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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/robert-ballard-discovery-hydrothermal-vents-deep-sea-ocean-expeditions-titanic-aoe>
"The mid-ocean ridge is where the Earth creates its outer skin. It’s called the
boundary of creation. We knew there was life on the bottom of the ocean but not
entire ecosystems supporting large animals until our expedition went down there
in 1977.
First, we sent down an unmanned vehicle called Angus, which was essentially a
camera system and strobe lights within a two-tonne steel cage. It was going
down in the eternal darkness, slaloming back and forth like a skier down a
mountain.
We were exploring the longest mountain range on Earth – the mid-ocean ridge. We
were looking for heat, and we theorised that there would be vents in the ridge,
but we never expected to see large concentrations of life. After 12 hours of
taking thousands of photos, Angus came back up.
When we studied the photos we found that at about 2,500 metres deep, where we
had detected a sudden increase in temperature, the water got cloudy. Then we
suddenly saw clams – giant clams the size of dinner plates – and tube worms
that were two or three metres tall.
It was like finding an oasis of life in the Sahara; it was like a rose garden.
The room exploded with excitement onboard the ship when we saw the images.
Scientists become children when they discover something – it was like we never
left middle school.
The discovery solved the mystery of how life got a foothold on the planet, and
it has led people to believe there is even more likely to be life elsewhere in
our solar system. But we were not expecting to find a large ecosystem of life –
we were all geologists.
We invited biologists but they didn’t want to go because they said there’s
nothing going on there. We constantly remind them they weren’t there when we
made this historic biological discovery; we have to rub it in."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
