captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> pelley: the price of gold hit

an all-time high this past week. there's demand for investments, for electronics and, in this holiday season, for jewelry. but there's another price being paid for gold that you probably haven't heard about. this is a gold mine in central africa, where men lift tons of dirt, one pan at a time. the world is paying top dollar for the gold they're producing, and those dollars are helping to fund the deadliest war since world war ii. >> we turned the corner and there it was right in front of us. >> logan: right there? >> right there. >> logan: when bob ballard discovered the "titanic" two miles down, there was a lot he couldn't talk about because it was top secret. but he's since opened up, and he opened up his film vault to us. >> and all that's left of human signature are their shoes. and all around the "titanic" are pairs of shoes. okay, on the rise. welcome aboard. >> logan: thank you, dr.

ballard. he is, by any measure, the greatest explorer of our time. he's taken deep-sea exploration to a new level, designing equipment that allows him to go deeper and see more detail than ever before. in just the time we spent with him, he made a discovery even he didn't expect. >> i think we just hit a home run here, folks. got it-- that's an ancient shipwreck. i love it! ( laughter ) >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm lara logan. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories and andy rooney tonight on "60 minutes."

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amazing. >> pelley: the price of gold set another all-time record this past week. there's demand for gold for investments, for circuits in cell phones and computers, and in this holiday season, for jewelry. but there's another price being paid for gold that you probably haven't heard about.

gold and other minerals are funding the deadliest war since world war ii. more than five million people have died in the democratic republic of congo. years ago, the jewelry industry banned the trafficking in so called "blood diamonds," but the same hasn't happened with gold. in the heart of central africa, we found a campaign of rape and murder being funded largely by gold that's exported to the world. this is a gold mine in eastern congo, dug from the side of a mountain by the bare hands and stooped backs of a hundred men. they've lifted tons of dirt, one pan at a time, building terraces as they descend. the hunger for gold drives men into the earth so that other men can kill. you good? >> anneke van woudenberg: thank you. >> pelley: anneke van woudenberg has spent ten years in congo. she investigated the mines for

human rights watch, and wrote one of the most respected studies on the trade. you know, this is a little bit dangerous business... >> van woudenberg: it is. >> pelley: ... especially for those guys. >> van woudenberg: it's particularly for those guys. and there are regular mudslides, rock falls. you know, the... the death rate is extraordinarily high in these mines. >> pelley: tell me what the life of a congolese gold miner is like. >> van woudenberg: you make, maybe if you're lucky, a dollar or two a day; you have no health care, no social insurance, you have nothing. people do this because they hope to become rich, but very few do. >> pelley: the people are destitute, but congo is the saudi arabia of minerals. in addition to gold, the earth is loaded with metals such as tin, copper, and something called coltan that's essential to the circuits in computers and cell phones.xrç our journey started beside lake kivu in the teeming city of bukavu. eastern congo is spectacular, remote and lawless.

to get to the gold fields, we traveled through territory controlled by one militia, then another. we found this gold mine on the mwana river in the province of south kivu. first thing you notice are the children. families set them to work early, and for many, it's the only life they'll know. their method is at least 2,000 years old. they lay blankets in the riverbed and let the sediment collect in the fibers. the blankets are wrung out, and somewhere in all that mud is treasure. they mix mercury into the sediment, which chemically binds the gold together, then they simply burn the mercury away. no one worries too much about the toxic fumes-- the neurological damage from mercury may not show up for years. can you pour that out there? and there it is. there it is.

about a quarter of the size of a pencil eraser, but it's gold. how much is this worth? >> this could be worth maybe $5. >> pelley: this could be worth $5. >> ( gold clinks ) >> pelley: that's the sound that's behind what is now the deadliest war on earth. in 1996, uganda and rwanda invaded congo. seven more countries joined in and started stealing congo's resources. the invasion ended, but ever since, rebel militias and government forces have fought over local power, ethnic hatred, and control of the minerals. we heard it firsthand from former rebel soldiers. this is a school that teaches guerilla fighters who've laid down their guns how to be civilians again. this former major told us that, when his troops controlled a territory, he demanded gold from every miner every day.

>> ( translated ): we collected gold, and then we went to buy medicines. we went to buy ammunition. we went to buy guns. >> pelley: who sold you the ammunition and the guns? >> ( translated ): we would buy those things from congolese army soldiers. >> pelley: he's saying that government troops sold weapons to him, the enemy. congo is so destitute that even its army goes without pay and becomes just another predator among the villages. is the violence increasing, decreasing? >> john prendergast: it spikes. it comes in phases. and it's very localized. >> pelley: john prendergast worked on africa policy in president clinton's white house. he co-founded something called "the enough project," which works to expose war crimes. >> prendergast: if you do a conflict analysis, you will find that, when there are spikes in violence, it has something to do with contestation over the mineral resources-- gold and the rest of them.

>> pelley: one recent spike centered on a village called kanyabayonga. we went there with united nations troops, and found that a rebel militia had raided the village and burned 70 homes. why attack the civilian population? >> prendergast: it's a very effective strategy. it scares the people. it terrorizes them into compliance. >> pelley: it's chaos. >> prendergast: it's chaos that is organized in order to exploit the gold and other minerals for the enrichment of these armed groups. and it just keeps the cycle going and going until we break that cycle and begin to address the root issue here, which is the gold and the other conflict minerals. >> pelley: villagers caught in the combat pour into camps like the one we visited in the province of north kivu. it's a desperate place where a fist of flour can be, in the moment, as precious as gold. fidel bafilemba is a relief worker for the international rescue committee, a global charity that brings water and health care to the camps. how many camps are there like

this in eastern congo? how many people are displaced? >> fidel bafilemba: oh, my god. oh, my god. we have served, so far, one million individuals, displaced individuals. and to name... specific camps here, i think we have over 100 camps within this country. >> ( translated ): one of my children was 15, another one seven, another one six. >> pelley: and they were shot to death by the soldiers? >> ( translated ): yes, they were shot to death. >> pelley: the story of just one woman captures congo. we found her in the camp. we won't use her name, but she asked us to show you her face. her village was destroyed by a militia, burned, in 2007. in addition to the three children, she lost her husband and her parents. your... your mother and your father were burned alive in their house? >> ( translated ): it wasn't

only my family. there were about 280 people burned alive in their homes. >> pelley: she ran with three surviving children to a makeshift camp for the homeless. but then, the camp was attacked and there was a second massacre. when that round of the killing began, the people fled to the relative safety of this united nations post. now, this has grown into a camp of more than 13,000 people. in terms of food, they're largely fending for themselves. today, the united nations was distributing flour and beans and cooking oil, but the last time this happened was five months ago. most of the time, they forage for food outside the camp, and that is where she fell victim to the other atrocity of congo-- rape. >> ( translated ): we went to look for food, but also firewood, mostly. and that's where we got raped by people in uniform. >> pelley: so, these were soldiers who raped you?

>> ( translated ): very hard to tell whether they were soldiers or rebels. all we knew and all we saw is that they were in uniforms and were armed with machine guns. >> pelley: it's estimated 200,000 women have been raped in eastern congo. rape is a weapon here, and often a lethal one. because of the suffering, the u.n. has tried to stop the trafficking in congo's illicit gold. but we found that the gold from these mines is being smuggled into world trade. all those nuggets are combined in border towns, and then the gold is slipped over the border to uganda's capital, kampala. uganda's right next door to congo, but it has almost no gold production of its own. in 2007, uganda produced about $500 worth. but in the same year, it exported $75 million in gold. almost all of that is coming

from the war zone. we took a hidden camera into a trader called jit. we offered gold for sale, and we were clear it came from congo. >> you know, it is not easy to get that thing. the rebels they are there, everything. >> pelley: he bought our gold. and we got a hold of internal ugandan records that list 228 international shipments by jit and many others. u.n. investigators say most of it is gold from congo that's been relabeled as a product of uganda. after kampala, it heads to refiners in dubai, and then out into the world. no one can say how much of the world market is fed by congo gold. the best estimates are around 1%. so it's not likely any particular watch or wedding ring contributed to rape or murder, but we wondered how a consumer would know. matt runci represents retailers as head of the trade groups,

jewelers of america and the responsible jewelry council. does your certification mean, for example, that the gold didn't come from congo? >> matt runci: source of origin is not yet a part of the council's framework. >> pelley: how do you keep that gold out of american jewelry stores? >> runci: one needs to know where the sources of controversy are if one is to try to prevent those sources from getting into the legitimate supply train. >> pelley: it's been pretty well known for a long time where the sources of controversy are in congo. >> runci: well, in the eastern province, yes, it has. >> pelley: jewelers know about the tragedy in congo, but it's never been standard industry practice to trace gold to its source. jewelers buy gold from middlemen; they don't ask where it comes from. it was seven years ago the industry banned so-called "blood diamonds" from west africa, but, up till now, it hasn't done the same for gold. >> runci: banning the gold is a noble goal, but one that

requires, i think, some thoughtful consideration, and a positive engagement between stakeholders, governments and industry to bring to achievement. and the industry stands ready to work with stakeholders and with government to achieve that end. >> pelley: what's to talk about? why can't the industry cut off the supply from congo and strangle the civil war there? >> runci: there is absolutely no place and no need for debate around the question of whether any illegally sourced mineral ought to be part of the industry supply chain. it should not be. >> pelley: wal-mart is the largest gold retailer in america. >> runci: i believe that's correct. >> pelley: what effect would it have if wal-mart simply declared that it would demand traceability all the way to the mine for all the gold that it sells? >> runci: there's no question in... in my mind that commercial pressure can and should and must be brought to bear. >> pelley: why isn't it done?

>> runci: i don't think the question's been put to them, frankly. >> pelley: we put the question to them. and of the major jewelers we talked to, only tiffany's said that it traces nearly all its gold directly to a particular mine, and that one's in utah. wal-mart told us it plans to trace the source of 10% of its gold products by next year. and the responsible jewelry council says that it's developing a system for the industry that will, one day, trace gold to its source. if congo's gold is less than 1% of world supply, that still comes to more than $300 million a year, enough to keep the war going forever, mining an inexhaustible wealth of misery. >> cbs moneywatch update

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>> logan: the deep sea between turkey and greece is a graveyard for ancient shipwrecks. many still lie undiscovered at the bottom of the ocean, fragments of history that remain beyond reach thousands of years later. now, one of the greatest undersea explorers in the world, robert ballard, is trying to uncover their secrets. you may know him as the man who discovered the "titanic," but what he couldn't say then is that he was on a clandestine mission for the navy at the time. it was a secret he kept for more

than two decades until the mission was declassified. tonight, you'll hear how that mission helped him find the most famous wreck in modern history, and about ballard's many other discoveries in his 50 years at sea. when ballard took us with him to hunt for ancient shipwrecks off the coast of turkey, we made an extraordinary find even he didn't expect. to get to bob ballard, we had to make a journey of our own to what used to be one of the great crossroads of civilization. for thousands of years, ancient mariners passed through these beautiful but treacherous waters to the place where the aegean sea meets the mediterranean. many of them didn't make it, their ships sinking deep below, as far as 2,000 feet down, never to be seen again. that's where we found bob ballard. >> robert ballard: okay, on the rise. welcome aboard. >> logan: thank you, dr. ballard.

>> ballard: please, welcome to the "nautilus." >> logan: his ship, the "nautilus," never sleeps. ballard and his team have been out here for two weeks hunting for shipwrecks-- a 17-man crew of archaeologists, scientists, and engineers working in shifts around the clock. >> ballard: we're here to find lost chapters of human history, chapters we've never read before. >> logan: how many shipwrecks do you think are down there? >> ballard: in this area, i'm sure there's hundreds, if not thousands, along this coast. >> logan: that have never been seen? >> ballard: never been seen. >> logan: the "nautilus" is specially designed for deep-sea exploration, armed with state- of-the-art electronics and navigation systems. ballard's team uses sophisticated underwater sonar to guide them to possible wreck sites they call targets. >> ballard: there's a target, for example. >> logan: that little dot? >> ballard: that little dot. >> logan: could be anything? >> ballard: exactly, but you can sort of start to figure it out because they have shadows. so if a ship went by like the "titanic," you'd get a very big target, but then you'd have a

very large shadow because it's a hundred feet above the bottom. what we're looking for is not the "titanic." we're looking for, literally, a needle in a haystack. we're looking for very small ancient ships. >> logan: once ballard has a target worth exploring, he sends down what he calls his "big guns"-- these two remote controlled vehicles, his eyes under the sea. they descend thousands of feet to the target, using high- definition cameras and powerful search lamps to shed light on a place that has always been in darkness. >> ballard: we're going to get it this time, guys. >> logan: the drama of the hunt plays out here in bob ballard's command center aboard the "nautilus." >> bearing 1-5-0. >> 1-5-0. >> logan: his team is particularly interested in what they think is a wreck that they spotted with the sonar. >> ballard: what's the range, katie? >> katie: 20 meters out. >> ballard: 20 meters out. we're closing in. >> logan: the crew is glued to the screens. pilots guide the remote-

controlled vehicles towards the target some 1,500 feet below. what do you think you're going to find? >> ballard: i have my fingers crossed that it's an ancient shipwreck. >> logan: in the back of the room, archeologists stand ready to tell ballard what he may have found. >> ballard: all right, let's go find out what this puppy is. >> logan: this is the moment of discovery that still thrills bob ballard after half a century at sea. >> ballard: and the anticipation-- "what is it?" don't know. and you come in and you come in, and you think, "well, it could be this, it could be..." and then, all of a sudden, the veil of... of darkness in the deep sea, like curtains, just open, and there it is. and you see it for the first time for 2,000 years or whatever. you can get used to that. >> logan: how many times have you done that? >> ballard: lots. >> logan: what's lots? >> ballard: 100 times or more. >> logan: 100 or more discoveries? >> ballard: yes. >> logan: bob ballard has made some of the greatest deep sea

discoveries of our time. >> ballard: look at that swastika. >> logan: he found the legendary german battleship "bismarck," three miles below in the atlantic. those are the guns? >> ballard: those are the guns. and we almost hit them, because we came in very low on the deck, and all of a sudden, first thing we saw of the "bismarck" was a barrel of a gun coming right at us. >> logan: he tracked down what's believed to be the remains of pt-109, commanded by john f. kennedy in world war ii. but the one that made him famous was the "titanic." for 73 years, the massive cruise liner sat two miles down, more than 12,000 feet of pitch black water, eluding the world's top undersea explorers, until 1985, when bob ballard came along. >> ballard: that's the captain's bathtub. >> logan: that's his bathtub? >> ballard: yeah, isn't that amazing? >> logan: it's kind of eerie. >> ballard: it is.

it's somewhat like going to a haunted house. >> logan: the images we're watching are from ballard's personal library, which he opened for us. he told us what it's like to come face to face with the world's best known shipwreck. >> ballard: we turned the corner and there it was right in front of us. >> logan: right there? >> ballard: right there. the bow was 60 feet into the bottom. >> logan: 60 feet. >> ballard: up at the very edge, because it hit with such power and it bulldozed so much. we rose along the side of the ship, and our lights were hitting the portholes and they looked like eyes. a hundred eyes, like the people who died-- it looked like people looking at us. >> logan: the fascinating thing about how you found the "titanic" is really that this wasn't your mission. >> ballard: that's correct. well, it was my mission, but i had to get it paid for. >> logan: by someone else. >> ballard: by the navy, yeah. >> logan: right. >> logan: the navy had tasked bob ballard with a secret mission to map two nuclear submarines lost in the atlantic during the cold war, the u.s.s. "scorpion" and "thresher."

they didn't want the russians to know what they were doing. >> ballard: because if you told the russians, "hey, just follow me," they'd put a satellite over the top of me. and they'd see me go out and they would see me stop, and the moment they saw me stop... >> logan: it would be game over. >> ballard: i just told them where the submarines are. >> logan: the cover for his navy mission was that he was actually searching for the wreck no one else could find, the "titanic." three other expeditions had tried and failed, even though they had months to search. bob ballard had just 12 days. how did you get around that? >> ballard: i cheated. i basically didn't do the search pattern the way they had done it. see, the traditional approach to searching for something in darkness, because you can't see, is use a sonar. and you lower the sonar down, and you tow it back and forth, and you mow the lawn. and that's what all three of them had done. and i went, "well, clearly, that's not working." >> logan: so ballard used what

he had just learned investigating the navy subs-- that when a vessel sinks, the wreckage is carried by the current, leaving a trail of debris like a comet. applying that to the "titanic," he decided not to look for the ship itself. instead, he searched for the trail of debris that he estimated stretched over a mile, a much bigger target. ballard also expanded the original search area. and instead of using the sonar to slowly comb every inch of the sea floor as the others had done, he used cameras on a remote-controlled vehicle to hunt visually, spacing his search lines almost a mile apart. >> ballard: so i was able to go through the box real quick, and sure enough, i picked up the trail, and as soon as i picked up the trail, i knew exactly-- go north. and i walked right into the "titanic." >> logan: how could all those experts not have worked that out before you? >> ballard: they were in the box. they were in the "this is the way you do it." >> logan: and you dared go

outside the box. >> ballard: i live outside the box; i'm always outside the box. >> logan: the moment of discovery was captured on camera. >> ballard: that's a boiler. that's a boiler. >> logan: that's bob ballard celebrating. >> ballard: our initial reaction was joy, and we're jumping up and down. and then someone looked... in our control room, we had a clock. and someone looked, and it was 2:00 in the morning. and someone says, you know, "she sinks in 20 minutes," because she sank at 2:20 in the morning. and all... we were embarrassed we were celebrating, and all of a sudden we realized that we should not be dancing on someone's grave. >> logan: the "titanic" was the largest manmade moving object on earth at the time of its sinking, but it was the smallest personal objects scattered across the floor of the north atlantic that impacted ballard the most. >> ballard: all that's left of human signature are their shoes. and all around the "titanic" are pairs of shoes-- mothers' shoes next to daughters' shoes, men's shoes, crew members'.

these are the tombstones of what... >> logan: where they died? >> ballard: where they died, where their body was actually laying on the bottom of the ocean. and that's their tombstone. >> logan: so, did it take you a while before you could talk about these things? >> ballard: it did. actually, i didn't want to, i was... i was hit by it. and i wasn't expecting to be hit by it. see, i went in there, you know, totally under control, so to speak. and i was blown away. it was a very moving experience that i did not expect to have. >> logan: the "titanic" brought bob ballard instant fame and celebrity. >> ballard: my mom called me the day i got home, and i expected her to be just off the wall like everyone else was, and she says, "you know, that was nice, but it's too bad you found the 'titanic.'" and i went "what?!" and she says, "well, you know your father and i are very proud that you and your brother went to college and got doctorates and are great scientists.

but now, they'll only remember you for finding the 'titanic.'" and mother's are always right. >> logan: nearly 25 years later, ballard is still working on his legacy. now that he finally has his own research ship, he can go explore anywhere he wants. when we joined him, he'd just finished searching for wrecks from the battle of gallipoli for the national geographic society, where he's an explorer in residence. then, he came here to hunt for ancient shipwrecks. >> ballard: along this coastline, sponge divers and recreational divers and archeologists have found a lot of shipwrecks. but no one has actually been at the very spot where... we're much deeper. right now, even though you can almost reach out and touch the land, beneath us, the water is 700 feet deep. >> logan: wow. >> ballard: and then it goes further out, and out in the middle here, it's over 2,000 feet deep. and that's never been seen. and so, we're the first human

beings to ever lay eyes on this part of the planet. >> logan: and how deep can you go? >> ballard: we can go to 20,000 feet, which is 98% of the world's oceans. >> logan: bob ballard used to go down in submarines-- not anymore. >> going down. >> logan: he sends his remote control vehicles instead-- "hercules" and "argus." he pioneered the use of these vehicles for undersea exploration: "hercules," with it's array of cameras, and "argus," which hovers above it in the water-- its 2,400 watts of light penetrating the gloom. we watched them on the hunt as they moved in on the targeted site that had caught ballard's eye. >> here we go. >> this is quite a mound. >> keep going. >> ballard: i think we just hit a home run here, folks. got it, it's an ancient shipwreck. i love it. i love it. there she blows. all right, now we go back here and they start telling us what

we found. so guys, what'd we get? >> byzantine. >> ballard: byzantine. >> i could tell by the anchor. >> ballard: all right, we got a byzantine shipwreck. >> logan: until this moment, no one had laid eyes on this ship for about 1,400 years. "hercules" glided over the wreck site, the ancient cargo piled six feet high, the ship's hull most likely buried beneath the sand. >> yep, yep. this is a really nice shot. >> logan: these well preserved ceramic containers, called amphora, were typically used to transport wine and oil. the last time they were on dry land, constantinople was the center of the western world. >> zoom out just a little to frame it, bob, so they get the whole image. >> perfect. >> logan: for ballard, their value is measured in history and science; he's not a treasure hunter. his team of archeologists documents every detail, measuring the cargo with lasers. >> ballard: oh, look at this.

that's important-- they've got, like, a thumbprint of the age. what's the age of that? >> it is sixth to seventh century. that's what we guessed, anyways. >> ballard: seventh century? >> logan: when i see that, i want to know how it went down, who was on it. i just want to know everything. >> ballard: exactly. well, the beauty of it is, it's no longer lost. and we'll come back. >> logan: of all the great discoveries bob ballard has made, for him, one stands out even above the "titanic." that part of the story when we come back. with copd, i was short of breath,

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>> logan: for someone who has

devoted his life to exploring the ocean, bob ballard was born in an unlikely place-- kansas. as a young boy, he was inspired by the explorer captain nemo, in jules vernes' "20,000 leagues under the sea." since then, he's been on more than 120 undersea expeditions all over the world. what still excites ballard most is making new discoveries, and he's done it time and time again. it may surprise you that the man who found the "titanic" would really prefer to be known for this-- six-foot-tall tubeworms bob ballard found by accident on an expedition he led near the galapagos islands. so, when you went down that day, you went down thinking that the origin of all life on earth was sunlight. >> ballard: the sun, exactly. when we began this expedition, we weren't even thinking about that. >> logan: and when you came up? >> ballard: we... we were stunned.

>> logan: these tubeworms were 8,000 feet below the surface, living in total darkness, thriving off the energy of the earth, not sunlight, something no one in the scientific world believed possible. >> ballard: because we had been told that all life on the planet owed its existence to the sun, that it was the sun that was the driving energy of life. and so, when you go into the deep sea, you don't have great concentrations of life, because the sun can't get there. so that's in our heads when we go down, and we turn the corner and it's disneyland. i mean, look at that concentration of life. and it didn't make sense to us, initially. >> logan: there was no doubt in your mind when you saw these that... >> ballard: it was a discovery of massive dimensions. this is far more important than finding the "titanic." the "titanic" we knew about; we did not know about this system. and it's completely rewritten biology books, chemistry books. for many people, this is where life began on earth. >> logan: no one even knew these worms existed? >> ballard: didn't even predict

it. >> logan: another one of bob ballard's most important finds was in the black sea. no one knew that ancient wooden shipwrecks could be perfectly preserved there, until bob ballard and his team proved it when he found this one in 2000, the best preserved ancient shipwreck ever discovered in the deep sea. >> ballard: this shouldn't exist. in any other ocean, you wouldn't be looking at the mast of a wooden ship that sank 1,500 years ago. >> logan: that's 1,500 years of dust flying off into the ocean? >> ballard: of dust, exactly. >> logan: and that's wood? >> ballard: that's wood. that should not be there. and wood borers are all over the world's oceans. they ate the deck of the "titanic"; they ate, you know, the wood on the "lusitania". any shipwreck that we have found anywhere, the wood's gone, but not in this crazy ocean called the black sea. >> logan: why? >> ballard: it doesn't have any oxygen at depth. >> logan: do you think you could find bodies? >> ballard: absolutely. i expect to find bodies.

>> logan: really? >> ballard: i expect to find perfectly preserved humans on these shipwrecks. >> logan: how are you going to find them? >> ballard: just run into them. as we excavate, one of these days, we're going to be brushing away and a face is going to appear. >> logan: it's not just the discoveries bob ballard has made himself; it's the ones he has inspired. this undersea world at nearly 3,000 feet deep in the middle of the atlantic was found by his old team at the woods hole oceanographic institution, working with the university of washington. they nicknamed it "the lost city." its towering limestone formations can stretch up to 180 feet high, some of the tallest undersea spires known to man. >> ballard: look at that. see that upside down pool? >> logan: they form overhangs that trap hot alkaline water rising from vents in the sea floor, creating what look like upside-down pools of water. >> ballard: see the shimmering water?

how many other such discoveries are waiting to be tripped over? i vote, a lot. >> logan: the skeptics might say, "so what?" >> ballard: so what? >> logan: so we didn't know this exists. what did that give us? >> ballard: this is showing us that life can exist at far greater extremes than we ever expected, which again increases the probability of finding it elsewhere, not only in the universe, but elsewhere within our own solar system. >> logan: the oceans cover more than 70% of the earth, but most of that has never been explored. >> ballard: we have, you know, better knowledge of mars and the moon than what's a few miles away. >> logan: bob ballard is leading a revolution in undersea exploration to change that. it started with an idea he had 28 years ago. this is our underwater world, and you're looking-- that's a live image coming in from america's first ship of exploration, the "okeanos

explorer." today, his idea is just coming to life here in rhode island. ballard, working with noaa, the federal ocean agency, created what he calls the "inner space center"-- the first-ever command and control center for ocean exploration-- that will stay constantly connected to three research ships at sea. >> ballard: our budget to explore our planet is only one- thousandth the budget of nasa. we're $18.7 million; they're $18.7 billion. >> logan: we had a chance to speak directly to one of the research ships, the "okeanos explorer." >> ballard: okeanos, inner space center. over. >> logan: the ship was in a remote part of the pacific, mapping american territory there for the very first time. can you tell us where you right now? >> we are currently 1,000 miles northwest of the hawaiian island oahu. >> logan: in the middle of nowhere? >> in the middle of nowhere. >> logan: ballard believes the deep sea is rich with things we can't even imagine, and full of human history he hopes can be found and protected before it is

plundered. >> ballard: the deep sea has more history in it than all of the museums of the world combined, and we're only now entering this great museum of the deep. >> logan: at 67, bob ballard is showing no sign of slowing down. but he does retreat to his home in connecticut to spend time with his family. it's also a refuge from a scientific world that has not always been kind to the man who found the "titanic," accusing him of being more interested in fame than science. >> ballard: no one likes to be criticized, no one likes to have people take shots at you, even if they miss. it hurts. i mean, anyone... you know, i'm the type of person that actually feels things. >> logan: so, when they say you're a showman? >> ballard: i am. guilty. >> logan: self promoter? >> ballard: yeah, have to be. >> logan: why do you have to be? >> ballard: because i have to raise money, i have to promote myself. i don't want to say, "well, i'm not very good at this, give me a

bunch of money"." no, obviously, i'm a salesman. >> logan: more of a salesperson than a scientist? >> ballard: no, no. i love science. >> logan: that's the criticism. >> ballard: oh, yeah. >> logan: but it doesn't hurt to be known as the guy who found the "titanic." >> ballard: does not hurt at all. but it also has its baggage. >> logan: what's the baggage? >> ballard: see, science is a "we," not an "i." it... it truly is. i didn't do anything; we did a lot of things. but in our system, in america, we have this star-based system-- star athletes, star news people, star politicians. and stars are "i." and the academic world is really, honestly a "we." >> logan: but you're the star quarterback. >> ballard: i'm the star. but it can get you in trouble in that world that doesn't believe in that star-based system. >> logan: one of the things we noticed about bob ballard as we tried to keep up with him darting around his ship is that he still has the enthusiasm of a man fulfilling his boyhood dream.

it turns out the shipwreck he discovered during our visit was a rare find. only one wreck from the seventh century has ever been excavated in its entirety, and that was 50 years ago. this wreck appears to be better preserved, and archaeologists are excited by the possibility that it could shed new light on one of the most important periods in maritime history. in all these years, is it the same passion now that inspires you? >> ballard: oh, yes, of course. discovery is an unbelievable, unbelievable feeling. >> logan: and it never loses its magic? >> ballard: no, because it always could beat the last one. people say, "what is your greatest discovery?" and i say, "it's the one i'm about to make." >> to see more of bob ballard's explorations, and the results of the new "60 minutes"/"vanity fair" poll, including what major discovery most americans

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>> kroft: now, a few minutes with andy rooney. >> rooney: people have often accused me of being negative. they say i complain too much, and if i don't like it here, why don't i go someplace else? well, i want to correct the impression i may have given that i'm too critical. i should talk more about some of the things that are good in america. first, taxes-- our taxes, for instance, are all just great. they're among the highest in the world. now, you can't beat that. the more you make, the more you pay. taxes provide thousands of jobs for internal revenue workers, too. television commercials-- they're aren't enough of them, as far as i'm concerned. half the time, the commercials are the best part of a show. a lot of people fast forward through a program just to watch the commercials. everyone complains about oil company profits. "right on," i say. that's the american way.

more power to the oil companies. if people don't here don't like paying $2.55 a gallon for gas, why don't they go to another country? they can take their car to venezuela. if they have two cars, they can take them both there. i love what you can do with a computer here, now, too. you can bank, pay bills, write emails, send pictures to friends, waste time. computers have made wasting time easy. you can do everything on your computer now. aren't those multimillion- dollar bonuses paid to wall street executives great? they've got it coming, that's what i say. they've not only got it coming, they've got it coming and going. they say that drug companies charge too much for medications. not me, i don't say that. i say, if you don't like it, don't buy any medicines. make your own pills, or just stay sick. and you say i'm negative about everything. >> kroft: i'm steve kroft.

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