 We need a lot of study, including the study in these head of trenches. Because of lack of equipment, scientists cannot access that region, so I lead a team to develop that system as quick as possible, provide the tools to the scientists, let them make a completed survey of all the trenches, then understand the whole ecosystem. If we can use this kind of philosophy to replace the currently materialistic philosophy, the main of the social problems can be automatically solved or disappeared. What's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sokian. We are on site at the beautiful Westlake University in Hangzhou, China. We are now going to be talking about deep sea technology. We have Dr. Wei Cheng-Sui joining us on the show. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for coming on our show. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm so excited for this. For those who don't know Wei Cheng's background, he's professor and PI at Westlake University researching deep sea technology to provide research tools to scientists to understand and explore our oceans. And you can find the links in the bio below. Wei Cheng, let's start things off with one of our favorite questions. We like asking our guests. Yeah, what are your thoughts on the general direction of our world? Okay. And in the last 200 years, our science and technology developed very fast. And it has changed dramatically to our everyday life. And initially, people always think science and technology can bring happiness to our human beings. But as the society develops, go on. From my own observation, there are still a lot of people still living in high pressure and didn't feel so happy. And there's a gap between each country, poor countries, regions, poor regions, and one country or different people. Then even rich people have some of the problems they face. Poor people also have some problems they face. And so basically, I have the question, whether science can really bring happiness to our human beings? Can really solve the problems, the development problems, or the disputes between different countries, different nations or different religions? And I find that science actually is limited. And maybe the fundamental reason or the cause is philosophy. Can we find a way of common values of human beings? And actually, what are our human beings? What's the perfect direction to be a success of a human being? And quite a lot of questions have not been addressed in science. And this is related to the philosophical questions or something. At the moment, it seems that people are more favoured on science and technology. Even though quite a lot of people think philosophy is not important. So from my own point of view or observation, our world or our human beings, we are lost in the right direction. We may go to the wrong direction or something. And at the moment, the person who can destroy the earth, more and more people have the power to destroy it. Then other people just live under the risk of this individual person. If they are lost in the temple or they are fighting each other, it may certainly affect other ordinary people or something. So how to solve such kind of issue, it may be more important than just further developing the science and technology. So if we look back at when we first discovered fire, we can use the fire to help us cook food. We can use fire to burn villages. So immediately the philosopher was needed to say, please cook just food, don't burn the villages with this. And so now fast forward millions of years later to modern day civilization. And we have exponential technologies, nuclear bombs, biotechnologies, neuro technologies, artificial intelligences. We need philosophers at Google, Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, all of the big companies in the world need big staffs of philosophers, ethicists, moral scientists. And this can ensure that maybe instead of making technology that helps wealthy people become wealthier, which we'll talk about in the show, that you can use some of these great deep sea technologies to pillage the oceans and take for myself the resources or we can use them to advance science and understand ourselves and our oceans better and share the benefits with the world. So I love your focus on this and we'll return to this topic again. Let's talk about your journey. How did you as a child get interested in science and the oceans? Yeah, great. That's a great question. And as a matter of fact, when I was a boy, so after junior high school, we were good to the farmers. We never had the chance to go to university or something. So during that time, we had no hope to be like we're educated. And then near the last or end of my junior high school, only half a year left, then the cultural revolution stopped and our country like a new period started to have an entrance examination who can go to the high school and then go to university or something. So given only half a year, I have seen the chance. That is the first time I started to have my dream and I played three steps. First to go to the middle high school in our country, then second step go to university, to be a university student, and then finally to be a scientist. So during that time, in my impression, scientist is the greatest person I can admire or something. Then I started hard and I step by step, went to the middle high school, went to the university, actually to the Qinghua University, one of the best universities in China. In the university time, then I spent some time to read philosophy, read history. And then actually during that period, after I was thinking what actually society or observation or something, I gradually was set up through this reading, through this thinking, that actually I found my idol or the person I actually admired, Mr. Li Suotong, I taking him as a life master. So what I wanted to have a life is a life like him. So in that case, scientist is not my final target. I wanted to be a person like him, to be a useful person to the society, to the people. And I do not care what the profession I was asked to do or something. He is a personality based on two characteristics. One is very kind to the society, to the people, only do good things to the people. Second is to do everything if he wanted to be the best or to be perfect or something. One is very care to everything, to be very careful to do it best. Second, I only do those things that would be benefited to the society, to the people, not myself. So that's actually the two fundamental qualities. And nowadays, from my observation, I think like scientists, maybe only pay to one aspect, I wanted to be the best to science or technology, do not care how to use your result or something. If you paid to me either by a politician or by a rich person or something, and then I receive the payment, I do the scientific development. But I think in that case, advanced scientific tools could be misused. And for my admiration or something, I wanted to be a scientist like Einstein or something. If I found this guy maybe misused my research product, I should refuse. Yeah, even cost my life. I do not want to be something. So basically like such kind of person is the one I admire. Other than pure, I can solve the technical problem. I don't care in other scenes or something. Yeah, yeah. So this is really cool that if we have a very deep ethical grounding in our lives that we can really be vigilant with what we accept as friends, as money, as all different types of what is being added to our lives. We can basically have a filter and say that I will not accept what value, I will accept what I am making into the world if you are going to use it inappropriately to cause violence. I like that a lot. And it is really interesting how even in your youngest years you began caring a lot about that. And it is very evident that it is here with you now also. I think that is actually really important for young people that if we can have them at younger ages and care more about philosophy and ethics and these types of leaders, then later in life it becomes without a question these types of I like that a lot. So what about when you did mechanics and then you did structural reliability at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. What were you studying about? Yeah, the technology. That's because it's my attitude. I actually was very flexible to the environment I was in. I was to be chosen as China's Super Scientific Research Centre to be the place. I started my master degree, but lucky enough I got the chance to be sent to the UK for starting my PhD. But that scholarship was awarded by the British Council. Basically, they can't respect your select or for like the Dutton Navy architecture or something, but they can also allocate you to another university or another. So they allocated me to the Imperial College in the civil engineering department. So in that case, okay, I have to start my PhD in the civil engineering systems. And after that, of course, I spent 18 months in the Imperial College, then transferred to Bristol, finished my PhD in civil engineering. So that subject, because at that time, firstly set a theory or something quite new mathematics, or ideally I chose that subject. But after that, I wanted to get some experience on postdoctoral research. My supervisor did not have the project funding to support my continued research, so I found another advertisement to work on composite materials in aerospace engineering. So I just, probably, to speak to the professor, your project I can do it because my previous background is solid mechanics. So after that, I actually did three years postdoctoral research in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. But so during that period, I did a lot of work on composite materials or something. If according to my own preference, I worked in that area, it's much better. But I had the equipment with the China Shepard Scientific Research Center. They gave me the chance to study in the UK. I had the responsibility to return back to that institute, to work for them. So after the three years postdoctoral, I went back to the China Shepard Scientific Research Center to start my research as a leading architect. You're still now an adjunct professor at Shanghai Ocean University. You started there in 2013, though, and you were doing project lead in the research and development of Hadal Science and Technology Moveable Laboratory. Now, we need to talk about the Hadal trenches because these are trenches that are deeper than 6,000 meters. They're pitch dark, there's no light, and they're kind of the last unexplored frontier on earth. So why are you so fascinated with that zone and what were you doing at Shanghai Ocean University? That's a good question. The first is that I treated myself or regarded myself. I was sort of top level scientist. I should do all these challenging tasks or frontier work. And then what do you find? For the geolon, we reached 7,000 meters. But at the same time, James Camelon developed 11,000 meters, mainly submersible. So for our technology field, from 7,000 meters to 11,000 meters is certain direction that what I wanted to do. Secondly, develop this submersible also very useful for the society of human beings because deep Hadal trenches is least explored by our human beings. We still don't know actually how deep is the challenging deep, whether there is a fish or not in these deep trenches. There are a lot of curious questions we don't know. And also, maybe very soon or 10 years, 10 to years later, our human beings will explore the ocean resources. But in what speed, in what method we explore this ocean resources, we are not just sure our ecosystem or something. We need a lot of study including the study in these Hadal trenches. Because of lack of equipment, scientists cannot access that region. So I need a team to develop that system as quick as possible, provide the tools to the scientists, let them make a completed survey of all the trenches, then understand the whole ecosystem. Then you can assess, such as in our South China Sea, if we are decided to explore certain type of resources, what's the consequence, what's the effect, will affect this ecosystem, something. We can answer this question, we will not bring such as very bad consequences to the society or something. So I think that one is to demonstrate my idea, any kind of team I can lead, I know the management method already, and to attack these challenging technological problems. Second, the tools I developed is useful for the ocean scientists. They can use that to do some useful work to help the society. So that's actually the motivation. So like if you manage the resources and the people and processes, in effective ways you can get more science done effectively. And then also, I like how you focus on being able to take the scientific advancements that you achieve in the field, it requires really good engineering skills too. You have to engineer the submersibles to be robust. And then you take that tool and democratize it to scientists around the world so that they can research the hadel zones and understand life on this planet more deeply. I like that process for you. So now let's talk about these differences in our unexplored oceans and how we're exploring them. So you guys have about 14 people in the lab here at Westlake University. Let's break this down. There's a couple of things. Let's start with this. There's the human occupied vehicles. Okay, so that's HOVs. Then there's unmanned underwater vehicles. UUVs. And unmanned underwater vehicles, there's AUVs, which are autonomous underwater vehicles. And ROVs, which are remotely operated underwater vehicles. So that's what requires a human but behind the computer. And so what are the differences between these? I mean, they do all different types of missions. We were talking about Remus, which goes and does the mine sweeping. So it's finding all of the old mines from the wars and destroying those, which it can actually terminate and discover and terminate underwater mines in one square mile in 16 hours. Whereas it used to, this is only a three foot long robot, which it used to take teams of divers and it used to be less safe and blah, blah, blah. But we also do things like map submerged wrecks, rocks. We do things like just scan our ocean floors, look for samples and take them back. Let's talk about the different vehicles, submersibles, how you design them and what they're doing. Okay. So basically, yeah, you're right. Manned, unmanned, two types. Unmanned can be divided into ROV, AUV. So basically AUV means without any cable. So you can do a wide area survey. So the basic way is the lights and the videos, cameras. So just record of this, the wide area information. And if you want to do some focused work to take samples or something, then you use the remotely operated ROV. ROV has a long cable to transmit the power to the submersible. So basically have a long, unlimited use of the power or something. What is the point? Because of this cable, it is harder to move the wide area. So you get to be focused on this particular side or something, and then you are remotely operated as a manipulator to get the sample or something. But the cable is there so it doesn't get lost? Unless the cable is broken. The cable is broken because when you are in the recovery or during operation, you got a sudden accident, it could be lost. So a lot of ROVs also get lost. AUV is expensive. Yeah, AUV is pretty plug-in. But if some unexpected situation happens, then change the plug-in, go to other directions, then far away from your ship, you couldn't receive any signal from it. It will be lost. So basically unlimited submersible has a high risk to be lost. Then also the main submersible, the main inside, you can do the very defined work focused. I can focus from a window or play my manipulator or something. And then they can actually freely like the sailing or something. So you can work it in a wide area. This work, that work area. But you need oxygen, food, water. Yeah, exactly. So basically like the three different types of submersibles, each has disadvantages. So basically a good set of tools is a combination of a system. If that work can be done using AUV, that's the cheapest, use AUV. If that work can be done using AUV, OK, use AUV. If that work needed to be defined, work needed to be use HOV, then you send the HOV down. And maybe in the evening, you use your AUV, AUV. In the day, also put your main submersible there. And also there can work collectively, like the AUV go around. And also you show how the AUV, how the HOV are doing, working or something. So this is a combination of tools. That would be very ideal. Record all the comprehensive information for the scientists. You know where, which place did the sampling. How do you get the sampling or something. Because otherwise, if we use only main submersible or something, we know the code of others. How do you get the sampling? Which actually the location was nearby, topography or something. So that's why the main idea, why I had the comprehensive pneumatic system. It's a combination of unmanned submersible, main submersible. And now for the unmanned submersible, actually started in the West Hall. The new concept, hybrid unmanned submersible. So one submersible, you can either convert it as an AUV or operate it as an ROV. So just in the ship, this time I use a cable. That time I without a cable, it's an AUV. So one submersible has two modes of working. That's very economical. The human can maybe remotely operate it when you need a very precise movement or resources to grab. But for these submersibles, you're still working on the batteries. The battery can only last, say, 10 hours or 10 hours or something, limited time. And in the deepest part, such as if you wanted to catch the fish or record the behavior of the fish, you don't know how long the fish will come or something. So if you wanted to stay in the button for a longer time, then land is the cheapest means. So that is why we also developed some sort of very economical, very cheap means, landers, like this camera system. We threw it into the button. We can work there for one week, one month, even a year. That's no problem, set it on record the long time. So if you want equipment to be installed on the ship button for a longer period, then land is the cheapest means. So that is why you see my comprehensive system. I designed several 11,000-meter landers, one hybrid unmanned submersible called ARV, autonomous and remotely operated vehicle, one HOV, and then one specific ship for this equipment to be operated. The landers are so interesting too because they have a glass sphere for buoyancy and then you can drop them down 11,000 meters and then they have different, like you said, you can add video cameras, you can add sampling ability so I can sample from the floor. So we can conduct science for months or years at a time with these landers and then resurface them afterward instead of these limitations with the battery powers, which I think is a really interesting part of what you're talking about. Now, what would we want to be finding? What's the top, let's say, three reasons that we... The oceans I think, what is it, 95% unexplored? And 70% of our planet is oceans and 95% unexplored. And below how many meters? There's no light? Well, basically about, say, 500 meters deeper, there's no sunlight at all. No sunlight once you go 500 meters deep. And the deepest is Mariana Trench, which is 11,000 meters. And this is usually next to the land, the continents, is a little bit the sea shelf. And then it goes down the deeper. So we can find different things on the sea shelf than on the very 11,000. So 1,000, 3,000 meters different than 11,000 zones. So what do we send the submersibles to find? What are the top three things we send to find? Basically, I'm not a scientist like to do the ocean science. You're a technologist. I'm a technologist. The landers and the... Up to now, our human beings' capability is actually less than 6,000 meters for the ocean. Basically, we got some tools to do the exploration or something, scientifically, so to speak. But below the 6,000 meters, there's very few or little equipment for that. The Water Hall in the United States, you developed the Nile's unmanned submersible in... In 2008, it lost in 2014. In Japan, there's a Keiko ROV, developed in 1995, and it got lost in 2003. And James Carmillon, developed an 11,000 meter manned submersible, but that one, only for dive ones exploration or something, was just taking the Guinness record or something. Not very useful for the scientists. And so the scientists still at the moment don't have access to us to the head of trenches. So this more or less gave us a chance to be the leader in that area to develop or make some contributions to that area. So that is my wish or hope. So for a person, I find there is a gap there. If I can provide operational manned submersible, the first operational manned submersible for the world scientists, that would be a big personal achievement or something. So that's my main motivation. Five or six years ago, I studied it. And then I work on that. And yes, you're a tool builder for deep sea technology. But just give us an idea like what would the landers be finding or what would the submersibles be looking for? Top couple things. Yeah, basically there are a lot of things. One is like you get the first basically the survey of the sea pattern, say geography, and the map or resource distribution or anything like that. Second, you get some somebody in particular taking the ocean sea water and then sediment. And the button, what kind of structure, what kind of... Serving, then sampling. Sampling of anything you started and say currently one of the focus with our plastic pollution has been affected to the trench. So like the creatures in the trench, they are polluted by this plastic and it is now confirmed. Even the amphibos in the marine trench inside the stomach. There is a plastic bag. It has already been confirmed. So basically like the whole severe situation. And also you can start the impact of like the atomic nuclear waste if you put it inside the cafe. And also you could do the rescue and recovery like the loss of the MH370 or something. You need a lot of submersibles to make the survey where the employee crash. If you also for the rescue, say in Mexico or your platform accident or something, you need a lot of equipment, submersibles for rescue. So I think that then use archaeology or tourist or anything. So actually also you find the lost bombs in the ocean or you get to dispose of these bombs in the ocean like the left for the Second World War or something. So there are plenty of work can be done by these submersibles. And our human beings are lacking of this kind of tourist because they are not easy to be developed, cost quite a lot. Technology is very challenging. Only a few people can do it. So that's actually quite very useful. Wow. So we need to survey first our entire ocean floor with high quality video and just geographical, geological research. We need to sample the different sediments, the different ocean life as well down there to catalog it. Maybe there's unique things like GFP came from the jellyfish. And so maybe there's other unique aspects of biology that we can use in understanding neuroscience or the cell in general. So we need to do that. And then we have this... I like how you also said we can deploy the different technologies like a suite, like a big suite of deployments. So it's not only the landers, but it's the landers and it's the autonomous ones and the human operated ones and the robotic ones, all this type of stuff. And then also there's recs that need to be explored. If we want to understand the archaeology, the record of how humans got here, we should go look at some of the sea floors. There's interesting things down there about how we... The microplastics is a little bit... It's a little gross. We are hopefully evolving fast enough to realize that we come from those oceans that we need to stop. Plutium also somewhere in the range of 70% of all of our carbon sequestration is from phytoplankton. Yeah, phytoplankton. But also about 50% of the carbon may be located in this head of tranches. So the area is very small, but the carbon content actually occupies quite a high percentage of this carbon cycle. Interesting. So it could be that these ocean geothermal and geological events produced a decent amount of the carbon cycle process. Yeah. Understand the ice-creating mechanism. Oh, yeah. That head of tranches is also very important. Yeah. Wow. So some of the tectonic plates, we usually only study on the continents, but when you look at the ocean floors, those... Those junctions of the ocean. Yeah, continental plates. And then the energy accumulated in that area to a certain level, it became a bit as quick or something. Yeah. So maybe these places are the first places to be detected where there is a big ice-creating or something. Yes. Yeah. So that's an ideal place for studying the ice-creating or something. Yes. Wow. Wow. Okay. That's so interesting. Okay. So why don't you also teach us about... What is where you see this heading? Like, maybe in 50 or 100 years, let's say, what would be your ideal way for us to go and survey and sample the oceans? What would be the ideal tool or technology? Okay. From my point of view, such as the technology, say, another five years or ten years is matured to explore the oceans or something. And if you spend some cost every country, pay some something, get more submissive to do the survey, because this trend is working load. No one country can afford to do all that. And this is benefited to all our human beings, similar as, you know, like the map to the land. This is a competing map for the ocean. So basically for this, if you want to complete a survey of one trench, say modern trench, maybe it costs one year ship time or something. It costs quite a lot. And there are more than 40 trenches or something. So if we only have one system, one ship, maybe it takes 40 years or something, similar as our human beings gene project. If we would organize together, you survey this trench, you survey that trench, we put it together maybe another 10 years or something. So now actually the main problem our human beings face, can we really work together for the same target? It's very difficult. I like that. For our reduction of the carbon dioxide, we initially had agreement, but if one country blocks, and for this, how to organize like the United Nations or some organizations, playing more rules to do that or something. Like the ocean cleanup project or the ocean mapping project, this type of stuff. So we can make all the ocean transparent, similar as you are working on the load or something. And like the human genome. Yeah, that's right. So with this organization, will someone come to lead that project or something? Open source the oceans for scientific, open science, notebook style. Exactly. Research. Yeah, like the Argyle project or something. There already has some project to be done, but for this head of transit, we also need, without that kind of organization, this could take 40 years or 100 years or something. Well, whether we can finish or not. But another district is really for me to see for our human beings is how to avoid the wars either local or global. Of course. The third world war. Because if there are two leaders or three leaders, they are not happy with each other. They started fighting and then divided into two parts and they're fighting each other or something. So as our human beings, actually no one can destroy ourselves, only ourselves. Yeah, yeah. So basically, such as... Oh, an asteroid. Yeah, an asteroid. Yeah, yeah. So basically, like only our human beings, like every country, respect each other, their different harmoniously. Then we try to solve the environmental issues and kind of issues or something. That's under that condition, all this science progress. Then we exploit the ocean resources to make people live much better, to improve our situations. Let all the poor people can survive, can live a better life or something. Yeah. So that's from my point of view. That is more important. I agree. Than purely technology-proclaimed, science-proclaimed. Yes, yes, yes. The importance of our relationship to nature, let's talk about this, because in order to avoid more war and suffering and issues with our lack of ethics or philosophy, if we dive deeper into where we come from, where do we come from? You go back, back, back, back, back, back. We all come from a single source and that source is nature. We breathe the air, we eat the food, we drink the water of the planet, of Mother Earth, of this beautiful planet. It's also interconnected. There is no air that I breathe that you don't breathe. So when we see it that way and we connect to nature more and if scientists, especially when you push the frontier of knowledge, this edge further and further, if you have philosophers or ethicists or moral scientists working with you of these big tech companies, these big governments around the world, it's easier to collaborate and it's easier to remember that we come from, we come with this at the same time with evolution. So how do you see the human relationship with nature, especially with our oceans and how does our disconnection from that affect the issues we have in our world? Yeah, so that is basically, I had quite a lot of thinking about that and now what I find is that actually that's a collective mistake in the 20th century and the materialist philosophy dominates and actually this philosophy, scientifically now we can have a lot of questions to that, this is not very scientific, have a lot of paradoxes about that. But they didn't address like the relations, who am I, what's the relation? I with the other people, with the animal, with nature. So more or less separated, but as a matter of fact, we should have another philosophy this harmonious system, I can live better only if my environment is better. My environment includes other people like this one of skin of my body or something. So in that case, if you cheat the whole earth, it's my body and every one or every life on the earth is part of my body, my self or something. In that case, if most people believe in that kind of philosophy, then you can get harmonious with nature or something. But otherwise it's like, oh, we are fighting for the resources. If I kill you, then all the resources belong to you. I become rich, I can live better or something. So in that case, maybe the people really should, I said very clearly, want to like you become, well, I can only live better, sacrifice of others. And no one wants to be sacrificed. So they want to fight against the survivors or something. So in that case, this is a very big mistake in this philosophy. What's actually the value or how to assess good people, better people or something. Get rid of this kind. Without this humans greedy or something, it's very hard to get harmonious with society, harmonious with people. From my philosophy, there's no enemy at all. Enemy was born from your heart. You regarded someone as my enemy. I treated him as a friend, he's my friend. Similar as any animal, a dog, a snake, anything. Because if you kill one kind of species, it will affect others. It's a cycle. Butterfly effect. Ten million species right now on the planet. Every single one of them is thought of like a cell in an organism. So there's heart cells, muscle cells, bone cells. It's very important to remember to be very, very careful with this ecosystem that gives us life, that sustains us, that is all interconnected. I want to talk about this too. This has now been said over and over again. This idea that we must slow down. And it's hard because a lot of people want to speed up. Speed up technology, speed up science is very important. And we agree it's important to push the science and technology. But if you do it without long-term thinking, seven-generational thinking, seven generations out, you risk causing serious issues. Because if we do the genetic engineering of a way of disease, this is of course, we understand this is important, yes. Can we also really consider what will happen seven generations out with this process? Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on our show. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Let us know what you're thinking. Have more conversations with your friends, families, coworkers, people online about the things we talked about in the episode about deep-sea technology, about all of the different styles of underwater submersibles about their importance in understanding our oceans and also about ethics and about philosophy and about spirituality and about nature, about all the things we talked about regarding that as well. Check out the links in the bio below to Wei Cheng's profiles. Also, support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the organizations around the world that you believe in. Support them and help them grow. You can support simulation. Our links are below. We'll be doing cool things like coming on-site to Westlake University for incredible interviews with leading professors, principal investigators. And go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in. And we'll see you soon. Peace. Good night. Thank you. Thank you.