World's Largest Cruise Ship to Set Sail as Industry Rebounds

Royal Caribbean's luxurious new vessel Icon of the Seas will be the world's largest cruise ship. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
Royal Caribbean's luxurious new vessel Icon of the Seas will be the world's largest cruise ship. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
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World's Largest Cruise Ship to Set Sail as Industry Rebounds

Royal Caribbean's luxurious new vessel Icon of the Seas will be the world's largest cruise ship. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
Royal Caribbean's luxurious new vessel Icon of the Seas will be the world's largest cruise ship. Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP

With cruise bookings seeing a resurgence after the Covid pandemic caused luxury liners to mothball, a Finnish shipyard is putting the final touches on what will be the world's largest cruise ship.

Royal Caribbean's luxurious new vessel Icon of the Seas is nearing completion in the Turku shipyard on Finland's southwestern coast, its maiden voyage scheduled for January 2024, AFP said.

"This ship is, as of today, as far as we are aware of, the biggest cruise ship in the world," said Tim Meyer, CEO of shipbuilder Meyer Turku, tasked with the construction.

While some have labeled the colossal structure a "monstrosity", citing its vast climate footprint, others are in awe of the sophisticated engineering integrated into this floating holiday destination and flocking to buy tickets.

Resembling a village more than a ship, the mammoth vessel boasts colorful waterparks, more than 20 decks and can carry nearly 10,000 people.

A distinct feature of the new ship, which went into construction in 2021 and entered sea trials in June, is a gigantic glass dome that covers part of its front section.

The pandemic dealt a heavy blow to the industry, raising questions about whether it would ever recover.

Cruise companies are now seeing customers return.

The Cruise Lines International Association has predicted that passenger volume will surpass pre-pandemic levels with 31.5 million passengers in 2023.

"After the restrictions are gone and the situation has eased up, we are seeing that the market is coming back very strong," Meyer said.

Bigger is better?
With a gross tonnage of 250,800 -- five times the size of the Titanic -- Icon of the Seas will snatch the title of the world's largest cruise ship from Royal Caribbean's current flagship, Wonder of the Seas.

Meyer Turku also has two more similar sized Icon-class vessels in their order books.

"We have seen over the last decade that cruise ships have become bigger," said Alexis Papathanassis, professor of Cruise Management at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences.

Papathanassis noted that "there are obvious economic benefits" to mega-sized ships, reducing the cost of individual passengers.

With its seven pools, a park, waterslides, shopping promenades, ice skating rink and "more venues than any other ship", larger vessels like the Icon of the Seas also offer more options for spending money on board.

This "in turn enables cruise companies to be more profitable," he added.

The extra income is welcomed by the cruise lines -- in order to survive Covid lockdowns the cruise lines "had to take a lot of credit" they now have to pay back.

"It's going to be a challenging time with financial austerity for cruise companies," Papathanassis said, adding that he expected ticket prices to rise.

What is too big?
While "the tendency towards increasing the size of the ship is not going to stop", Papathanassis believes "it will certainly be slowed down".

The reason behind this is not engineering but rather the financial equation.

"The bigger the ships are, the higher the investment cost and the required technology know-how. And technological know-how does not come cheap," Papathanassis explained.

Similarly, larger vessels come with their own unique challenges, such as port overcrowding, he noted.

This "in turn enables cruise companies to be more profitable," he added.

The extra income is welcomed by the cruise lines -- in order to survive Covid lockdowns the cruise lines "had to take a lot of credit" they now have to pay back.

"It's going to be a challenging time with financial austerity for cruise companies," Papathanassis said, adding that he expected ticket prices to rise.

What is too big?
While "the tendency towards increasing the size of the ship is not going to stop", Papathanassis believes "it will certainly be slowed down".

The reason behind this is not engineering but rather the financial equation.

"The bigger the ships are, the higher the investment cost and the required technology know-how. And technological know-how does not come cheap," Papathanassis explained.

Similarly, larger vessels come with their own unique challenges, such as port overcrowding, he noted.

Often hailed as a bridge towards more climate-neutral options, LNG has lower emissions than traditional marine fuels, but T&E has voiced concern over potential methane leaks.

"LNG does have dramatic consequences for the climate because it leaks methane," Dijkstra said.

A typical component of LNG, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that can have a much worse impact on the climate than carbon dioxide.

"The problem is when you use LNG as a marine fuel, you are encouraging the development of the gas industry."



Alien Planet Lashed by Huge Flares from its 'Angry Beast' Star

File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
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Alien Planet Lashed by Huge Flares from its 'Angry Beast' Star

File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger

Scientists are tracking a large gas planet experiencing quite a quandary as it orbits extremely close to a young star - a predicament never previously observed.

This exoplanet, as planets beyond our solar system are called, orbits its star so tightly that it appears to trigger flares from the stellar surface - larger than any observed from the sun - reaching several million miles (km) into space that over time may strip much of this unlucky world's atmosphere, Reuters reported.

The phenomenon appears to be caused by the planet's interaction with the star's magnetic field, according to the researchers. And this star is a kind known to flare, especially when young.

"A young star of this type is an angry beast, especially if you're sitting as close up as this planet does," said Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy astrophysicist Ekaterina Ilin, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

The star, called HIP 67522, is slightly more massive than the sun and is located about 407 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

This star and planet, as well as a second smaller gas planet also detected in this planetary system, are practically newborns. Whereas the sun and our solar system's planets are roughly 4.5 billion years old, this star is about 17 million years old, with its planets slightly younger.

The planet, named HIP 67522 b, has a diameter almost the size of Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet, but with only 5% of Jupiter's mass. That makes it one of the puffiest exoplanets known, with a consistency reminiscent of cotton candy (candy floss).

It orbits five times closer to its star than our solar system's innermost planet Mercury orbits the sun, needing only seven days to complete an orbit.

A flare is an intense eruption of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the outermost part of a star's atmosphere, called the corona. So how does HIP 67522 b elicit huge flares from the star? As it orbits, it apparently interacts with the star's magnetic field - either through its own magnetic field or perhaps through the presence of conducting material such as iron in the planet's composition.

"We don't know for sure what the mechanism is. We think it is plausible that the planet moves within the star's magnetic field and whips up a wave that travels along magnetic field lines to the star. When the wave reaches the stellar corona, it triggers flares in large magnetic field loops that store energy, which is released by the wave," Ilin said.

"As it moves through the field like a boat on a lake, it creates waves in its wake," Ilin added. "The flares these waves trigger when they crash into the star are a new phenomenon. This is important because it had never been observed before, especially at the intensity detected."

The researchers believe it is a specific type of wave called an Alfvén wave, named for 20th century Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Hannes Alfvén, that propagates due to the interaction of magnetic fields.

The flares may heat up and inflate the planet's atmosphere, which is dominated by hydrogen and helium. Being lashed by these flares could blast away lighter elements from the atmosphere and reduce the planet's mass over perhaps hundreds of millions of years.

"At that time, it will have lost most if not all the light elements, and become what's called a sub-Neptune - a gas planet smaller than Neptune," Ilin said, referring to the smallest of our solar system's gas planets.

The researchers used observations by two space telescopes: NASA's TESS, short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, and the European Space Agency's CHEOPS, short for CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite.

The plight of HIP 67522 b illustrates the many circumstances under which exoplanets exist.

"It is certainly no sheltered youth for this planet. But I am not sad about it. I enjoy diversity in all things nature, and what this planet will eventually become - perhaps a sub-Neptune rich in heavy elements that did not evaporate - is no less fascinating than what we observe today."