Rescuers have announced that the 'Titan' submersible has "imploded" after debris was found on the ocean floor near the Titanic.
A major operation was launched on Sunday to find the submarine-like vessel that went missing in the the Atlantic with five people on board.
The OceanGate Expeditions vessel was supposed to reach the bottom of the sea to view the Titanic shipwreck, but it lost contact around one hour and 45 minutes after being submerged.
Tributes continue to roll in after the world's hopes were dashed when it was sadly confirmed that the five men are dead following a horrific implosion.
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Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet all died following a "catastrophic failure" close to the Titanic wreck.
According to National World, "an implosion could occur if any part of the submersible's carbon fibre and titanium hull has suffered a small crack or fault." The implosion itself looks like a bubble created by the water's weight, Mirror UK reports.
Dr David Gallo, a senior adviser with RMS Titanic Inc, the company that owns the rights to the original underwater gravesite, said the timeline suggests something happened "mid-water" that caused them to lose power or radio communications.
What happens to a submarine when it implodes?
Twitter user Adam Stuart shared a video: "Train Tank vacuum implosion at 1 atmospheric pressure. The depth at #Titan is around 375 atmospheres."
The video has been watched almost 3 million times, with many saying this is the best explanation for what happened to those on board the Titan submersible.
What happens to the human body when a submarine explodes underwater?
If a submarine implodes, it means that it collapses inwards on itself as a result of the water's high pressure, according to HITC.
The event would be catastrophic to those on board, and no one would be able to survive.
What went wrong on Titan?
Officials are not sure how quickly the vessel imploded into the dive. It may have happened right away and could be why the sub never resurfaced, or it may have happened after they lost communication and ended up floating in the water.
Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, explained in a haunting interview that “as you’re descending, you’ve got your depth and altitude… that’s pretty critical. When you get close to the bottom, you have to be ready to drop some weight so you don’t go crashing into it, or thrust."
The billionaire who has officially been declared deceased, continued: "So getting that notification 200 metres above the bottom is pretty critical. And then when we use our laser scanning system, we need correction data for through water speed currents and the light to keep the errors down, and that’s it, that’s the element of adding [coms] on the sub."
Others speculate that the material Titan was made of wasn't enough or wasn't meant to last, as Stockton admitted to taking shortcuts there too.
In a statement that now seems poignant, he said: “This Carbon fibre hull is a huge thing. Carbon fibre has been used for autonomous underwater vehicles before, but never anything as large as what we’re doing. Some work was done by the Navy decades ago, but it was determined that you can’t use it.
"A lot of arguments about using carbon fibre in submersibles were the same as using [carbon fibre] in aircraft. And having built my own fibreglass plane 30 years ago, I’m still flying it, you can do it, you just have to do it right."
