Latest Black smoker Stories
Hydrocarbons "“ molecules critical to life "“ are being generated by the simple interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City hydrothermal vent field in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Being able to produce building blocks of life makes Lost City-like vents even stronger contenders as places where life might have originated on Earth, according to Giora Proskurowski and Deborah Kelley, two authors of a paper in the Feb. 1 Science. Researchers have ruled out carbon from the biosphere...
So you're a fish. Right now some tubeworm tartare and clams on the half shell would really hit the spot, so you're headed for the all-night café. "All-night" being the operative word because the volcanic ridge you're tooling along is nearly 1.5 miles below the surface. The term "where the sun don't shine" perfectly describes the place. It's pitch black. Darn, but what's that loud rumbling up ahead? Must be one of those pesky black smokers. Some of those babies can fry...
SAN FRANCISCO -- Scientists exploring the world's sea floor have discovered new super-hot, mineral-rich geysers belching from the southern Atlantic, Arctic and Indian oceans. The findings are significant because they show that such hydrothermal vents are a global phenomena, which may help shed light on Earth's geological development and the origins of simple life. Thermal vents teeming with exotic creatures were once thought to exist only in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" because of its...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The ship with all the gadgets and underwater rovers was stationed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but for the first time, the scientists directing the expedition were not on board. They sat in rooms thousands of miles away. The scientists and technicians, at universities in Rhode Island, Washington state and New Hampshire, watched 42-inch plasma television screens in awe as unmanned submersibles poked around the Lost City hydrothermal vents - a two football field-...
Being seasick is not a problem for scientists on a major expedition now under way in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. That's because most of the researchers investigating the eerie Lost City hydrothermal vent field are working "aboard" a landlocked science command center in Seattle. Only four scientists are with University of Rhode Island oceanographer Bob Ballard aboard the Ronald H. Brown, a research vessel operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A strange world of see-through shrimp, crabs and other life forms teems around a newly explored field of thermal vents near the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, scientists report. Towering white mineral chimneys mark the field, named the Lost City, a sharp contrast to the better-known black smoker vents that have been studied in recent years. The discovery shows "how little we know about the ocean," lead researcher Deborah S. Kelley of the University of Washington...
