Live webcast of undersea volcanoes @ IGRID2005

I'll be attending the iGRID2005 conference this week in San Diego, where a bunch of really neat demonstrations like this will be taking place. Boing Boing reader Oren explains:

This coming week my colleagues at The Research Channel will be broadcasting a live stream of volcanoes on the ocean floor, along the Juan de Fuca Ridge, which lies 200 miles off the Washington coast. The live feed will be Sept 28 and 29 from 10 am to 6 pm, Pacific time.

The images will be shot in high-definition by a camera mounted on the Jason rover, tethered to the UW's Tommy Thompson research vessel, then beamed to shore via satellite.

If you're at an Internet2 site with multicast enabled, you'll be able to watch it in 6 Mbps high-def, but anybody with a broadband connection can watch the Windows Media versions. More info is on Visions05 pages. High definition video over the Internet live from ocean floor volcanoes – how cool is that?

This expedition is precursor to the Neptune project: "The expedition's goals include mapping and video coverage of areas along the northern portion of the NEPTUNE program study area. NEPTUNE is a planned U.S./Canadian underwater observatory. An instrumented network of 2,000 miles of fiber-optic/power cable will give researchers real-time, interactive observations of and experiments within the ocean, seafloor and subseafloor, as well as the biological communities that thrive there."

These demos will take place Wed. Sep. 28 and Thu. 29, from 2-3PM Pacific. Link to website with more info, link to infographic.