Titanic: full-sized digital scans reveal new details of wrecked passenger liner

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Titanic: full-sized digital scans reveal new details of wrecked passenger liner

Researchers hope that the scans will provide new details about how the Titanic sunk in 1912. 

Scientists have created full-sized digital scans of the Titanic, revealing intricate new details about the ill-fated passenger liner that sank more than two miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in April 1912.

Deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd and Atlantic Productions carried out the digital scans last summer. 

Researchers hope the detailed scans will provide new insights into the sinking of the Titanic.  (Atlantic Productions/Magellan)

The scans provide a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water had been drained away, Magellan said in a press release. 

A team on board a specialist ship remotely controlled submersibles, spending more than 200 hours surveying the wreckage. The team took more than 700,000 images from every angle, creating a 3D replica of the Titanic. 

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The new scans are so detailed that even the serial number on one of the ship's propellers is legible. 

"It allows you to see the wreck as you can never see it from a submersible, and you can see the wreck in its entirety, you can see it in context and perspective," Parks Stephenson told the BBC. "And what it's showing you now is the true state of the wreck."

The shipwreck of the RMS Titanic in 1996. (Xavier DESMIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images, File)

The team hopes that the new images will shed new light on what exactly happened to the liner, which sank on its maiden voyage from England to New York City on April 15, 1912, killing more than 1,500 people. 

"We really don’t understand the character of the collision with the iceberg," Stephenson said. "We don’t even know if she hit it along the side, as is shown in all the movies — she might have grounded on the iceberg." 

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Recovery efforts began immediately after the Titanic sank, but it wasn’t until September 1985 that oceanographer Robert Ballard and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in partnership with the Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer, located the wreckage.