The prices on Polymarket, a forecasting trading platform, from when we started our forecast to when we finished it shows this well enough. This development was in many ways a shock to forecasters’ expectations. Unfortunately (or fortunately!), while we were finishing up our forecast the Ever Given was freed from the sand in the Suez Canal late Sunday night on the East Coast. The question resolves positively once the canal is free for commercial vessels to pass through again. Given this issue’s massive geopolitical implications and its applicability to the forecasting space, the Suez Canal blockade was a no-brainer this week. The canal blockade has cost nearly $10 billion per day in global trade, and with a resolution to this crisis still pending, these losses are at risk of reaching crippling heights. We also chose this question because of its massive impact on global trade and the global economy. We chose this question, in part, because of its timely nature and in turn its short time horizon for resolution. In this volume, we decided to tackle a Metaculus question which aligns with an extremely topic subject in global affairs today: the Suez Canal blockade crisis. Here’s how the full moon helped free the stuck ship Ever Given in the Suez Canal ( Space.Welcome to Volume 8 of Metaculus Mondays! Suez Canal blockage: how cargo ships like Ever Given became so huge, and why they’re causing problems (The Conversation) “ Tendency toward Mega Containerships and the Constraints of Container Terminals,” Nam Kyu Park and Sang Cheol Suh, 2019 May 6, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering Large container vessel Ever Given blocks Suez Canal (Ship Technology) But hey, this gives you one chance a day, most days, to show off your astronomy knowledge. If you’re ever at the beach you can now surprise your friends by looking at the Moon and knowing the tide, at least if the moon is in the sky. Low tides come just before moonrise and just before moonset. That is because planetary rotation carries the tide ahead of the Moon. Now, what does this have to do with astronomy? The first thing I did when I heard about this grounding was pull up a tidal chart of the Suez Canal.Įach day, we experience two high tides: one when the Moon is almost but not actually straight overhead, and one when the Moon is almost straight beneath our feet. We have to admit that we’re out of our depth when it comes to shipping, and Ally, who was a project manager for a global shipping company – and who is currently very glad she is now a producer for us and not involved in this particular nightmare – wrote the earlier portions of this story. The Ever Given is the fourth ship to run aground in the Suez since 2016. It also raises concerns about the safety of allowing larger and larger ships through the canal. This means there is almost no room (literally and figuratively) for error. Likewise, the ship’s beam and draft - that is, the breadth of the ship at its broadest point and the vertical distance between the waterline and keel - are barely within the maximum allowable through the canal. Due to safety concerns, vessels longer than 400 meters need permission from the Suez Canal Authority to transit the canal, putting the Ever Given right at the max length. CREDIT: Īccording to a 2019 paper published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, terminals and waterways are struggling to accommodate so-called mega container ships like the Ever Given. IMAGE: Tide measurements for the Suez Canal. Reports say it’s going to take days, maybe even weeks, to refloat the ship and allow traffic to resume. Satellite images show the Ever Given sitting diagonally across the entire width of the canal. Navigation in the Suez was made even more challenging for the Ever Given by a sandstorm and 50-kilometer winds, which caused the ship to lose control and hit the bottom of the canal. In an image from the Russian satellite Canopus-B, you can get a sense of just how stuck this ship is, and a hint at its size, which is essentially the size of the Empire State Building laid on its side! The vessel, named the Ever Given, measures 400 meters long and 59 meters wide, making it one of the largest container ships in the world and challenging to navigate through the relatively narrow Suez Canal. Our What’s Up segment is about astronomy, just in a roundabout way.Įarlier this week a large container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, where it is currently still blocking all maritime traffic through one of the busiest waterways in the world. IMAGE: Russian satellite “Canopus B” image showing the megaship Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal.
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