That's the best kind of Pacific: deep and dark.
Underneath the seafloor of this well-studied site, the international team of researchers found veins of subsurface fluids swimming with life that has never been seen before.
"On land we have long known of animals living in cavities underground, and in the ocean of animals living in sand and mud, but for the first time, scientists have looked for animals beneath hydrothermal vents," says the institute's executive director, Jyotika Virmani.
"This truly remarkable discovery of a new ecosystem, hidden beneath another ecosystem, provides fresh evidence that life exists in incredible places."
Stripping back the seafloor's shell has now revealed a colorful ecosystem of worms, snails, and chemosynthetic bacteria, which don't rely on sunlight but on minerals for energy.
May the vulcanoctopus live long and prosper.
ReplyDeleteThis is how every modern sea monster horror movie begins…
ReplyDeleteLife is tenacious.
ReplyDeleteNow if we could figure out how to tap the energy from the smokers and vents on the ocean floor and transfer that energy into electricity to work for us this would be a big savings from using coal and oil to produce the electricity needed to run the planet. And should be very near zero pollution to harm the earth.
ReplyDeleteHeltau
We have the technology to do that now, and have for years, it's called nuclear power. Rather than trying to come up with some new fangled way to produce electricity which is "near zero pollution," and which would require vast new infrastructures not yet invented, build nuclear power plants.
DeleteWe should not neglect the maintenance of the carbon cycle, the necessary element of life (i.e. Carbon) gets bound up in plant life, living and dead.
DeleteWe need to release the carbon that is provided to us by God by burning the oil, coal and natural gas. We cannot rely on volcanoes to provide the missing Co2.
The level of Co2 in the atmosphere today is far to low.
Geothermal power is a thing, as I understand it. Easier to do on land, near volcanically active areas, than under gigatons of salt water. Not sure how cost-effective any of it is though. Presumably (absent lawfare) if it *were* cost-effective then it would be getting exploited regularly. Deep drilling is a mature technology, as is pumping tech. Pump a working fluid down a well, it vaporizes and comes back up to turn a turbine, then gets re-condensed and pushed back down.
DeleteNature uh uh uhhh finds a way! Quote from some damn ol Dino movie
ReplyDeleteThou shall not worship or make images of anything in the sea beneath the earth
ReplyDelete