and won every major journalistic award in print and film. His reporting shows unusual depth and breadth—everything from exploding stars and the secret life of marine mammals to the spread of nuclear arms and why the Titanic sank so fast. The Best American Science Writing, a yearly anthology, has twice featured his work.
He joined The Times in 1983 and before that worked in Washington for Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Broad has won two Pulitzer Prizes with Times colleagues, as well as an Emmy and a DuPont. He won the Pulitzers for coverage of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the feasibility of antimissile arms. In 2002, he won the Emmy (PBS Nova) for a documentary that detailed the threat of germ terrorism. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005 for articles written with Times colleague David E. Sanger on nuclear proliferation. In 2007, he shared a DuPont Award (The Discovery Channel) from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the television documentary, Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?
Broad is the author or co-author of eight books, most recently The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards (Simon & Schuster, 2012), a New York Times bestseller. His books have been translated into dozens of languages. His other titles include Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (Simon & Schuster, 2001), a number-one New York Times bestseller; The Universe Below: Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea (Simon & Schuster, 1997); Teller's War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception (Simon & Schuster, 1992); and Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (Simon & Schuster, 1982).
Broad's reporting has taken him to Paris and Vienna, Brazil and Ecuador, Kiev and Kazakhstan. In December 1991, he was among the last Westerners to see the Soviet hammer and sickle flying over the Kremlin.
Broad's media appearances include Larry King Live, The Charlie Rose Show, The Discovery Channel, Nova, The History Channel, and National Public Radio. His speaking engagements have ranged from the U.S. Navy in Washington, to the Knickerbocker Club in New York, to the Monterey Aquarium in California. He has also given talks at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.
Broad earned a master's degree in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has three adult children and lives with his wife in the New York metropolitan area.
He joined The Times in 1983 and before that worked in Washington for Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Broad has won two Pulitzer Prizes with Times colleagues, as well as an Emmy and a DuPont. He won the Pulitzers for coverage of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the feasibility of antimissile arms. In 2002, he won the Emmy (PBS Nova) for a documentary that detailed the threat of germ terrorism. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005 for articles written with Times colleague David E. Sanger on nuclear proliferation. In 2007, he shared a DuPont Award (The Discovery Channel) from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the television documentary, Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?
Broad is the author or co-author of eight books, most recently The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards (Simon & Schuster, 2012), a New York Times bestseller. His books have been translated into dozens of languages. His other titles include Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (Simon & Schuster, 2001), a number-one New York Times bestseller; The Universe Below: Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea (Simon & Schuster, 1997); Teller's War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception (Simon & Schuster, 1992); and Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (Simon & Schuster, 1982).
Broad's reporting has taken him to Paris and Vienna, Brazil and Ecuador, Kiev and Kazakhstan. In December 1991, he was among the last Westerners to see the Soviet hammer and sickle flying over the Kremlin.
Broad's media appearances include Larry King Live, The Charlie Rose Show, The Discovery Channel, Nova, The History Channel, and National Public Radio. His speaking engagements have ranged from the U.S. Navy in Washington, to the Knickerbocker Club in New York, to the Monterey Aquarium in California. He has also given talks at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.
Broad earned a master's degree in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has three adult children and lives with his wife in the New York metropolitan area.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 15, 2019
I discovered 'The Universe Below' by William J. Broad when I read Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', years ago. I got Broad's book at that time, and after it had spent many years in my bookshelf, I decided to read it now for 'Science September'.
As the title describes, this book is about the deep part of the ocean. We would expect that it would be about the deep ocean and its shape and structure and about the strange and wonderful denizens who live there. It is about all these things, but the book also talks about other things, unexpected things. Let me explain.
The book is divided into seven chapters. Each chapter touches on a particular topic. The first chapter is about how the deep parts of the ocean were explored and how some of their secrets were discovered and how some of their wonderful denizens came ashore and amazed people, while other amazing inhabitants were discovered during underwater explorations. This chapter stretches to around 30 pages, and in my opinion, it was the best part of the book. It was definitely my favourite part. The second chapter talks about how the American Navy explored the ocean's deep and used that knowledge to fight against its Cold War enemies. There is one chapter which talks about volcanic vents in the ocean floor and how they were discovered to be harbouring bacteria and other living beings which survived in conditions of extreme heat. The author also talks about his own trip to the ocean bed with scientists who were studying volcanic vents. Successive chapters talk about these – about ships which had sunk into the ocean and how treasure hunters and archaeologists and historians and scientists were trying to recover them now, how the supposed treasures in the ocean were being exploited by people and organizations and governments or how these denizens tried exploiting them, and how wastes were dumped into the ocean, especially radioactive wastes from nuclear reactors, and how that might have an adverse effect on marine life and their environment.
So, as you can see, the book is not just about oceanography and marine life, but it is also about many about things related to the ocean. The author has tried to focus on one topic in each chapter and so there is something in it for everyone. If your favourite is sunken treasure or sunken ships like the Titanic, there is a chapter on it. If your favourite is microbes which live in extremely hot deep sea volcanic vents, there is a chapter on it. If your favourite topic is fishes like the Coelacanth which were assumed to have gone extinction millions of years ago until they were discovered again recently, there is a chapter on it. My own favourites were the chapters on oceanography and deep sea life. I also found interesting the chapter on the American Navy's involvement in the deep sea, because it talked about the evolution of a lot of new technology which was invented and used by the Navy, and which was later used by scientific organizations for deep sea research. The chapter about the exploitation of the deep sea was heartbreaking, especially when I discovered that some of the fish which are caught in the deep sea by fishing companies and which might be moving towards extinction, are like humans – they grow slowly and they live till a great age, like a hundred years or more. Human greed knows no bounds. The chapter on how governments dumped radioactive waste into the ocean was also heartbreaking. There was one particular passage which talked about how the American Navy used to dump radioactive waste stuffed in steel drums into the ocean not far from the coast, and when some of the drums refused to sink, the Navy pumped them with bullets and sea water entered those barrels and they sunk. It is hard to stop ourselves from asking the question, "What kind of idiot does that? Isn't that drum filled with radioactive waste?" The Russians seem to have done even better – they dumped whole nuclear submarines and nuclear reactors into the ocean! Our hearts just seethe with anger at all the idiots in the different governments who did stuff like this.
I found 'The Universe Below' quite fascinating. It has lots of interesting information on the ocean from different perspectives, with lots of insights on humans' engagement with the ocean. William Broad's prose is engaging and moves at a smooth pace. The book doesn't have any photographs, but Dimitry Schidlovsky's black-and-white sketches, which look like a combination of line drawings and stippling art (drawing using dots), are beautiful and gorgeous and they are decked throughout the book like stars. The book made me want to explore the science of oceanography sometime.
Have you read William J. Broad's 'The Universe Below'? What do you think about it?
As the title describes, this book is about the deep part of the ocean. We would expect that it would be about the deep ocean and its shape and structure and about the strange and wonderful denizens who live there. It is about all these things, but the book also talks about other things, unexpected things. Let me explain.
The book is divided into seven chapters. Each chapter touches on a particular topic. The first chapter is about how the deep parts of the ocean were explored and how some of their secrets were discovered and how some of their wonderful denizens came ashore and amazed people, while other amazing inhabitants were discovered during underwater explorations. This chapter stretches to around 30 pages, and in my opinion, it was the best part of the book. It was definitely my favourite part. The second chapter talks about how the American Navy explored the ocean's deep and used that knowledge to fight against its Cold War enemies. There is one chapter which talks about volcanic vents in the ocean floor and how they were discovered to be harbouring bacteria and other living beings which survived in conditions of extreme heat. The author also talks about his own trip to the ocean bed with scientists who were studying volcanic vents. Successive chapters talk about these – about ships which had sunk into the ocean and how treasure hunters and archaeologists and historians and scientists were trying to recover them now, how the supposed treasures in the ocean were being exploited by people and organizations and governments or how these denizens tried exploiting them, and how wastes were dumped into the ocean, especially radioactive wastes from nuclear reactors, and how that might have an adverse effect on marine life and their environment.
So, as you can see, the book is not just about oceanography and marine life, but it is also about many about things related to the ocean. The author has tried to focus on one topic in each chapter and so there is something in it for everyone. If your favourite is sunken treasure or sunken ships like the Titanic, there is a chapter on it. If your favourite is microbes which live in extremely hot deep sea volcanic vents, there is a chapter on it. If your favourite topic is fishes like the Coelacanth which were assumed to have gone extinction millions of years ago until they were discovered again recently, there is a chapter on it. My own favourites were the chapters on oceanography and deep sea life. I also found interesting the chapter on the American Navy's involvement in the deep sea, because it talked about the evolution of a lot of new technology which was invented and used by the Navy, and which was later used by scientific organizations for deep sea research. The chapter about the exploitation of the deep sea was heartbreaking, especially when I discovered that some of the fish which are caught in the deep sea by fishing companies and which might be moving towards extinction, are like humans – they grow slowly and they live till a great age, like a hundred years or more. Human greed knows no bounds. The chapter on how governments dumped radioactive waste into the ocean was also heartbreaking. There was one particular passage which talked about how the American Navy used to dump radioactive waste stuffed in steel drums into the ocean not far from the coast, and when some of the drums refused to sink, the Navy pumped them with bullets and sea water entered those barrels and they sunk. It is hard to stop ourselves from asking the question, "What kind of idiot does that? Isn't that drum filled with radioactive waste?" The Russians seem to have done even better – they dumped whole nuclear submarines and nuclear reactors into the ocean! Our hearts just seethe with anger at all the idiots in the different governments who did stuff like this.
I found 'The Universe Below' quite fascinating. It has lots of interesting information on the ocean from different perspectives, with lots of insights on humans' engagement with the ocean. William Broad's prose is engaging and moves at a smooth pace. The book doesn't have any photographs, but Dimitry Schidlovsky's black-and-white sketches, which look like a combination of line drawings and stippling art (drawing using dots), are beautiful and gorgeous and they are decked throughout the book like stars. The book made me want to explore the science of oceanography sometime.
Have you read William J. Broad's 'The Universe Below'? What do you think about it?
Read
September 7, 2011I picked this up because the index had nearly a column about the Alvin. We'll see how it reads, and how it compares with documentaries on local cable channels.
Finally finished. I was only reading it when I went out to eat, and I only do that about once a month.
Though it ties together a lot of stuff (I do appreciate the personal interviews), I should have taken warning from the fact that Dr Sylvia Earle is mentioned only once in the index. In fact, I did NOT read any of the military stuff, except when it was quite extraneously intruded into other matters.
I found much of the material appalling. I've done a lot of reading on Hanford, and I thought THAT was bad. But at least at Hanford they didn't just chuck the steel drums full of radioactive waste into the water--and then SHOOT HOLES in them if they didn't sink at once.
Furthermore, I didn't much appreciate the discounting of objections of oceanographers, biologists (cetologists, particularly) and others to the reckless and stupid plans of people to broadcast fatally loud sonar throughought the ocean (for example). It's not just a matter of discounting objections because there was no obvious immediate impact (in fact there WAS such impact, but it was ignored). It's also a refusal to admit that beached whales dying with riddling hemorrhages were a direct consequence of these horrendously painful sounds forcing whales to surface suddenly.
There's too much of a tendency among military and extraction industries to argue that if you can avoid having reports of deleterious consequences of your actions reaching the public, those effects have no importance, and you can just go on with your bad behavior uninterrupted. Then when the truth DOES get out anyway, the plan is to demonize the publicists, as if those who publicize terrible behavior cause the bad news to become bad. Shooting the messenger, of course. But that's hardly a new practice.
About the only good thing that can be said about this book is that it introduces and summarizes some very interesting environments. But that's not enough. The book ends in 1997, and it leaves several things up in the air. For example, I still see orange roughy at fish markets, though the book establishes that orange roughy is a long-lived, slow reproducing fish. It has almost certainly been fished almost to extinction by now...but with no followup, there's only the fishers' word for it.
There really needs to be a critical, updated edition of this book--one that (for example) consults icthyologists who HAVE studied species that are barely introduced in this volume.
Lacking that, this is probably about the best elementary text available. A crying shame, really...because it's pretty bad.
Finally finished. I was only reading it when I went out to eat, and I only do that about once a month.
Though it ties together a lot of stuff (I do appreciate the personal interviews), I should have taken warning from the fact that Dr Sylvia Earle is mentioned only once in the index. In fact, I did NOT read any of the military stuff, except when it was quite extraneously intruded into other matters.
I found much of the material appalling. I've done a lot of reading on Hanford, and I thought THAT was bad. But at least at Hanford they didn't just chuck the steel drums full of radioactive waste into the water--and then SHOOT HOLES in them if they didn't sink at once.
Furthermore, I didn't much appreciate the discounting of objections of oceanographers, biologists (cetologists, particularly) and others to the reckless and stupid plans of people to broadcast fatally loud sonar throughought the ocean (for example). It's not just a matter of discounting objections because there was no obvious immediate impact (in fact there WAS such impact, but it was ignored). It's also a refusal to admit that beached whales dying with riddling hemorrhages were a direct consequence of these horrendously painful sounds forcing whales to surface suddenly.
There's too much of a tendency among military and extraction industries to argue that if you can avoid having reports of deleterious consequences of your actions reaching the public, those effects have no importance, and you can just go on with your bad behavior uninterrupted. Then when the truth DOES get out anyway, the plan is to demonize the publicists, as if those who publicize terrible behavior cause the bad news to become bad. Shooting the messenger, of course. But that's hardly a new practice.
About the only good thing that can be said about this book is that it introduces and summarizes some very interesting environments. But that's not enough. The book ends in 1997, and it leaves several things up in the air. For example, I still see orange roughy at fish markets, though the book establishes that orange roughy is a long-lived, slow reproducing fish. It has almost certainly been fished almost to extinction by now...but with no followup, there's only the fishers' word for it.
There really needs to be a critical, updated edition of this book--one that (for example) consults icthyologists who HAVE studied species that are barely introduced in this volume.
Lacking that, this is probably about the best elementary text available. A crying shame, really...because it's pretty bad.
August 31, 2012
It's okay. Not fantastic, but still an educational read on the ocean depths. For me, the readability of each chapter was highly dependent on the subject matter. I'm not sure if that was due to me or variable writing quality. I felt like I flew through the chapeters on hydrothermal vents and deep sea organisms. I liked the interspersed illustrations, but I think more pictures would have enhanced the experience. I had to turn to internet image searches for some of the unfamiliar invertebrates he described because words were insufficient. There were other chapters that took forever to get through, particularly one on the history of military and civilian deep ocean exploration. The chapters on shipwrecks and ocean mining also required a bit of slogging, but I at least learned a lot. I had no idea the extent that deep water mining has been considered, held at bay because it's not economically viable. It sounds like the potential environmental effects would be less than pleasant. While I'm at it, the section on rampant nuclear waste dumping was fairly disconcerting. Well, I've told you about the content, and well, I don't have much to say about the writing style. Except Broad has a bit of a fixation with facial hair. Whenever the author introduces researchers or boat crew, a description of the beard (or lack thereof) in always prominent. Kinda odd.
August 11, 2012
Most interesting parts described the deep sea environment. Writing varied in quality from excellent to belabored and cliche. Great illustrations from Dimitry Schidlovsky.
Ideas of an oceanographer named Marv: "a deep, hot world of unfamiliar life that lined the fissures and hollows of the world's oceanic crust...The habitat probably went down miles...big undersea caverns where lava once flowed upward and then receded and now held only lakes of warm seawater percolating with thick clouds of microbial life." (128)
Trade winds? Scurvy? Lateen sails -> sail in shifting winds. Shallow drafts reduce drag, discourage worms + barnacles (325).
SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) ships: two submarine hulls, n-shaped from front -> stability. Spacious decks.
"mysterious circular holes, each nearly a mile wide and more than three hundred feet deep...probably produced when the ocean floor gave away of its own accord, like terrestrial sinkholes." (266)
Ideas of an oceanographer named Marv: "a deep, hot world of unfamiliar life that lined the fissures and hollows of the world's oceanic crust...The habitat probably went down miles...big undersea caverns where lava once flowed upward and then receded and now held only lakes of warm seawater percolating with thick clouds of microbial life." (128)
Trade winds? Scurvy? Lateen sails -> sail in shifting winds. Shallow drafts reduce drag, discourage worms + barnacles (325).
SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) ships: two submarine hulls, n-shaped from front -> stability. Spacious decks.
"mysterious circular holes, each nearly a mile wide and more than three hundred feet deep...probably produced when the ocean floor gave away of its own accord, like terrestrial sinkholes." (266)
July 18, 2007
This is fantastic, packed full of very readable knowledge of undersea creatures of the deep (for which I was reading it.) There is, unfortunately, a great deal of emphasis on submarines, naval histories & government policies. But they really are necessary to understand what has been explored & why.
I also learned how much we've fucked up our oceans with the dumping of 47,000 barrels of nuclear waste at the Farrallone Islands alone (yipes!)... not to mention the rest of the world...
Not for the faint of heart...
I also learned how much we've fucked up our oceans with the dumping of 47,000 barrels of nuclear waste at the Farrallone Islands alone (yipes!)... not to mention the rest of the world...
Not for the faint of heart...
October 26, 2009
This book taught me everything I know about the deep sea.
May 30, 2019
Reading this book certainly reinforced my decision to have a subscription to the New York Times.
Authored by a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer of theirs, The Universe Below, though a tad outdated at this point, is a fascinating depiction of the most unexplored parts of our planet. I was instantly hooked (pun retroactively intended), finding myself often breathlessly sharing things I’d learned during my lunch break reading sessions with my unwitting table mate.
It begins in the Victorian times, arguably the genesis of deep sea exploration, and finishes right up at the time the book was penned.
I’d picked it up to learn more about the mysterious creatures residing far under the waves (and there I found discoveries beyond my expectations) but ended up also getting a crash course in the politics of oceanic exploration (that resulted in some of the pioneering technology being developed by the same people who make our cereal), the quiet war of underwater archaeology, and the deep history of naval tragedies (not to mention governmental laziness and apathy), finishing with an eye-opening treatise on environmental concerns.
The Universe Below not only is filled with facts told in a way that is engaging and heartfelt, but it also contains the author’s own adventures in the field while researching the book, which adds even more humanity to a sweeping story that spans a century and only scratches the surface of the tip of the iceberg of discoveries to be made in the world’s oceans.
Highly recommended.
Authored by a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer of theirs, The Universe Below, though a tad outdated at this point, is a fascinating depiction of the most unexplored parts of our planet. I was instantly hooked (pun retroactively intended), finding myself often breathlessly sharing things I’d learned during my lunch break reading sessions with my unwitting table mate.
It begins in the Victorian times, arguably the genesis of deep sea exploration, and finishes right up at the time the book was penned.
I’d picked it up to learn more about the mysterious creatures residing far under the waves (and there I found discoveries beyond my expectations) but ended up also getting a crash course in the politics of oceanic exploration (that resulted in some of the pioneering technology being developed by the same people who make our cereal), the quiet war of underwater archaeology, and the deep history of naval tragedies (not to mention governmental laziness and apathy), finishing with an eye-opening treatise on environmental concerns.
The Universe Below not only is filled with facts told in a way that is engaging and heartfelt, but it also contains the author’s own adventures in the field while researching the book, which adds even more humanity to a sweeping story that spans a century and only scratches the surface of the tip of the iceberg of discoveries to be made in the world’s oceans.
Highly recommended.
January 24, 2018
Of course it's dated (20-years old), uneven (as in, no so neatly combined set of very well researched articles) and it's anthropocentric approach is more than irritating. However, Broad managed to dive deep and sailed accros vast ocean of deep see exploration. Brought to surface plentiful of anecdotes, but also facts ranging from abyss mining, establishment of EEZ, nuclear waste disposal, cold war technical divided, robotics, SOSUS, late 90's oceanography research etc. As a book it's probably not the best effort, but it's a journalism of quality rarely delivered in the post-Google age.
April 26, 2014
unknown unknows, physics to see what we cannot see as known unknowns, most excited to see how world ends, universe expanding, what is ultimate stuff of matter dark matter, age of universe in billions, cosmic wild goose chase yet know Creator and Creationism ha, 5miles/sec to escape velocity, nothingness heading on collision course, theory of everything is anything, throw dart on wall then circle it, maybe much ado about nothing as reality or wonder and imagine, ignore theology applications to science and angels push planets, if no one watching anything goes, until we open our eyes and let natural laws we don’t know, God as redundant in creation, read all of Darwin not just the part within your circle.
August 18, 2012
writing style just couldn't keep me interested, definitely a bad thing in nonfiction. chapter 2 went on a bit too long on the military/cold war undersea operations. lost interest midway through chapter 4 when he started talking about the titanic. realized i have too many other library books out to bother slogging through the remaining 130+ pages (and the first 200 took far too long to get through, too). neat subjects (except the overused titanic), uninspiring execution.
May 28, 2012
This book has a lot on the technology that makes sea exploration possible, which didn't do much for me. I had been hoping for more on the species that inhabit the deep, though that's admittedly not really the author's fault.
Read
September 9, 2009The true final frontier: Explore the depths of the ocean and discover the meaning of "monsters of the deep."
May 19, 2016
The deep is full of really fascinating stuff and this book is a good start. It's a bit dated and I would like to see updates on a lot of the threads started.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews