Latest Hydrothermal vents Stories
The microbes that inhabit deep-sea hydrothermal vent environments may be relics of the earliest life on Earth. Some of the most arresting images of life on our planet have come from the deep-sea world of hydrothermal vents. Massive chimneys belching superheated fluids, colonies of giant crimson-tipped tubeworms swaying in the current, swarms of tiny shrimp, albino crabs. These ecosystems, although isolated from life on the surface, contain a virtual zoo of creatures, thriving under conditions...
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...
PROVIDENCE, R.I -- The ship with all the gadgets and underwater rovers is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but for the first time, the team of scientists directing the expedition is not on board. They're sitting inside a room thousands of miles away. The scientists and technicians are at universities in Rhode Island, Washington and New Hampshire, watching 52-inch plasma television screens as an unmanned submersible pokes around the Lost City hydrothermal vents - a forest of limestone...
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- An expansive ecosystem of knee-high mud volcanoes, snowy microbial mats and flourishing clam communities lies beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica, say researchers. The discovery made in February in a deep glacial trough in the northwestern Weddell Sea was detailed this week in Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union. Such sunless, cold-vent ecosystems have been found elsewhere - near Monterey, Calif., in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Sea...
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Scientists exploring an emerging undersea volcano near the islands of American Samoa in the South Pacific were so amazed to find eels living in the newly formed lava that they nicknamed the population "Eel City." Hundreds and perhaps thousands of purplish-gray eels about a foot long were swimming around and hiding in the nooks and crevices at the summit of the new volcano at a depth of about 2,000 feet, Craig Young, director of the University of Oregon's Oregon...
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...
