Gallery: A Cross Section of the Sea Floor, Recreated in a Coffee Table

  • Image may contain Water Tub Hot Tub and Jacuzzi
    Christopher Duffy
    01

    OceanTable6.jpg

    Christopher Duffy is a British designer who works in trompe l’oeils.
  • Image may contain Sphere Clothing Apparel Accessories Accessory Helmet and Crash Helmet
    Christopher Duffy
    02

    OceanTable3.jpg

    The surface of his latest piece, the Abyss Horizon table, looks like a bathymetric map of the ocean floor, rendered in 3-D.
  • Image may contain Furniture Transportation Vehicle Watercraft and Vessel
    Christopher Duffy
    03

    OceanTable4.jpg

    He based its contours on actual maps, culled from oceanographers around the world, and Duffy brought the shapes to life with the help of hundreds of pieces of cut glass and birch wood, which he stacked together like a jigsaw puzzle.
  • Image may contain Nature Water Outdoors Ocean Sea Art Painting Pattern Ornament and Fractal
    Christopher Duffy
    04

    OceanTable2.jpg

    With those maps, Duffy says, “I was looking for an abyss, a really deep, deep zone, and a shallow zone. The high points and shallow points, the nooks and crannies, that’s where it gets interesting.”
  • Image may contain Outdoors Nature Ocean Water and Sea
    Christopher Duffy
    05

    OceanTable1.jpg

    Milling the layers and layers of glass and wood and fitting them together takes three months, Duffy says. Besides getting measurements right, down to the millimeter, the process requires wedging slabs of glass and wood into an airtight formation.
  • Image may contain Furniture Table Water Outdoors Nature Ocean Sea and Coffee Table
    Christopher Duffy
    06

    OceanTable5.jpg

    If it were off by even a hair, it would ruin the illusion.
Read More
Climate Change Has It In for the World’s Best Surfing
As coastlines change, so do surf breaks. That may spell the end for premier waves and the tourist economies that depend on them.
Damian Carrington
A Decade-Long Experiment Is Unlocking the Mysteries of the Ocean’s ‘Deep Reefs’
Scientists left structures up to 100 meters under the surface. Here’s what they found when they retrieved them 10 years later.
Byrd Pinkerton
Humans Watched This Supernova Explode Nearly a Millennium Ago. Now You Can See It in High Definition
The new image isn’t just stunning—it may also provide clues about how this star survived its own explosion.
Jorge Garay
The ‘Exotic Physics’ Behind a Mysterious 1,000-Mile Cloud on Mars
The cloud has baffled astronomers since its discovery in 2018. Now, a new study offers a possible cause for its appearance.
Tereza Ondráčková
Oil Spills Wreak Havoc on the Bottom of the Ocean, Even a Decade Later
While oil is known to float, new research finds that over time it can permeate even extremely deep marine habitats, with animal populations declining by as much as 80 percent.
Bob Berwyn
The Atlantic’s Near-Record Hurricane Drought Is About to End
Tropical Storm Isaias is set to become the basin’s first hurricane of the season, bringing life-threatening rain and storm surge to the Gulf Coast.
Brian Kahn
Earth’s Condition Is ‘Serious and Getting Worse’ as Climate Change Intensifies
Seven of 16 planetary vital signs are in their most extreme state ever recorded, and El Niño is here to make matters even worse.
Brian Kahn
A Startup Has a Plan to Make Water From Air Using Data Centers’ Waste Heat
Atoco’s new machines use specialized materials that can harvest water from some of the driest air on Earth without using electricity.
Brian Kahn
We Linked 150 of Ikea’s $10 Speakers to Make a Wall of Sound
WIRED attempts what even the Swedish brand hasn’t: making a sonic monolith using scores of the cheapest Bluetooth speakers on the market. Can you have too much of a small thing?
Jeremy White
Egypt’s Climate-Resilient ‘Super Corals’ Are Starting to Feel the Heat
Scientists can’t agree why reefs in the Red Sea have long been immune to bleaching. The answer could be the key to saving these tough corals as climate change begins taking its toll.
Eli Siegel-Bernstein
Pour One Out for the Leap Second
The metric might not mean much to laypeople, but leap seconds have been a source of contention in the timekeeping community for years. Now, they’re dead.
Brian Kahn
Astronomers Discover a Possible New Dwarf Planet in Our Solar System
Lying beyond Pluto, 2026 ED138 could be as large as 1,500 kilometers in diameter. Astronomers are still working to confirm whether it meets the criteria for a dwarf planet.
Jorge Garay